She raises an eyebrow and pulls me in close. “I like you, Alex with a c. So protective.”
“I’d rather be in front than in the back,” I joke.
She laughs and snakes a hand around to tap a nail against my belt buckle. “I will remember that.”
My gut dips, and I try to tell myself it’s in an exciting way. Like hell yeah, sex implications! But when I say, “Damn, I meant I’d rather be in back,” and my voices trembles like it’s in a paint shaker, I think that maybe my gut is dipping in a very different, guilt-ridden way.
Rian giggles against me, and her breath warms my spine through my T-shirt. How is it that we have more chemistry when we’re not looking at each other than when we are?
“So…where are we headed?” I ask, since I’m now the one directing us.
“Up.”
“I forgot my wings tonight.”
I feel her smile against me. “Good thing I didn’t.” She ducks under my arm and nods at a fire escape that looks like a ninety-pound person could make it crumble into a million pieces.
“Uh…okay…”
She laughs. “I appreciate the attempted enthusiasm. But we should probably take the elevator.”
Phew. I’m all for taking risks tonight, but I’d rather not die on that thing. And I’m man enough to admit when I’m scared shitless—heights are not my thing. I know I’m not exactly winning any points tonight in the awesome date department, but screaming when I slip on the top rung of the fire escape ladder will probably kill the night entirely.
Rian sneaks around me, bumping a side door open with her hip. The building wails and moans, making another surge of adrenaline pump through my body. I grab her hand and pull her inside, enjoying the way her giggles sort of sound like hiccups.
It’s dark in here, and musty-smelling, but the moon shines through one of the broken windows and onto a giant wall that’s been tagged so much it’s more spray paint than interior paint.
Rian pushes a button to our right, and the chiming doors open up. The elevator reminds me of one I saw in a Leo DiCaprio movie (all right, it was Titanic, not The Departed, and I’m wondering how old this building really is). Rian mashes the button for the roof over and over until the doors close with a loud screech that makes me think maybe we should’ve dared the fire escape.
“Ever done it in an elevator?” she asks, taking me so off guard that I end up snorting so hard I hurt myself.
“Have you?”
“Do you count oral sex?” She leans against the cracked wooden railing nailed against each of the elevator’s four walls. I force my brain to stay in my head.
“I would, yeah.”
A slow, deliberate smile spreads across her face. “Then not yet.”
She drops her eyes, intentionally eyeing my zipper. My brow furrows and I shift my weight. The unexpected sexual advances keep throwing me off balance. One moment we’re talking casually and perfectly on the surface, and the next she’s indicating an intimate exchange.
“Hmm,” I say, mostly because I haven’t decided on how to proceed with that kind of offer. I don’t know her, and I’m past the days of sleeping around. I want to move on with my heart, not just in bed. Guess I should’ve made that more clear.
The elevator creaks when I take a step toward her. I see her pulse jump in her neck, and I reach out and tuck my fingers between hers. Holding hands always helps for me—it’s the first step of many small ones that lead to something more. Her breath catches, and the seductive glance softens into something much sweeter. For the first time tonight, I can see potential in something new.
“I want to know something real,” I tell her, trying not to sound so damn desperate for a connection between us. I lock eyes with her for a second before I drop my gaze to our hands. “Tell me something real about you.”
Her hand twitches in mine. The air between us goes quiet, so the only sound is the eerie screech and squeal of the old elevator pulling us to the roof. She lets out an amused sigh, and I catch her eyes once again.
“Sex in an elevator is about as real as I get.”
The floor jumps underneath us and the door dings open, saving me from looking too disappointed in her answer.
“Welcome to my world,” Rian says, hopping off the elevator. The entire roof is fenced, minus a small portion next to the wobbly fire escape, and there’s a basketball hoop on the far end.
The ground is covered in graffiti art.
“Badass,” I say under my breath, stepping out onto the roof, tentative since I don’t want to stand on such amazing artwork, but there’s nowhere else to stand.
She makes her way to the basketball hoop. There’s a rack of basketballs hanging out in the corner of the roof lot, like this court is used often, though no one would ever guess from the state of the building. And like it knows I’m judging it, something clangs behind me. I whip around, but no one’s there. Must be that fire escape finally biting the dust.
“Ten years in the making.”
“Huh?” I ask, still surveying the area behind me. Rian laughs, and I turn back around.
“This one.” She taps the ground with her foot, and I ignore the ominous clanging and make my way over to her. “I know you can’t really see it.” She waves up at the burned-out roof lights and the very minimal moonlight we’re getting.
“Easily resolved,” I say, pulling my phone from my pocket. I ignore the notifications and turn the flashlight on to shine it at our feet. Dark blue paint mixes in with lighter blues in unbelievably realistic waves, yet the whole thing looks abstract at the same time. I follow the patterns, walking up and down the court. Rian stays where she’s at, rubbing her arms a little. I wish I’d taken my jacket just so I could offer it to her.
“This is incredible,” I tell her, and she gives me a small smile. Something that looks a lot like worry flashes across her expression, and she looks down at the ground just above my light.
I move my phone across the court. The blues and greens of the background meet the hard outline of a figure floating in the water—a small girl with colorful hair as long as her body. Her eyes are a piercing green, wide open, and her mouth is formed in an imperfect O. Starburst shapes cascade over her cheeks and hands and feet; her skin almost looks crystallized.
I crouch down, running my hand over the microscopic lines along the girl’s neck. They look a lot like…
“Gills,” Rian says, her breath warming my shoulder. She squats down next to me. “They’re small, to make you think that, from a distance, she’s going to die here. That she might already be dead. That she will be permanently stuck under the water.”
“That’s very morbid of you,” I say with a sideways glance.
The corner of her mouth twitches upward. “But if you look real close, you can see that…she’ll be okay.”
Damn. When people say stuff like that, the air shifts and folds and flops you around until you’re in that moment with them. That’s what I meant by something real. I find myself wanting to pull her closer, so I settle my hand in hers again.
“That’s morbidly beautiful,” I correct myself, and she shakes with silent laughter. “Who is she?”
“The girl?” she asks, and I nod. “Me. You. Everyone, I guess. We all have our challenges in life.”
“Like being in love with the wrong person?”
I mean to say it like it’s not a big deal, but I feel the air snap back to before her realism. Her hand feels foreign in mine. Like the artwork, I feel trapped underwater and I’m desperately searching for the same air Rian is breathing.
“I don’t think that’s accurate,” she says, pushing on her knees to stand upright. I follow after her.
“Which part?”
“The ‘wrong’ part. What makes you think she’s the wrong person? Because she doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Well…yeah,” I say with a laugh.
She shakes her head, smiling up at the starry sky. “There are a million people in the world. How many have yo
u loved?”
“I don’t know. A fair amount.” But in love? I guess that’s an entirely different answer—one I don’t know. I always thought that for you to be in love, the other person had to love you back in the same way. Maybe I’m wrong about that; I’ve yet to experience a two-sided kind of love.
“Loving someone isn’t wrong,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. Her eyes drift down to the girl in the water briefly before she takes in a large breath and holds it, looking back at the sky.
A shadow moves across the court, but when I look to see the source of it there’s nothing there. Probably my mind playing games, since it seems to love doing that tonight. Trying to distract me, no doubt. Because it knows that my cement heart isn’t going to beat for someone else for a while.
“She’s mostly me, though,” Rian says, and I wonder if I’ve zoned out on half the conversation again.
“Sorry?”
“The girl.” She nods at the ground. “When I was fifteen, I almost drowned.”
My eyebrows move upward. She says it so matter-of-factly and she’s caught me so off guard that whatever the proper way to respond to a revelation like that is, it doesn’t exactly come to me easily. Or at all.
“W-what happened?”
“I was being stupid.” She lets out a hollow laugh. “My friends and I decided it would be a good idea to jump off a bridge.”
“What kind of bridge you talking about here?”
“Not real high, but definitely took guts. The lake it was over was pretty deep; we’d been swimming in it all summer. We climbed up the wooden bridge and out onto the railing. It had started to rain, so we were the only ones out there. My friend Delia was a bit of a daredevil and she said, ‘If I asked you to jump off this bridge, would you?’ As a joke, of course, but Josh—my boyfriend at the time—took one look at us and simply stepped off the ledge. He was always the one to jump right into anything. No pun intended.”
“Sounds like you.” Or from what I can see of her.
“Maybe me now, but not then. I was a shy and quiet art student who just wanted to keep to myself most of the time. When I met Josh, it was just so…unexpected, the way I felt about him. He made me want to burst out of the shadows.”
Amen. If anyone were to put into words how I felt when I met Theresa, those are the words that would ring truest. “I know exactly what you mean.”
We share a nostalgic glance, and then she blows out a breath. “So he jumped first, made it look so easy. He popped from the water and waved me down. I was still at the point in my life where leaps like this, metaphorical and literal, required a helping hand. So I grabbed Delia’s arm and we jumped off together. I remember exactly how it felt too—being in midair before hitting the water. It wasn’t exhilarating or freeing or felt like flying or anything like that. It was terrifying. Because when we jumped, Delia hit her head on one of the wooden railings on the bridge. She banged it so hard I felt her hand go instantly limp in mine. The whole way down I knew she was unconscious, and there was absolutely nothing I could do but scream.”
Rian looks down at her empty hand, running her fingers over her palm. “The water slapped us like we’d hit a stone wall. Delia was sinking, dragging me down with her, and I wasn’t a strong enough swimmer to pull us both to the surface. And I couldn’t…I wouldn’t let go of her.”
“Where was your boyfriend?”
“He dove down, tried to find us. He must have, because after I blacked out the next thing I remember was the hospital.”
“And Delia?”
“She made it, but…well, things change after something like that. Sometimes it brings people together. This time it drove us apart.”
She shivers slightly, and I step closer, hoping I can warm her with my body heat. This girl, this woman, has brought us once again to a deeper level than I’d expected for the evening.
“That’s why water.” She gestures to the mural and then sticks her hands in her back pockets. “That’s why I changed my name, too.”
“It’s not Rian?”
“Rian…like ‘rain’ with a couple of flip-flopped letters.”
I grin at her. “So what’s your real name?”
“That is my real name. It’s who I am now.” She sighs. “But if you really want to know, it’s Charlotte.”
“Charlotte?” I don’t mean to laugh, but I do, and I get a flirty punch to the shoulder out of it.
“I know. Doesn’t fit, but it used to.”
I playfully snatch her by the waist and bring her close. Being invited into the raw parts of someone’s soul has never been so simple before. When it came to Theresa and me, every time she realized she had let me in, she cowered away, or shrugged it off like it wasn’t a big deal. After learning about Theresa’s sort-of ex I understood why she was so guarded. And after her, I know firsthand what it’s like to protect the most vulnerable pieces so that they aren’t beaten down again. Rian seems to have thrown all that out the window. Either that or she’s told the story so many times already that it’s just a part of her, and she doesn’t realize how much she’s sharing with a near stranger.
I pull her up tight against me, and the corner of her lip twitches upward. It’s not exactly a weird moment, but it still doesn’t feel natural. I should kiss her, but that’s just it. It’s something I feel like I have to do, yet have no desire to do. Something’s still in the way, preventing me from looking her in the eye. My gaze flicks over her shoulder to make sure no one’s watching, as if I’m about to make a mistake or do something that violates my moral code. My jaw clenches, and I internally curse myself for letting unjustified guilt cock-block me.
Rian puts her hands on my face, jerking my eyes back to hers. She gives me a wicked smile before pushing up and brushing her lips against mine. But before we can really truly kiss, before I can escape the whirlwind of thoughts in my head, I catch something flying toward us from the corner of my eye. I’m not quick enough to duck, and it pelts us both in the face.
My cheek starts throbbing, and curses drop from both my lips and Rian’s. If my ears weren’t ringing, I’d probably register the echoing plump, plump of the basketball bouncing by our feet.
“What the hell?” Rian screams out to the shadows. She picks up the basketball and marches toward the shadowy corner where the ball came from. I quickly grab her back belt loop and yank her back.
“Get your ass out here!” she calls out, struggling against my grip. An amused grin plays on my lips, and I hold her tight against me.
“You’re not marching over there first,” I tell her. “Stay here or stand behind me. Could be some psycho.”
“Probably some punk-ass kid!” she yells at the shadows. I laugh and squeeze her elbow. She doesn’t relax in my arms exactly, but she doesn’t fight me anymore.
I take my phone back out and shine the light over, but I’ve got to walk a little bit to get the light to reach. The fire escape clangs, making my heart jump a little, but I’m proud to announce I keep my cool on the outside. Rian’s right—probably just some kid having a laugh at our expense. Landon and I would’ve done the same thing fifteen years ago. He would’ve dared me to, I would have, then we’d have taken off running.
The fire escape clangs again.
Laughing at myself for being so stupid, I run to the edge to look over. I can’t see anything or anyone on the death stairs, but they are wobbling, creaking, clanging.
“Hey!” I call down to no answer, not that I expected one. “All right, if you’re gonna run, I’ll let you. But don’t rush on those stairs. Be careful. And call your mom!”
I stand back to let them get on with it without me watching. Rian’s standing behind me, holding out the basketball, ready to drop it on top of whatever head pops from the shadows. I quickly grab it from her.
“Hey!”
“Don’t let some punk-ass kid ruin our night, yeah?”
She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “You are too good, Alex with a c.” She blinks up to me, a
nd her arms drop. “Um…you’re bleeding.”
“What?” I reach up under my nose, and wetness stings my finger. “Oh. Guess that basketball was just one hit to the face too many.”
She giggles, and then the sound of fabric ripping echoes across the court. I look down to see Rian tearing at the hem of her shirt.
“Aw, I kinda liked that shirt,” I say through a grin. She shrugs, balls up the piece of material, and pushes it against my nose.
“Guess I won’t be going down while we…go down, like I’d originally planned.” She lets out a faux-disappointed sigh, tugging me toward the elevator. And no offense to her, but I’ve decided that I’d like to kiss her for longer than three seconds before she gives me a blow job. Call me old-fashioned.
Chapter 8
PRESENT DAY
“We’re not doing so hot tonight,” I say when we get back to the limo…which has a flat tire.
After crawling back through the broken fence, we spotted Jackson crouched down, sleeves rolled to the elbows and a spare tire leaned up against the curb. He told us to hang out for a bit while he fixed it, and I offered to help, but the look he gave me basically said to back the hell off. So I took the time to stop the nosebleed.
Rian rises on her toes and kisses my cheek. When I look down at her with wide eyes, she says, “Do you believe in fate?”
I take the bloodstained material away from my nose. “Not really. You?”
She leans in and waggles her eyebrows. “I’m a big believer in fate.”
I thought she’d say something more, so I stand there like an idiot for a few seconds, waiting for her to continue, but she never does. So I start humming the tune to “She Was There” under my breath just to fill the silent air. I haven’t sung it since I was in the play in school. It was my senior year in college and I was nervous as hell, and I was in the apartment I shared with Landon practicing when he walked in with Lizzie and Theresa.
“Wow, keep singing,” Lizzie said as the door shut behind them. I sort of laughed it off and put my sheet music down.