by Ella James
So I sit there, and I stroke his hair. When he flexes his shoulder and shifts onto his side, I whisper, “Do you want to put your head in my lap?”
When, to my surprise, he mumbles, “yeah,” I try to turn my mind off and just feel: my arms around his body, the width and weight and strength of him.
At our school, there’s a girl who’s evangelical and they put oil on people’s foreheads when they pray. If I had oil, I’d smear some on him right now.
But I don’t. I only have my childish tears.
And so, as Dash sleeps in my arms, I tell myself the only thing I can to ease the pain. When Dash is gone, I will grow up. I’ll be pretty, stronger, smarter when he comes back home. He might not want me while I’m still so young, but one day, we’ll be older. I’ll be Dash’s equal.
He’s an artist. I’m a writer. I know it might sound silly, but I really am. Writing is the only thing I do well. I’ll write books like my mom did, and Dash will paint.
I sit there, quiet and still until he wakes up—and it’s close to four. We climb inside his window. When our feet touch down on Dash’s carpet, he pulls me into a long, tight hug.
“I love you, Ammy Dove. Please take care, and be safe. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like. You promise?”
“Yeah. I won’t.”
“Good.” His eyes are strange, as if there’s something burning bright behind them, but it’s so quick, just there and gone, and then Lexie has heard us, and she’s up. We’re all talking, hauling Dash’s last few things out to his truck and taking dark-blurred pictures by his U-Haul, with its Tennessee plates and image of Elvis on the side.
Alexia is hugging her big brother, crying, still half-drunk, and I’m pressing my lips together, blinking too much, waiting for the time when he gives me a last hug, too. He does, of course, and it’s perfection.
Perfect things don’t last, and so he goes.
Three
Amelia
August 2011
“Blow doesn’t work on me. No effect whatever. I have ADHD, so coke calms me down. If I wanna have a good time, I gotta roll or pop an Oxy. That or pot. You ever smoked?”
I shake my head.
My date’s eyebrows arch. “Never?”
“Never.”
“But you’re Alexia’s friend.”
“We’re not as close as we used to be. I’m too boring for her.”
Michael Kisner, a junior who just moved here from New Jersey, drops his jaw, shaking his head slowly, like I just told him I kill kittens for fun.
I offer a small shrug, choosing to give him the most honest answer rather than blaming my weak, preemie lungs. “I just…don’t really like altered reality that much.”
“Altered reality!” His wide eyes widen further in outrage. “We’re talking about mary-jo-ana here. What you’re saying sounds like… like a video game or something!”
“Video games. I do like those…”
“No.” He shakes his buzz-cut head. “Amelia, that won’t do.”
“No video games?”
Michael and I are sitting on a leather couch inside a massive sunroom on the back side of a massive lake house. The room is crowded with so many potted plants, it feels a little like a jungle. In between the giant plants are gorgeous, stained-glass windows depicting nature scenes. Over our heads, palm frond ceiling fans twirl slowly, dangling from exposed wood beams.
The home is owned by the McVays, one of the wealthiest families in Atlanta. The only reason I’m here at their lakeside palace with Michael, enduring my very first—and, heaven help me, possibly also last—real date is because The Gin Rangers are playing a private concert.
Yes, as in the Grammy-winning Gin Rangers.
The McVay family has some connection to the band. Alexia is semi-dating Lambert McVay, a senior at our school. And since tonight is Lambert’s eighteenth birthday bash, our whole posse is here at midnight, living it up.
How I got stuck with Michael, I’m not really sure. He’s gotten friendly with Lamb, and Lexie vouched for him, describing him as “really cool.” Michael called me yesterday, acting really nice and offering to pick me up.
I had no idea he’d be quite so…intense.
I cast a longing glance out several sets of glass and mahogany doors on the back of the sunroom, looking past the torch-lined pool to see the Gin Rangers rock it on the lawn between the pool and lake.
Toward the back of the pack, I see Lexie’s metallic gold dress glint in the moonlight. I can’t see Lambert, only Lexie and her glowing dress, moving easy to the music. Probably because she’s high. Which, come to think of it, is probably why she told me Michael I-Can’t-Do-Cocaine Kisner is “really cool.” He’s obviously a druggie.
Why did I listen to Lex? Why did I take Michael’s suggestion to go inside for beer and a breather?
“I can’t believe it,” he’s saying now. “I smoked my first joint when I was like, seven years old.”
I’m stifling a laugh when he leans closer. “Woman, you’ve gotta try it.”
I shake my head, inhaling deeply. Since Michael is wearing nine gallons of cologne and is also bathed in vodka, the inhalation makes my eyes sting.
“Probably never, but definitely not tonight,” I tell him. “I just want to hear the Gin Rangers.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely tonight! You can’t put this off, Amelia. Can I call you Lia? So damn hot. See, it sounds like Leia. Tell me you’ve at least seen Star Wars.”
“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” I quote. (Vader).
Michael’s eyebrows rumple. He tilts his head a little, like a puzzled puppy.
“Darth Vader.” I give him what I hope is a patient smile, causing him to look doubly confused.
“You calling me Vader?” he asks, looking offended.
“No.” I laugh. “Just—never mind.”
“So, back to the MJ!”
I sink into the couch, running my hands over the flowy, semi-sheer green dress I’m wearing over my bikini and listening to the Gin Rangers as Michael rattles off the many benefits of marijuana. I’ve got nothing against pot, I’m just not a risk-taker. If I ever did decide to toke up, I’d rather be at my own house.
I nod repeatedly, re-gloss my lips, and adjust my glasses as Michael talks about decreasing brain inflammation and lowering bad cholesterol. When I can break eye contact, I flick my gaze around the room, praying I’ll spot one of my friends. Any excuse to escape.
Since I don’t see anybody, I let my mind wander. It goes where it often does: to Dash. Now there’s something to think about while Michael yammers. Except I’m not sure I want to think about Dash. Not sure thinking about him would do me any good, even though most of the time, I can’t seem to stop myself.
I wish I knew where he is and how he’s doing.
Since summer started, I heard he’s texted his mom a few times and Alexia once, telling them only that he’s traveling. “Cheaper than college,” he texted Lex, as if money matters at all to the Frasiers. Mr. and Mrs. Frasier work all the time, both as producers in the music industry.
I press my lips together, holding in a sigh, and continue nodding while Michael extols the virtues of marijuana. I want to kick myself for agreeing to a date with someone I didn’t know. With someone Lexie recommended. I hate it that it’s true, but I’m trusting her less and less.
When the marijuana talk winds down, Michael leans against the back of the couch, surprising me by taking my hand. He looks me in the eyes and then looks down at our joined hands.
“Look how much darker my hand is than yours,” he says, rubbing my knuckles. “And all those freckles on your fingers.” He squeezes my fingers with his own. “I’ve got a redhead fetish. Always have. We had a nanny when I was a kid, and she had red hair.”
My eyebrows arch before I can censor my face. “Fetish?”
He grins. “You know what I’m saying.” A dimple appears beside his mouth. “You’re the prettiest one I’ve ever been able to call mine.”
�
��Mine”? Does he think I’m his? His own personal fetish come to life? I pull my hand away from his, even though I worry that it’s rude, because I can’t help it. I manage a bland smile, then stand, rubbing my stomach.
“I’m not feeling very well. I think I need some water.”
It’s not entirely untrue. I’ve had a queasy sort of stomachache all night, the kind of stomachache that’s brought on by a screaming conscience: in this case, screaming that Michael is a D-bag. An oblivious, probably harmless D-bag, but a D-bag still.
I take one last look out the patio doors at the Gin Rangers, surrounded by a thick swarm of bodies, and the sparkle of the lake behind them, then take off down the long hallway leading deeper into the house. As I move, the din of conversation crackles into fragments:
“Did you hear that Betsy…”
“…told her ‘fuck that’…”
“…latched arms and then we tried to…”
“…amazing tits.”
I smell barbeque, drifting inside on a summer breeze. Shoulders bump mine as I search the bodies pressed around me for one of my friends. I don’t see them, or even anyone I know.
The Gin Rangers launch into “Magic Mountain” and I turn back toward the sunroom. Maybe I should go back outside. My feet are killing me from the two hours before I followed Michael inside, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—not to mention the reason I sneaked out past my bitchy stepmother, asleep in the living room recliner, earlier tonight.
“Where are you going?” she’d snapped, when I thought I’d gotten to the front door safely.
I jumped, glancing back.
“Your dad’s asleep.”
“…I know,” I whispered.
“That dress makes you look like rain forest Barbie. Go on, though.” She waved her arm. “Give me some peace.”
Manda’s always like that: acting like I put her out, even though I try my best to tip-toe in her presence. She’s a gymnastics instructor, and ever since I quit taking her classes when I was ten, I’ve been pretty sure she hates me.
As I look back toward the Gin Rangers, distracted by the thought of Manda telling Dad about tonight, Michael catches my eye and starts to stand.
I turn on my heel and book it down the hallway. After passing half a dozen doors, I try one, opening it to an empty bedroom. I step inside, noting the antique, oak bedroom set and two oil paintings I recognize as the work of Mary Nelson Sinclair, one of my dad’s artist friends.
A minute or two later, I think I hear Michael’s voice in the hallway.
The room I’m in has two closed doors: one small, like a closet door, and one larger, like a bathroom door. I wrap my hand around the knob of what I think is the bathroom door, hoping to hide out until my date gets distracted, then slip outside, listen to the Gin Rangers while I text my non-high friend Lucy, and head home. It’s running away, but it’s justified, I think, as I pull the door open.
A second later, the sight before my eyes hits me like a boot to the gut. Standing before me, in a doorway directly opposite the one I’m in, across a bathroom done in shades of green, is Dash.
Real Dash.
Dash whom I haven’t laid eyes on in nearly a year.
His hair is shorter, body bigger, face more chiseled—but it’s him. His pants hang down around his hair-dusted shins, exposing rumpled boxer-briefs, which gather close around his package.
My gaze is on him for no more than half a second before his hazel eyes pop open wider, and one of his arms jerks up toward his face.
“Ammy?” His mouth opens. “What the fuck?”
“Oh my God!”
His eyes peel even wider, then he whirls around and steps into the room from whence he came. It’s a slightly larger bedroom, done in some dark color I can’t process because my own wide eyes are glued to Dash’s back: the pert ass wrapped in gray cotton, his wider-with-age shoulders clothed in what looks to be a light blue t-shirt.
“Dash?” From the back, I see his head hang lower.
My heart races as adrenaline floods me, making my skin tingle and burn. It’s then that my senses process perfume. And something else. A scent that makes me think of flesh, hear the echo of moans.
Sex.
I’m smelling sex.
Dash turns to face me more fully, his big hands jerking his pants up. He fastens them, then lifts his head, revealing eyes that remain slightly widened, and totally unreadable. “What are you doing here?”
It’s all I can do to stand beside him. It’s a miracle I choke out, “Gin Rangers.”
Dash is here! He’s here, he’s here!
All his features twist up in what looks like pain.
“Lamb goes to our school, you know,” I babble. “My—your sister—she’s having a thing with him this summer. So he invited her. And all our friends.”
Dash takes a slow step in my direction. For a long moment, he’s quiet while his gaze laps up and down me, followed by the slightest little furrow of his dark brows. “Are you drinking, Amelia?” His voice is husky. Low.
All this time, and that’s what he asks me? Am I drinking?
“Have you been?” Dash told me one time that his favorite was the Irish Car Bomb, and though I doubt he had one of those here, I know that when he’s out, he always goes for whiskey.
I inhale again, because I’ve barely got my breath. The shock I felt on seeing him is morphing into panicked agitation: that he’ll disappear again. That…I don’t know what. And yet—even as I yearn to grab onto him, hold on, I also want to lash out. I feel my upper lip curl. “You smell like a bottle of Jameson.”
My voice sounds high.
My throat feels tight.
“Who are you with?” I can’t resist asking, even though I hate myself for being such a ninny.
I watch as his face locks down, masking any feelings I might read on his familiar features. “Who brought you here?” he asks me grimly.
“Why do you care?” Fury simmers in me. Disappointment masquerading as pure rage. “Dash, what the hell? Do you know how many letters got returned to me? I emailed all year. You left and you…you just left.” I fold my arms, fisting both my shaking hands.
His face flickers, and I can see emotion in the hard line of his brows, in the tightness of his jaw. “Am, why don’t you let me take you home. You don’t belong here at this time of night.”
I look him up and down again, stunned silent by his firm, authoritative tone, by the strangely patriarchal formality of his words. I realize that he seems in motion even though he’s still. Because I’m in motion, I notice. My breaths are hard and heavy as I take him in. “I don’t understand. Dash… Where did you come from?”
“Where do you think?” He sounds exhausted. His eyes are downcast as he runs his hand over his short, dark hair.
I want to throw myself at him. I need to touch him. Shock and disappointment have me frozen like a tranq dart. My voice quavers. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard a word from you.”
From the second Dash left in his Elvis U-Haul, I wrote him all the time, every other day at first, and then twice a week. At first, I figured he was busy and he’d call or write back soon. When September turned into October and no one had heard from him—at least not Alexia or me—I started writing more instead of less, pouring little pieces of my soul into the words I wrote him.
In November, about a week before Thanksgiving, I got a package with no return address. Inside it: a pointy maple leaf, suspended between two thick sheets of glass, flawless and furiously red.
I took it as a sign he would be home, so when he wasn’t, my entire body felt leaden with disappointment. Who could I complain to? Lexie? She was as confused as I was, and, by that point in the school year, distracted by the Adderall she was snorting.
I wrote him more letters, and mailed fewer. In early December, every single letter I had written was returned, bound in a thick blue rubber band. Stamped on the front of each: “Undeliverable.”
Panic clawed me.
&n
bsp; What did it mean?
In mid-January, I got an emailed photo of Dash posing with a gorgeous painting of a Mourning Dove. I devoured every pixel, noting his soft grey beanie; worn, plaid button-up with a t-shirt peeking out under the collar; the brand new scruff on his jaw and the slightly dreamy tilt of his lips. That was Dash’s smile: the sweet smile I remembered from the first day I met him and Alexia.
I replied: Oh God, there you are. It’s beautiful. Where have you been?
Crickets.
I emailed him again in late February. Missing you, D. Saw it’s snowing up your way. Hope you’re drinking coffee with your dog and hope the dog is wearing a sweater.
Crickets—and the sound of my poor heart, starting to crumble.
In March, Alexia told me she’d asked her parents about Dash. She was surprised to find he’d been intermittently texting their mother.
“He seems okay?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Mom said he’s having fun.”
In May I got another unmarked package: a vivid, nighttime photo featuring a blazing milky way, and in the middle, a bright orb that had to be the international space station.
Alexia told me Dash was traveling this summer. I would have asked her more questions, but now I only see her once or twice a week, usually out at parties where she’s drunk or high.
Dash has become my neurosis. At least one or two nights per week, I sit out on my own roof, staring at the stars, with one eye turned toward the Frasiers’ driveway. How is it possible that he wouldn’t come home? What was wrong? I knew something was. I could feel it.
“So…where were you?” I repeat. Sweat is gathering between my breasts and tickling my hairline. My chest is so tight, I feel like I might pass out. “Where were you, Dash?” It’s rasped.
He shrugs, and it’s clear he’s holding up a wall between us. His eyes and face are distant, as if we haven’t known each other our whole lives.
“Around,” he finally says. The word is slow and soft, deceptive in its nonchalance. For a long second, his eyes hold mine; I know him well enough to see he’s trying to act normal. “Did some traveling.” Another shrug. “Worked a little here and there to get some money. Painted.”