“Fuck.” The air goes out of me. I bend double, plant my hands on my knees and catch my breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Where is she? Where would she go?
Am I too late?
A chill, direct and intimate as a frigid hand, runs over the back of my neck. I straighten slowly, eyes level with the landscape as snow begins to drift, silent and sterile, from above. I tip my head back and it catches in my eyelashes.
I jerk back to some moment from an eternity ago: Margot’s visiting from her apprenticeship in Boston and Dad’s cooking. Me and Dad are fighting. I can’t even remember why, just that I left earlier, slammed the door so hard the windows rattled. I get home, from where, I don’t know, push open the door to the buttery aromas of rosemary chicken roasting, and potatoes cooking on the stove, the heat fogging up the windows. Margot isn’t there yet. I was supposed to help Dad cook for her, put on a good welcome, but Dad’s not alone. Warm, high laughter is playing out of the kitchen.
I pause in the living room, watching them together, not sure I even understand what I’m seeing, or how I feel about it. Lexie is stirring something on the stove, and Dad’s plunging the thermometer into the chicken, and both of them are laughing so hard their cheeks are pink.
I remember being paralyzed by that, caught dead. We’d all known each other so long, and I knew Dad liked Lexie best of Margot’s friends, but I didn’t realize how much they’d bonded. I got the sudden sense my dad knew how lonely Lexie was, without a dad, and a mom that was gone more often than she was there. My dad was like that—he looked out for people. And Lexie liked to bring warmth wherever she went.
I couldn’t stand the sight of it. I remember walking right back out and almost instantly Lexie was out there with me, in a flood of light from the front door, standing on the lawn.
“Staying or leaving?” she’d said, and I turned to face her. She was wearing a red turtleneck, and her hair was drawn back but falling free, curls against her cheeks. “Liam.”
I was standing like that, half-coming, half-going, when snow began to fall. Lexie laughed and looked up, dimples in her cheeks, hands open to the sky.
Staying.
I jerk back to the present, to the eerie and terrible stillness around me, to the absence of light and life from her house. I can’t lose her, I realize. I can’t lose anyone else.
I’m turning toward the Miata when my phone goes off. It’s not a call this time, but a text.
From Lexie.
My stomach bottoms out with relief, and I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.We need to talk. Meet me at the theatre.
I almost laugh. But she’s not safe, not yet. I get in the car and drive.
10
Lexie
One.
My girls. My everything.
Two.
My future.
Three.
Him.
An easy way to stay on track, to stay in the moment, to stay focused: hold onto them. The things that are most important, the things you live for, the things you want.
“Why this place?”
Jockey’s voice falls down to me as if through a dream. I try to open my eyes but even the faint light inside the theatre drives into them like knives. I grimace, a soft hiss, and squeeze them shut again. The pain in the back of my skull is everything. Pounding, radiating, expanding, consuming. I can barely breathe. I can barely think. I’m spiraling, falling down, down, down—
One.
My girls. My—
“Quit bitching. Your boyfriend beat the shit out of me.” Jockey’s footsteps, shaking the projector room floor. A whoosh of air as he crouches down beside me. “Least I can do is return the favor.”
