Blu is silent by my side as she walks me through the crowd of bystanders. I don’t have the strength to look at them and see what they are thinking. My heart’s breaking too much. Abel’s still out on the balcony, but I can hear his outraged words.
“Come back here, Pixie. You’re mine, you hear me? You’re fucking mine and if you think for a single second that you can get away from me, you’re out of your mind. I won’t let you.”
I put a trembling hand on my tummy and Blu notices. Her eyes flare in understanding but I shake my head. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell him. Please.”
She nods as she squeezes my shoulder and keeps walking. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
I can’t tell Abel. I can’t tell him that his wish already came true. He has already had his revenge. I can’t do that to my baby — a baby I’m not even sure I’m carrying. But if I am, my child will never bear the sins of his father. I won’t let it happen.
I won’t let Abel’s anger touch him or her.
Just when Blu’s about to turn into the hallway, I pause. I stare at my husband. He’s being held back by two men but he’s basically bulging out of their hold, his determination to come after me is so strong. He’s panting, growling, his eyes are wild, his hair’s messy. He’s both a man and an animal right now. A true god. He makes his own way, his own rules. He loves me with every inch of his savage heart. I do too.
I mouth I’m sorry, like the way I did on prom night three months ago.
We only lasted such a short time in New York. Back in our town, you couldn’t have separated us even if your life depended on it.
When did we go from being two crazy kids in love to this? To whatever this is.
Shaking my head, I turn and walk away.
In my wake, my husband shouts my name over and over. It’s loud, tortured. It’s a howl. It’s the big bang.
And I can’t help but think that maybe this is how hearts die and all love stories come to an end.
My Pixie is gone.
She walked away from me, crying, her beautiful face splotched and red, the loose strands of her hair sticking to her wet cheeks.
I’ve had nightmares about this. About waking up one day and finding her gone because I’m not worth it. I’m not worth all the trouble, the years of sneaking around, running away from the only place she’s ever known, being estranged from her parents. I’m not worth all that.
I’ve had nightmares about her finally realizing that whatever her parents have been saying all along, whatever her town has been saying, is true. Abel Adams is a monster and he doesn’t deserve the love of the town’s princess. A goddess.
But fuck that. She’s mine. I took her and she’s going to stay with me. I won’t let her get away.
No matter what Nick says. She doesn’t need space. Not from me, her husband.
“You guys need to calm down, okay, man? It was a huge fight. You both need some time. Blu’s gonna look after her, so let’s get you home so you can relax and get some perspective.” He thumps my back. “Take the night off and when she’s back in the morning, you guys can talk.”
They stay with me all night, Nick and Ethan. They snatch away my phone so I can’t call her, won’t leave me alone for a single second. Those fuckers. I would knock them out, but it wouldn’t matter. Ethan would duck and run away, and it wouldn’t faze Nick. Nothing fazes that guy.
I pace and growl like I did the night they locked me up back in that town. At least then I had the pain to distract me from drowning in thoughts of Pixie. Tonight, I don’t have the luxury. I keep seeing her face when she told me I’d lost all control. Well, fuck yeah, I’ve lost control. I’ve had no control over my actions, over myself ever since I saw her.
I don’t understand how it all came about. One second she was kissing me and the next, she wanted me to go away. It’s not her choice. She’s my wife. She married me and she’s stuck with me for life. Even if she wasn’t married to me, I still wouldn’t let her get away from me.
Sometime during the night, I make the mistake of drifting off. I wake up gasping for breath because I see Pixie leaving me to go back to her parents. I haven’t had that kind of reaction in years now. Like someone’s strangling my throat, pressing on my windpipe, keeping me from drawing a breath.
Abel means breath, my mom used to tell me when I was a kid.
When they died, I couldn’t breathe right for days. Not until I saw Pixie and all my thoughts became hers. My nightmares went away and I dreamed about her pink dress and her flying hair and dirty toes. I wondered if there was a way I could touch her. If I could find out whether she was real or something I made up in my head out of grief and loneliness.
She was real, though. So real and pretty, sitting on the church pew, under the window, talking to her friend. Her voice was sweet. Like sugar or something. I wanted to dip my finger in it and pop it in my mouth for a taste.
Half asleep, I search the apartment for Pixie — not that it’s a huge place — but I come up empty. Where the fuck is she? Nick is gone now to go to the airport because Blu and him are leaving for LA in a little while. Pixie should be back by now. Obviously, she can’t stay at their place.
Ethan has woken up from my loud feet and I throw him a glare. In exchange, he throws me my phone. Good boy. While pacing the living room, I dial Pixie’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail, making me growl.
“Pixie, pick up the phone. Where the fuck are you? Do you have any idea how worried I am? You’re driving me fucking crazy right now.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Just pick up the phone, all right? You can’t shut me out. You can’t leave me hanging like this. I…”
I pause in front of the mirror. The tall one by the door. Pixie blushes every time we pass by it. Every time I kiss her in front of it or make her look at our reflections together, she ducks her head and elbows my chest. Abel, you’re shameless. It doesn’t matter that she loves it as much as me, that it gets her hot in two seconds flat, she pretends to be outraged.
A vice tightens around my heart, my throat, and my breathing stutters. I have to clench my eyes shut and dig a fist to my chest so I can take a proper breath.
The phone’s still pressed to my ear and I continue, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for whatever I did, for whatever I said, but you need to talk to me. You need to pick up your phone. I gave you your space. You’ve had an entire night. Now you’ve gotta talk to me. Right fucking now, all right? I’m coming to get you. You can’t stay at Blu’s forever. I’m coming, and Pixie?” I blow out a breath. “Stay put. I can’t have you getting lost again.”
I don’t want to cut off the call but I do it. I wanna keep myself connected to her however I can but I need to run now. I need to go get her from Nick and Blu’s house. Enough of this space shit.
But before I can leave, my eyes get stuck on the mirror, on my reflection, again. My eyes are red-rimmed, ragged from lack of sleep. Pixie says my eyes remind her of maple syrup and that every time I look at her she gets hungry for chocolate chip pancakes. I don’t know if it’s a compliment or what that I make her hungry for food, but I’ll take it.
She loves playing with my hair, says it’s the softest thing she’s ever touched. The strands are sticking up right now, like she’s just run her fingers all over them. My shirt’s wrinkled, as well. She hates black but I wear it because I know it gets her all worked up.
Abel, you need color in your life.
I’ve got you for that. All pretty and pink.
The hollow of my throat shows through the neck of the shirt; she loves tucking her nose in there. The veins on my arms stand out thick and taut; she loves tracing her finger along them. She loves comparing our palms, her small ones to my longer ones.
The silver cross she keeps sucking on lies in the middle of my heaving chest. There was a time when this necklace reminded me of my mom, her gentle laughter and sweet voice, but now all I can think about is Pixie’s perfect pink lips caressing the edges of it, her teeth bi
ting on it as I pound into her.
She loves using me as a pillow while sleeping, though she says I heat her up too much and tries to move away. I don’t let her go too far though. I drag her back. In winter when we used to spend time up in her treehouse, she’d cuddle beside me because of my body heat. It’s not winter in New York yet, but she’s gonna need me to warm her up.
Everything I am, every single part of my body, is deliberately, thoughtfully designed for her. Maybe, before dying, that fucking god of hers did one thing right. He created me for her and He molded her for me.
Where the fuck did it all go wrong?
You’ve lost all control.
***
She isn’t at their apartment.
Last night, she went to a coffee shop with Blu and stayed there for a few hours, before coming back to their place and spending the night there. But in the morning, she left. Not for our apartment but to go somewhere else.
“She left? You fucking let her go,” I bellow at Blu, who looks calm, as if everything is fine. As if slowly, bit by bit, I’m not losing my grip on reality.
“I’m not her keeper. She wanted to leave so I let her go. She’s not a child, Abel. She’s allowed to go places.”
I growl, “Are you out of your mind? She gets lost. She doesn’t have any sense of direction. She doesn’t even have any money.”
“I gave her some.” She sighs. “Look, before she left she asked me to tell you that she’ll call you. That you shouldn’t look for her. She’ll come to you when she’s ready. Oh, and she also said that she can take care of herself. You should trust her.”
I push my fingers through my hair. “I should trust her?”
“Yes.”
“That’s great. It’s fantastic. I should trust her.” I nod, all the while wanting to punch something. “She left me. She won’t pick up my calls and I’m talking to fucking strangers to find out where she is. And I should trust her.”
Putting my hands on my hips, I look up at the ceiling of her apartment — the apartment I checked all nooks and crannies of under Nick’s glower — as I bark out a laugh. It strains the tendons of my throat, making me feel like I can’t breathe. Again.
Blu watches me with kind eyes. “It’s not my place to say anything but she loves you. She loves you a lot. More than you can even imagine, maybe. She left everything for you and she doesn’t even care because you are her everything. And all she’s asking you in return is to give her some time, okay? All she wants from you is a little bit of trust, and maybe a little bit of patience too.”
“What’d she say to you?”
“I just told you.”
I want to break something. I think maybe I’ll break the sliding door leading to that fucking balcony. The balcony where everything went wrong, where she left me like I didn’t matter to her at all. Like all the shit we went through didn’t matter. She ignored my screams, my shouts while I was being held like a rabid animal.
“She loves me, huh?” Blu nods. “Then why isn’t she here talking to me? Why’d she leave me?”
“Maybe you should ask that of yourself.”
I haven’t seen her in forty-eight hours.
Haven’t seen her. Haven’t talked to her. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if she’s okay. I don’t know if she’s lost, in trouble, if she needs me. I’ve called her about a hundred times but she hasn’t picked up once.
It reminds me of the night when my parents died. I was at Ethan’s and didn’t get back until the early hours of morning. When I stepped through the door, I knew something was wrong. The silence was too thick. My dad was a noisy sleeper. He’d toss and turn and yes, sometimes snore. My mom hated that. She always said that he needed to go see a doctor for his snoring problem or she wouldn’t sleep next to him anymore. He never went and she never slept apart from him.
My phone was dead so I had to hunt down my charger before I could make any calls. No easy feat, that. Pixie calls me a slob for a reason. At last, I found it buried under my dirty laundry, which was in turn, under my bed. As soon as I powered my phone on, it blew up with messages and voicemails. I was afraid to open any of them. Somehow, I knew it was going to be bad news. The worst fucking news.
I’ve looked everywhere for Pixie, all the places I could think of. The restaurant she used to work at. The coffee shop by the apartment that she says has the best chocolate chip cookies. Jury’s still out on that. The nearby subway stations, like she’d be hanging around those smelly places, just waiting for me to find her.
Like a maniac, I show her picture to random people, asking if anyone has seen her. Most of them look at me like I’m crazy and move along. Some take a good look at her smiling face, ponder a bit, say no, and then move along. Others don’t even spare me a glance.
I get into a fight with one such person. I shove him and he shoves me back. We curse at each other. He’s a drunk and I look like I might be the same. A crowd gathers around us, as if my life’s a show to be enjoyed.
Assholes.
I walk away from the fight. Finding Pixie is more important. But after running around for hours, my legs give up and I stumble on the sidewalk, outside a laundromat. I try standing but it’s as if my entire body has given up.
Your body’s like a kingdom or something.
That’s because I make smart choices about what I put inside it.
She laughed. Maybe I need to make smart choices too. You know, about what I put inside my body.
I sit propped against the brick wall, her picture in my hands and the air smelling of detergent, making me realize how dirty and sweaty I smell myself. I lose the last battle with my body and a thick tear snakes down my pulsing cheek.
My fingers curl and I crush her photo. I hate her for doing this to me. I hate her for leaving me like my parents did. I throw the crushed photograph and it hits the trashcan before falling to the ground.
A minute later, I crawl to it, pick it up and smooth the wrinkled paper, pressing it to my chest.
***
“Oh my God, you lost my best friend,” Sky screams in my ear. “You fucking asshole. What did you do?”
When my phone rang a minute ago, I leapt to it, thinking it was Pixie. It wasn’t. It’s her menace of a best friend.
“You talked to her?” I sit up on the mattress in our room.
I don’t remember collapsing on it though. I only remember Ethan coming to get me from in front of the laundromat and taking me home. I realize I don’t thank the guy often. He gave me a home, a job. He lied for me and I haven’t shown him my appreciation.
“Yes. She called me and she was crying. What did you do to her?”
A breath whooshes out of me. It’s huge. It’s a gust of wind. Jesus Christ, she’s fine. She isn’t… gone. Even now, I can’t think of the ugly word: death.
“Where is she? Is she okay?”
“Well, if you call sobbing like a baby okay then yeah, she’s doing fabulous. And I have no clue where she is. She wouldn’t tell me. She also told me not to call you but I’m still doing it because I’m so mad at you,” she snaps. “So, what the fuck did you do? Did you say something to her about the treehouse? Because if you did then I’m gonna come up there and kick your ass.”
I want to distance the phone a few inches and grimace at her loud voice, but I grip it tighter at her words. “What about the treehouse?”
She goes silent for a few seconds before continuing, “You don’t know?”
I’m completely awake now. My body’s hurting like a motherfucker but I’ll survive. “What don’t I know?”
Sighing, she tells me, “Her dad. He burnt down the treehouse. He found more pictures of you and her and the day you guys left, he torched everything. They had a wake for her, Abel, telling everyone that she was dead to them. I didn’t wanna tell her but Jesus fucking Christ, she’s stubborn and I thought you guys were happy over there and that you’d, I don’t know, fuck her silly or something. But now she’s gone. Oh my God. I never should’ve told he
r. I’m an idiot. I’m such a –”
“When’d you tell her?”
“Uh, I don’t know, a couple of days ago. Look, I –”
I hang up on her.
Sky’s not the person I wanna talk to right now. I need to find Pixie. I have to. I have to talk to her, listen to her sweet voice. I need to dial her number but I’m almost crushing the phone in my hands. Any second now, it’s gonna break, shatter into a million pieces. I’m gonna smash it to dust with my bare hands.
I should stop. Phone’s my only hope right now. My only hope is that she might pick up my call and talk to me. My only hope is that she’ll let me comfort her.
Why didn’t she tell me?
Maybe she did. The night I was out, getting bored out of my mind without Pixie, she was drinking. She hardly ever drinks. She likes to think that she loves it, loves the bitter taste of it, but I notice her tiny grimaces. It makes me smile every time she acts badass.
It’s you and me against the world. I know that now.
Jesus. Fuck. She tried to tell me and I was busy fucking into her. I was too drenched in lust, in my need for her.
I should really stop now. It’s not really the phone I wanna destroy, it’s them: her fucking parents. They have no idea what death is. They have no idea how it feels when someone you love is gone. You can’t reach for them. You can’t touch them. You know in your heart, in your very bones that they are no more. They don’t exist. Where you saw their faces, their smiles, there’s only a void. You see the casket. You see their closed eyes. You see that their chest is not moving. Their body is lying useless.
That’s what death is. It’s black. A vacuum, without body, without substance. Without breaths.
I should dial her number and fucking pray to God that she picks up. But I never learned how to pray. My mom wanted me to but I’m like Dad. He never believed in God either.
Maybe there’s a God, Abel, but I don’t believe in Him. I only believe in myself.
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