“Why do you care?” Kennedy asked. “You said you ended the situationship because Seb was, like, the not-hot version of Patrick Bateman.”
These were my closest friends.
Mybestfriends.
I’d laughed and cried with them. I’d held their hair back while they vomited the night’s alcohol and pills. I’d put my finger down their throats to makesurethey vomited.
And when I looked at them, I saw markets and quid pro quo. All three of us were in a twisted parasitic relationship, surviving and thriving off each other.
That’s just the way friendship is.
My eyes wandered from people dancing, to those taking selfies, to the group skinny-dipping, landing on another group gambling for pink slips and whatever the hell else they had.
The memories we looked back on, the photos we enjoyed the most, were the blurry ones, the ugly ones, the ones we accidentally took. Those filled with laughter, or sorrow and mistakes.
My life was populated with perfection.
Nothing to look back on but ivory and cold pictures.
I wanted to run out into the ocean. Ruin it. Ruin the pretty hand-sewn crystal beading on my dress. Ruin themakeup someone spent over an hour on. Crush the diamonds on my neck. Everything.
“It’s the principle of the thing, Kennedy?—”
“I’m gonna go for a smoke,” I said, not waiting for them to respond.
Outside, a gush of salty winter air whispered across my cheek, followed by the sound of the waves shattering like sugar candy on the sand. The cold felt good on my overheated skin.
Marshmallows replaced the thorny blood inside my body. Minutes expanded into forever. It was like I was underwater, staring at my world reflected back at me. Slow. Peaceful.
That lovely, fuzzy haze filled my veins like the cottontails that grew in our home in Italy. The look, not the feel. They were always so scratchy…
The benzos hit.
It was okay. Everything was okay.
Finally.
I lit my cigarette and kicked off my shoes, dipping my toes in the icy sea. The red cigarette tip burned bright in the night.
I knew he was behind me before I heard the soft crunch of sand. Maybe it was the musky smell of cannabis drifting on the night breeze that seemed to follow him wherever he went. More likely, it was that inexplicable thing that tied us together.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Reaper.” I tapped my cigarette, ash falling like stardust to the sand.
Horror movies would have you believe monsters can’t wait to eat little girls. They lay in wait to deflower virgins, rip apart our insides, and dragus to their hell.
As an adult, I’d learned monsters weren’t tempted by such banalities.
Hell was a privilege.
Real monsters wanted your soul.
I went to take another puff, when Grim stepped into view and gripped my hand. The cigarette was suspended, a sliver from my lips.
His voice came low and smoky in the dark. “You taste better when you don’t smoke.”
THIRTEEN
GEMMA
