You said we were going to talk, but you never called, bitch!
It was Alyssa.
I immediately typed out a reply and sent it.Sorry, you’re right. Jared came to see me today.
I had told Alyssa about what happened with him, and she hated him for it. She told me that a man who could do something like that once would do it again in the future and was dangerous. “Keep him at a distance,” she had warned me. “He’s still obsessed with you.”
I also suspected the same just from his expression—a mixture of love and disillusionment. Sometimes, it appeared almost innocent, but other times it felt dark and insidious.
I texted with Alyssa for a while, asking how her relationship with Logan was going. Though they were still dating, neither of them had made anything official. Logan wasn’t like Neil; he was thoughtful, rational, and romantic, but he was a forceful personality as well. I was happy for my friend—Alyssa deserved to experience real love with someone like him.
When we said goodbye ten minutes later, my eyes drifted back to my other conversations, to one in particular. The number wasn’t saved in my contacts, but I knew exactly who it was.
I opened it and read it again.
You look bored…
Those awful pajamas again…
We have adjoining balconies.
They were all from Neil, and my only response had been,How did you get my number?
I shifted uncomfortably on the couch as memories transported me back there to my room in New York. With him.
I needed to hate him, hate him with everything that I was and yet…
My body could do nothing but want him. I wanted his lips, his hands,and his smell. My memory had become my own worst enemy because the more it pulled me back in time, the more I missed him.
I might have taken it from Logan.
“Logan…” I grinned. For a moment, I imagined him rifling through his brother’s phone to get my number so he could contact me. It was funny and also flattering, and, what’s more, he hadn’t lied about it. He was an asshole, frequently a pervert, and very troubled, but he wasn’t a hypocrite. He never lied.
He was very selective about what he showed of himself and even more so aboutwhohe showed it to. He’d offer up his body but never his soul. That he kept locked in a treasure chest to which no one had a key.
He was always so grave, so ponderous, and almost never smiled. Even during sex he was contained, unyielding, and methodical, as focused as he might be if he were playing some sport and not in the midst of sharing an intimate moment.
I could tell that I had in him a difficult riddle to solve.
Though my father had come to visit me again in the hospital before I was discharged, he’d never said anything about Neil because I tried not to ask questions about him.
The urge to know how—or what—he was doing was always there, but if I was going to give in to that curiosity, I could have contacted him directly. Which was something I had yet to do.
And I never would do it.
I shook myself and refocused on Neil’s texts, allowing the memories to waft through my head.
Do you want to…talk?
Mr. Disaster, the man who never wanted to talk. Except, that day, he said he did.
Why?I’d asked him.
Because today I told the Boy that there is a star in the sky for each of us, far enough away that our mistakes cannot tarnish it, and he seemed to agree. He would like to find it with you.
The Boy… I had always presumed that introspective answer was related to some event in his past that had likely scarred his soul irreparably. I wasconvinced that Neil had a lot of suffering in his history, in part because, during those moments when I was allowed to explore his naked body, I had seen the small burn-like scars on his forearm. There were three of them, small and round and red. They weren’t very noticeable, but they wouldn’t escape a careful eye like mine. I had even tried to touch them while I was examining his lovely tattoos, but Neil had grabbed me firmly by the wrist and prevented me from making contact with them. Something had changed in his eyes in that moment; a shadowy, visceral anger bled into those golden eyes, warning me not to cross that firm boundary.
His reaction struck me briefly speechless, but I did try to get him to talk about it. It was no easy task with the way he fled immediately after sex. And, before sex, he was so good at turning my head around that I frequently found myself unable to form a coherent sentence.
