I want to go check on Ian, though he probably doesn’t want to see me. He told me to leave, yet all I can think about is crawling in bed beside him and soaking up his warmth. I am cold underneath this downy comforter in this big house with lots of space but little security.
I can’t stay here and do nothing. I can’t hide out for the rest of fall break in this big room in this big house on this big estate and pretend he doesn’t exist.
I don’t want to pretend at all.
I just want to go back to a few hours ago and forget his words that sliced me to the bone and the look of indifference he was seemingly born with. I thought I had finally broken through, that I’d chipped away at his walls. But I was wrong.
I am not the mousy girl in the movie who finally tames the bad boy heartthrob. I’m just a girl, a normal, boring girl. A girl who likes strange food combinations—like pickles and peanut butter—and needs meds to keep the darkness at bay. A girl with silly dreams of being a surgeon like she could somehow bring her brother back with every successful operation.
Ian is ethereal, otherworldly. He was born into a life of privilege but seems content to shun it all—no, that’s not right. He seems okay with setting fire to it and watching it burn.
He’s brilliant and beautiful and all things unordinary. I’ve never seen him study, yet I’ve also never seen him get anything less than straight As. He’s got an Adonis belt that deserves to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, and I can attest to his prowess in the bedroom. I am a fool to think I could ever change him, ever really make him mine. Catching Ian is like catching the wind, frustrating and useless and utterly impossible.
But hope is a cruel bitch. It burns its little flickering flame in endless night. It keeps alive those dreams you wish you could forget and ignores the odds that stand like Mount Sinai in front of you. I hope for him. I hope for me. I hope for what we could be together.
I climb out of bed, the floor cold and unforgiving against my bare feet. I slide a sweater over my head and leave for Ian’s room.
The halls are quiet and lonely, my feet loud on the marble floor. A clock ticks, but the sound is far away. I wrap my arms around myself to ward out the cold, but it leeches the warmth from me anyway.
This place is massive, a maze I could easily get lost in and have to yell for help. I cut through the library as Ian showed me. The space is enormous, lined with built-in bookshelves that climb up the two story walls and two rolling wooden ladders on opposite sides of the room.
Lights mounted to the walls give off flicking flames like old gas lanterns, giving the space a cozy, warm feel. I want to take a moment and run my fingers across the worn spines of the books and feel the titles embossed in gold. I want to get close and smell them like a serious weirdo, but I don’t. I cross the massive Persian rug and slide the doors shut behind me as I leave.
I am cold, colder than I’ve ever been, and something inside my gut screams at me, but the message is messy and jumbled and I have no idea what it’s trying to say. I walk a little faster and before I know it, I am jogging, my feet slapping against the floor. When I reach Ian’s door, it’s shut. I should knock, but I can’t stop. I go inside.
“Ian?” I say, my voice loud against the soft hum of the heater on the far side of the room.
His room has been trashed. His dresser lies tipped over, and there are clothes and papers everywhere, balled on the floor and bunched up in corners. An electric guitar literally sticks out of a wall, wedged in there by the lower bout, and the place smells like booze. The stench burns my nostrils as his tablet lies on the floor where it first landed, flickering on and off like a beacon to lost sailors at sea.
“Ian?” I say again, his name a squeak.
There’s no response, and my heart jitters inside my chest like someone’s playing paddle ball with it.
I say his name again, louder. Again, no response.
I walk over the destruction, careful to avoid the pieces of broken glass from the photo frames shattered on the floor. There’s a light on in the adjoining bathroom, and the door is cracked open. I push open the door, and it opens with a long, solitary creak.
I am blinded, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust from the darkness of his room. The white light flooding my vision fades. First into focus are the white-and-black granite countertop and the mirror that extends over the vanity. Next are the walls, the same light gray as the cliffs that run along the Pacific. Last to clear are the floors of black marble and Ian.
He’s on the floor, and the darkness inside me squeezes tight around my lungs. The world tilts on its axis and whirls like a wobbling spin top.
I can’t breathe. I am shaking. My knees give way underneath me, and I collapse to the floor in front of him, a wail tearing from my throat.
He lays on his side, his limbs splattered like a dropped rag doll. Vomit pools on the tile beside him.
Images—no, memories, my memories—scroll like a broken projector inside my head.
William with the needle in his arm.
A spoon and a lighter and a cracked leather folio scattered on the carpeted floor around his body.
Everly at his side, her eyes glossy and faraway, her painted lips, ruby red and open,
