Then she pulls around to the front of the building and parks the car in a spot of shade beneath a tree.
She leaves the engine on as she opens up her chicken sandwich and takes a bite. “It’s really hot here,” she says. “God, how can you stand it…I feel disgusting.” She fans her hand in front of her face.
“You look beautiful, though.” I let it slip out, my mouth and thoughts barely under control anymore.
She blinks, slowly, her eyelashes fluttering. “Thank you.” She takes in a gradual breath before rotating toward the window. She starts eating fries, her forehead creased, like she’s confused as hell, and so am I. I’m not even sure what’s going on anymore. Why we’re here. What the point is.
“Nova,” I say as another drip hits me and I can focus again. “What do you want from me? I mean, you show up here out of the blue and you just want to hang out? It doesn’t make any sense.”
She chews the bite of food and then shuts her eyes. At first I think it’s because she’s going to cry or something, but when she opens them, her eyes aren’t wet with tears.
“I came here to help you,” she confesses, looking directly at me, intensity radiating from her expression. “I…I called because I wanted to find out about you signing that release to use the video. I’ve actually been looking for you for a while, but it’s been really hard to track you down.”
“Okay…” I pick at the fries, not even close to being able to eat them, my jaw too sore from grinding my teeth and my belly too queasy from the crystal I devoured before I left, so I immediately set them back down. “But I don’t get why you think you needed to come down here to help me. I’m fine and I don’t get why you don’t get that or why you’d even think differently.”
Her bluish-green eyes unhurriedly scroll up my body with zero indication that she believes in any way that I’m okay. “Because Delilah told me something on the phone…about you.”
I stiffen, my pulse accelerating, my lungs tightening, stealing my air away. “What did she tell you?” What the hell have I told Delilah? God, I have no idea.
She deliberates something with caution, wetting her lips with her tongue and licking some salt off them. “Do you remember the concert we went to together?” she asks.
“Of course…how could I forget?” It’s actually one of the few things I can remember. The sun, the smell, her, Nova, all over me.
Her lips curve slightly upward like she’s happy that I can remember. “Yeah, I’ve never been able to forget either, all that time that we spent together, how I was…and how I just ran off in the middle of it all.”
“It was good that you did,” I say and I mean it. “You never should have been hanging out with us to begin with—you never belonged in our world.”
“I know it was good that I left when I did,” she agrees. “And I learned something about myself, not then, but later on, after I got better.” She gazes off at the gas station in front of us as a car backfires. “I’ve spent the last few months learning a lot about myself and I discovered that I want to help people, you know. I’ve missed a lot of chances of being able to help because I was too afraid to see the truth or I couldn’t take care of myself enough.” I’m not sure what she’s getting at and I’m about to ask her, but when she looks at me, something in her eyes stops me. “I want to help you get better.” She says it like it’s as easy as breathing, but it’s not. It’s harder than finding a bottom in a bottomless pit.
“You can’t,” I say, very aware of the tattoos on my arm—Lexi, Ryder, No One—and the fact that she can see them. Permanent reminders that I can’t be helped—that I shouldn’t be helped. But Nova doesn’t know what they mean, since I never told her. If I did, she wouldn’t be here. “Nothing you can say or do will ever be able to help me—I’m not helpable.”
“Yes, you are and I know I can help you.” She rotates in her seat and brings her knee up on it. “If you’ll just let me, you’ll see that.”
I almost laugh at her because she doesn’t get it. How could she, when she doesn’t even know anything about what’s going on? “You don’t even know what you’re talking about—you don’t even know me at all. You can’t help someone you don’t know and besides, I don’t even want to be helped. I’m fine right where I am.” I belong right where I am. Everyone knows it. My dad. Lexi’s parents. Tristan’s mom.
“I wish it’d been you that died,” I hear Tristan’s mom sob. “I wish it’d been you—it should have been you.”
I blink, fighting back the tears as I lie in the hospital bed, surrounded by people who hate me. “I know.”
She starts to sob harder and runs out of the room, leaving me alone with my guilt consuming me, and all I want to do is feel death again.
I tear myself away from the memory as Nova’s quivering hand slides across the seat and takes hold of mine. Heat. Warmth. Comfort. Fear. All these things surge through me and all I can do is stare at our hands, fingers tangled, connected. It’s been a long f**king time since I’ve felt a connection, the last time being with her last summer.
“I went to therapy for a while,” she divulges as she clutches my hand. Her fingers are trembling and I notice that just below the scar on her wrist is a tattoo: never forget. I wonder what it means, what she doesn’t want to forget. “It was kind of helpful…it made me realize that I was running away from my problems instead of facing them. All the stuff I did…the drugs, how I cut my wrist, all of it was because I wasn’t dealing with Landon…my boyfriend’s death.” She says it like it’s so easy to talk about and I have no idea what the f**k is going on. I mean I remember her telling me her boyfriend had taken his own life, but she was bawling her eyes out and now she looks so calm. I remember the scar on her wrist, too, but she never flat-out said she did it herself until now.
“That’s good,” I say, not sure what else to say. What I want to do is just hug her, feel her, be the kind of person to comfort her, but I can’t do that to her—offer her this revolting ghost version of myself. “I’m really glad for you.”
“It is good,” she agrees, stroking the back of my hand with her finger. The feel of her skin on mine makes me shudder and I don’t know why. I’m numbed by drugs. I shouldn’t feel anything, yet I do. I feel everything. The heat of the sun. The slightest variation in our body temperatures, the soft coolness of the air as it hits my cheek. How much I want to kiss her.
“It made me realize who I was and what I wanted out of life…I want to live and I mean really live, not just go through life in a daze. And I want to help people who were going through the same thing I went through…people who won’t ask for help when they need it.” She pauses. “I actually spent a lot of time volunteering for a suicide hotline, helping people.”
“That’s really great.” I’m happy she’s made a life for herself, one where she can use her good heart to help people. “I’m so glad you moved on from all this shit…” I glance down at my bruised and scarred chest and my scraped-up hand, markings of who I am now. “I’ve always told you that you didn’t belong in our world.”
“I don’t think anyone really does,” she says with all honesty. “I just think that sometimes people think that they do.”
I press my free hand to the side of my head as it begins to throb. She’s messing with my head and it’s giving me a headache. It’s like her words have a hidden meaning, yet I can’t figure it out what it is.
“I don’t agree with that,” I say, still holding her hand even though I know I should let go. Just a little bit longer. Just a few more minutes of warmth before I step into the cold. “I think that sometimes people do terrible things and deserve to rot and die.”
She winces, her breath catching, but she quickly gathers herself and scoots closer to me on the seat. “You didn’t do anything terrible.”
I clamp my jaw tightly and pull my hand away. “You have no idea of the things I did…what I’ve done.”
“So tell me,” she says, like it’s that easy when it’s not. “Let me understand you.”
“You can’t—no one can. I already told you this. No one can help me who’s alive, anyway.” Remorse skyrockets through me as I accidentally let the truth slip, but there’s no taking it back. Sometimes, when I’m really high, at that point where I almost feel detached from my body, I think that maybe Lexi can help me, even though she’s dead. Sometimes when I get that far gone, she doesn’t feel dead—or maybe it’s that I don’t feel alive—and I swear she can hear my thoughts, almost touch me. She tells me that it’s okay. That she forgives me and loves me, like she did yesterday when I was getting beaten up. But the comfort is only brief, since when I come out of my daze, I realize that it wasn’t real and that no one will ever forgive me. That I’m a junkie who killed two people and there’s no changing that.
“Quinton, you’re not alone,” Nova says, her eyes watering as she inches closer to me, looking like she feels sorry for me. I want the look to go away so goddamned bad I’m considering shouting at her, but then she gets close enough that her bare knee touches the side of my leg. “And if you’ll talk to me, you might be able to realize that. That you’re not alone. That people care…that I care.”
Heat swelters me—her heat. I feel it. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything and I want to jump out the door and run, yet I want to melt into her, too. I can’t think straight. I need her to stop this. Need her to stop trying.
“What if I told you I killed someone?” I say, hoping that maybe it’s what will finally cut the ties…the connection between us that needs to be severed. “Would you still want to understand me then? Would you still care about me?”
She winces and I think, There you go. Now are you scared? Now do you want to understand me?
“I don’t believe that,” she tells me, quickly composing herself.
“But I did,” I say in a low voice, leaning in. “I took two lives, actually.”
“Not on purpose, I’m sure.” She barely seems worried and it annoys me because I don’t understand the reaction. Everyone around me told me what I fuckup I was, how much I messed up, how much I ruined everything. And she’s just sitting here, looking at me like it’s perfectly okay.
“No, but it was still my fault.” My voice cracks, revealing that I’m not really okay with talking about this, just pretending.
“Not necessarily,” she insists and then shifts so she’s pretty much sitting on my lap, her knees on mine, her back against the dashboard so she’s looking at me straight on and I seriously forget how to breathe. The sensation is so intense that it actually hurts, in my chest, my gut, my heart, what’s left of my broken, insignificant soul. “I think that maybe you think it was your fault, but I know that sometimes blaming yourself is the only way to deal.” She places her hand on my cheek and I feel a spark of life inside me, one I thought had burned out a long time ago.
“That’s not what I’m doing…I don’t even deal with it.” I pause, wondering how she got me to say that aloud when she doesn’t even know what the heck I’m talking about. I’ve been so shut down for months and now she shows up and I can feel that pull to life again. I’ve taken a breath again and it’s time to return to my drowning because I can feel the painful prickle of memories surfacing. What death felt like on my hands; Lexi’s blood, my own, the guilt, all still memories decaying inside me.
“I need to go back.” I ball my hands into fists to keep from touching her and I stare out the window, avoiding her overpowering gaze. “I’m done talking. I just want to go back now.”
She hesitates and I expect her to argue, but instead she puts the car in reverse. “Okay, I can take you back, but can I ask for a favor before I do?” she asks.
I squeeze my eyes shut, holding my breath, wishing I could stop breathing altogether. “Sure.”
“Can I come visit you tomorrow?” she requests in a soft tone. “I’m not going to be here for very long and I’d like to see you and talk to you a little bit more before I have to go.”
I should tell her no, save her like she’s trying to save me, but even in my cracked-up head I can’t bring myself to let her go just yet, so I greedily say, “Yeah, if you want to, but I hope you don’t.” I open my eyes and watch her reaction.
She smashes her lips together, battling her nerves. “But I do want to see you. I really, really do.”
I’m not sure what to do with that, so I decide to do nothing, shutting myself down, and it’s easy because seconds later I’m thinking about something else, getting home, getting to Johnny’s, getting my next hit. Then nothing will matter. Not this. Not the future. My past. What I did.
It’ll all be gone.
* * *
I don’t say much to her on the ride back to my place, but she talks lightly about music, how she’s been playing again, and I love hearing her talk that way. I love hearing her happy. It makes me almost want to smile and I haven’t wanted to smile in a really long time, but I don’t think I quite get there.
Then we’re pulling up to my building and the slight elation I was feeling deflates into the darkness that engulfs the place where I live and my mouth begins to salivate, knowing what’s waiting for me as soon as I get Tristan and get to Johnny’s. I want it more than sitting in this car, more than eating, breathing, living.