“I’ll lose my shine, Andrew, and you’ll leave me, too. Everybody does. My own mother?—”
“I’m not them, Sloane. I want every worst thing youthinkyou’ve ever done so I can hold it up to the light and show you why I love you more because of it.” Her lips press into a grim line, head shaking as she drops her gaze. “None of us are perfect, okay? And…” Telling her about Glenn and Ian feels wrong in this moment, but I know I have to. Know that I can only be what she needs if I’m not hiding who I really am.
The door to the lot bursts open, interrupting the rainfall’s dull murmur and the start of my absolution, as Grant’s voice rumbles across the haze.
“How long?”
“I can’t deal with him right now,” Sloane says to the ground, shoulders glistening as she slumps beside a shallow puddle.
I rise, turning to face him, only to see that he’s not alone.
40
Sloane
I wriggle from Andy’s grip when I hear Grant’s voice the moment he’s distracted, my heel catching on a small rock as I try to stand and I fall forward again on to my knees. Feels like I’ve been down here my whole life, begging for someone to say those words to me. I look up from the asphalt laden puddle.
I love you.
I feel the shape of the phrase in the way my heart is slamming into my chest, in the small pebbles of gravel lodged into my palms forming ravines of blood in the lines.
I love you.
Has there ever been a more painful phrase? Its impermanence, how many conditions it comes with? An idea we’ve turned holy, a wish that never comes true? It’s Santa or the Easter bunny. It’s the window I’d look out of, waiting to see my mom’s beat up old Volvo, the tread on the tires screeching around every bend as she made her way back to us. It’s the hope that someone would stay, just because you asked them to, just because you wanted them there. That someone could seeyou and want you and make you something they care enough about not to leave.
I feel slender arms on my shoulders, a second pair pulling me into a warm but slippery body.
“Sloane,” they whisper and I wonder if this is all the love I’ll ever deserve. Love from people who care but only in the periphery of their own lives, whose hearts are so full of someone else they can only give you the sharp edges of what's left until all you are is a series of those edges. You try to make them whole, pushing them together to make them mean more than they do.
Where did these people leave me though, these relationships I’ve poured so much of myself into? With bloody palms, knees raw from where I knelt, waiting to matter.
I pull out of Gen and Olivia's embrace, using my bloody hands to push the hair out of my face. “Stop. Just stop.” I wonder if anyone can hear me over the downpour. I can see their mouths moving. See Grant holding Andy by the collar, pushing him back. Away from me.
“He’s been working with Ian the whole time.” “He’s been lying to you.” “Look at the blast! He was hired to watch us.” “He’s a liar!”
A steady pulse of conflict thrums between me and all of them and I feel it now—the distance, the one that seems to follow me. And for the longest time I thought other people created it but maybe it’s just another way I’ve protected all of them.
I step backward, feeling rain or tears or both fanning my cheeks. Grant said this would happen. He said I’d come here and mess things up. He’s always right.
“Sloane,please!Please!” Andy’s shout breaks the night air, heated and desperate. That false promise lives somewhere inside it, but he was never mine—I know that now.
Grant shoves him back. Ben grabs his arms, keeping him from me and even though I want to look away, I can’t. The agony in his eyes tells a different story than the mouths around me, than this throbbing ache between us. Will it hurt more if I step forward or back?
“Hey. Hey—” Pale hands are on my face, shifting my focus. “We need to go, Sloane.” Jean takes his jacket off wrapping me in its dry interior. “We have to go.” His body is a shield between me, my brother, the world of Astor… and Andy.
Andy.
I see the door to the art show open, Elliot standing there, his victory carved into the sharp lines of his smile, celebrating the knowledge that I am exactly who he said I was. Exactly who they’ve all said I was. I look back at Andy one last time, let my eyes linger on the expression I’ve worn so many times. The one you wear when you realize someone’s leaving. When they’ve left.
Fingers in my hair stir me from my sleep and I’m not sure if it’s twilight or dawn as gray light peaks between the blinds of the unfamiliar space. It takes a second to remember that Jean put me up in a hotel. We didn’t talk much, but he agreed to not tell anyone where I was as I turned the location off on my phone. It’s a formula I’ve followed a few times now—to disappear.
Somehow she always finds me.
Evie’s fingers untangle my blonde strands the way I’d sometimes let her do late at night, when she thought I was sleeping. When I needed her as much as she needed me, but I’d never tell her that.
I roll over, see her lined face, dark circles framing her eyes, a crease between her brows, a woman who's been worried foryears. “I think...I really need you.” I don’t know if I meant to say it out loud, but there it is out in the open. I roll my lips together, pursing them to the side, as if the movement will hold back the tears that are already falling.
“Oh honey.” She pulls me into her and even though her embrace was never a place I wanted to be, the comfortable familiarity of her arms is the kind that can only be achieved when someone's wrapped you in them a thousand times over. Where Connie's arms always felt like they were slipping away, Evie's were a constant looming thing, silently begging me to fall into them. I let myself inhale her powdery lemon scent, the poison edge of the Aqua-net missing, her hair in a low unwashed bun.
