“Yeah, well, you’re a terrible friend.”
I tap my pointer finger to my lips. “Gotta say, that feels a little harsh.”
“A better friend would let me wallow in misery all by myself.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure a better friend wouldnotlet you do that. It’s kind of the definition of the term.” I feel my way to the bed and sit down on the edge. My hand finds a lumpy pile of tissues, which I promptly relocate to the nightstand. I sincerely hope they’re wet from tears and not… other substances. “Seems like it might’ve been bad. Zeke sounded like someone ran over his dog. Multiple times. Forwardandbackward. With a semi-truck.”
Yasmin sniffles. “Good. He deserves to feel like shit.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I insist. “C’mon. Talk. I’m a good listener.”
She hesitates still, sniffling and blowing her nose repeatedly. Her voice is all teary at the edges when she finally speaks. “Hejust makes me feel so many things at once. I think I might explode.”
I chuckle. “Not all of them are good things, I take it?”
“No! Not at all!” she cries. “But even if they were, does it have to be so many at the same time? A girl likes to have time to sort through stuff, you know. It’s not fair to just pile it on me.”
“Well, why don’t we take it one by one?” I suggest. “Like a grocery list. Except instead of zucchinis and eggplants, it’s emotions. Much more fun.”
She sounds like a dying goose as she honks into another tissue. “Fine. Emotion number one: I’m furious.”
“At Zeke?”
“At everyone! At Zeke for suggesting we turn tail and run. At Bastian for dragging us into this mess in the first place. At Brandon for… just existing, I guess. And most of all, I’m furious at myself for being stupid enough to fall for a guy who thinks the solution to every problem is either punching it or feeding it.”
“To be fair, those are solid problem-solving strategies in many contexts.”
“Not helpful, El.”
“Sorry. Continue.”
“Emotion number two: I’m terrified.” She swallows hard. “Every time I close my eyes, I still feel Brandon’s hands around my throat. And now, there’s this whole other layer of danger on top of it, this shadowy mob nonsense I know nothing about, and Zeke wants to talk aboutrunning?” She laughs bitterly. “Whereexactly does he think we can run to? The moon? Mars? Aleksei probably has people on Mars!”
“I don’t think the Bratva has interplanetary reach just yet. But we can’t rule it out, I suppose.” I lace my hands together in my lap. “Okay, what’s emotion number three?”
The lavender incense curls through the air between us, thick and cloying. When Yasmin speaks, that booming, take-no-shit voice of hers has gone as meek as a little mouse. It hurts me to hear her like this.
“Emotion number three is that I’m in love with him.”
I wait. There’s more to come.
“I’m so in love with him,” she says, “and I hate it. I hate so many things about it! Like, there’s so much guilt that we left him the way we did. I know we had to, and if we went back, I’d do it all over again because I love you, too—but I fall asleep every night seeing him lying on the floor of my apartment, so still and pale and bloody, and it breaks my fucking heart, Elly. I think part of the reason I’m mad is that I’m lashing out to pretend I didn’t play a role in turning all this into such a mess.”
I reach out and touch her knee, just to establish some kind of physical reassurance between us. “You can’t beat yourself up like that, hon. For what it’s worth, I feel guilty, too.”
She exhales shakily. “The point is, I don’t know how to be this person.Caring?Psshh—that’s never been me. I’ve always been the one who walks away first. Who keeps things light. Who doesn’t let anyone get close enough to?—”
“To hurt you?”
“Toseeme.”
“And Zeke sees you,” I say softly. “That’s the biggest problem of all, right?”
She sobs in laughing frustration. “He seeseverything. It’s infuriating. I can’t hide from him. He just looks at me with those stupid, earnest, soulful puppy dog eyes of his and asks if I’m okay. I want to scream at him that of course I’m not okay, nothing is okay, nothing has ever beenlessokay, but also I want to crawl into his arms and never leave.”
