He looked me up and down. “Where are you going?”
“She’s going to see her friend,” Mom said.
“Harper,” I said faintly. “Dean was…very special to her.”
“What happened to this Dean? Wait, isn’t he the coxswain for Tucker’s crew?”
He was…
I nodded. “I have to go.”
To my shock, my mother threw her arms around me. “You drive safely and be back at a reasonable hour.”
I nodded and hurried out before my dad could say a word.
I drove as fast as I dared and got to Xander’s house just after eleven. My headlights splashed his front door. He was sitting on the stoop, head down, arms dangling off his knees.
I shut off the engine and hurried to him. “Xander…”
He looked up at me, the porch light casting shadows over his face. Haggard, bloodshot, tear streaked. I sat beside him, put my arms around him, smelled the alcohol on his breath. I would’ve given anything to make him stop hurting, but there was nothing that was going to make this better. The world had shattered and become impossibly broken. No amount of soft words was going to put it back together.
“Rhett killed him,” Xander said dully. “He gave him a pill, Dean took it, and it killed him. And I don’t think it was the first time, and I…I didn’t stop it. I got drunk, and I didn’t stop it…”
“Xander, it’s not your fault.”
He looked at me, confused. Incredulous. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense.Him? Dean fucking Yearwood? He’s better than every single one of those fucking pretentious pricks—” He bit off his words and sucked in deep breaths.
“I know,” I said. “I know this is hard—”
“No, you don’t know,” he snapped, tearing off the porch and staggering a few steps away. “You don’t know because if you did know, you’d stay.”
I reared back. “What…?”
“You’re holding onto a lie, Emery,” he said. “A stupid idea that prom is going to fix anything.”
“My design is stupid?” I asked in a soft voice.
“No, your design is going to be extraordinary, but they’re too fucking stupid to see it. Don’t you get it? They don’t see you and you don’t see them. It’s like a selective hereditary blindness, running rampant in the Wallace DNA.”
“I know you’re hurting right now, Xander, but—”
“I’m just telling you the truth. The facts. Because facts and evidence are how we predict what will happen next. Not magical thinking. Not…hope.”
He’s drunk, that’s all,I thought.He’s drunk and he’s suffered a terrible loss.
I got to my feet while Xander turned his back to me, hands on his hips. I approached him slowly, reached for his arm, then pulled at the lapel of his jacket. One slight tug toward me, and a sob tore out of him. He wrapped me in his arms, his body is shaking, I held him as best I could, my own tears soaking into his shirt. He made fists in my hair and my sweatshirt, then abruptly staggered back. He tore his glasses off with one hand and wiped his eyes in the crook of his arm.
“Do you know what he told me?” Xander said. “The other day, Dean said, ‘Put your heart out in the world and see what happens.’ So I did. And this is what happened. I lost him. And my dad is really sick. I’m losing him too. My mother and Dean and my father…” He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “And you. Everybody I love…”
“No…”
“Yes. You need to marry me so that you can leave me.” He snorted a terrible laugh. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”
I shook my head, tears falling down my cheeks. “Xander, wait…”
“Please just go, Emery. I need to go to sleep and not feel or think about anything for a little while. I’m sorry…sorry.”
He staggered back into the house, and I stood for a long moment in the front yard, alone. Then I drove back home.
