“Ah.” Still rubbing, breathing through his nose now. You can tell it’s an effort, butit’s progress.
“Want to know something funny?”
He only nods, concentrating as hard on his breathing as he is on my idle chatter.
“My mom’s name is Susan. So it’s, you know. Michael and Susan, and then their four really dramatically named kids.”
I think the sound he makes is a laugh, or at least an approximation of one. Maybe the best he can do under thecircumstances.
“I’m sorry about this.” His head lifts again, and he looks at the narrow strip of light coming from the back door. Then, like a switch has been flipped, his body seems to curl into itself again, his breathing kicking back up into that staccato rhythm.
Without thinking, I reach out and take his hand, my fingers sliding between his. My palm pressed all the way against his. My wrist, my forearm—all touching his. It was instinct, this touch, some way for me to be with him during this awful, grasping thing. Some way to tell him that I have a hold on him too, not just this panic he’s trying to wrestle free of.
But I still have to close my eyes against the feel of it. Against how big his hand feels against mine, how calloused and rough it is compared to the soft vulnerability of his wrist. We stand like that for so long, or at least it feels long, out in the weird time capsule that is this back alley. At one point, I squeeze his hand—firmly, pointedly—and take a deep, sucking inhale through my nose, then let it gust out from my mouth noisily. I do it twice more before he starts to match me, and after a while we’re just holding hands and deep breathing in tandem, hurricaning out the sound of that AC drip.
By unspoken, mutual agreement, we gust out one final breath, and then it’s quiet, his breathing better, though not back to normal, pre-panic levels.
“I have to get back in there,” he says, and he’s made that sound soimpossible. Sodifficult. There’s something stunning about it—him out here, against this wall, holding on to my hand like it’s a lifeline—when I’ve seen the pictures he’s taken. It seems like no one who’s taken those pictures, pictures that freeze tense, explosive moments of conflict, could ever be panickedabout anything.
But maybe it should seem like someone who’s taken those pictures should be panicked about everything.
“Does thishappen a lot?”
Instead of answering, he disentangles his hand from mine, and I feel blood rush painfully back into my fingers. I hadn’t realized we were clinging to each other so hard. I twist my wrist but stay where I am—where that brick wall feels warm and solid behind me. Alex pushes himself off, though, his back to me now, and I watch the long line of his spine straighten so beautifully, so easily, his shoulders widening like wings spreading for flight. He reaches up, runs both of his hands through his hair, and then tucks them in his pockets before turning back to me. He looks as gorgeous as he always looks. He looks like the last ten minutes haven’teven happened.
Maybe I’ll meet you again sometime,I think, the echo of the last words he spoke to me two years ago ringing loud in my head.
“Don’t tell Kit.” Then, maybe realizing the sharpness of his tone, he adds a genuine, soft-eyed, “Please.”
There’s a few seconds where we look at each other, where I try and work out the calculus of his request: My loyalty to Kit. My knowing how important Alex is to her, and how much she’d want to know he was struggling. My genuine hope that everything about this weekend is perfect and happy and stress-free for her. My reaction to that look in his eyes, the one that keepssayingplease.
“Okay,” I finally say, a little robotically.
“You want to goback in first?”
I look toward the door, and for the first time, I hear the muted beat of music coming from inside. “You go ahead. I’ll make a stop in the restroom.” A lie, but the truth is,Ineed a minute now, and I take one more deep breath as he ducks back into Betty’s, making sure he leaves the door propped open behind him.
And I think:That didn’t look like relaxed, easy charm. That didn’t look like casual nomadism, no strings attached, no permanent address, no cares in the world. That didn’t look like freedom.
That didn’t look like the Alex I’d met two years ago at all.
Chapter 2
Alex
You’re notgoing to panic.
I stand a bit straighter and move to check my reflection in the huge, elaborately framed mirror that stands in the foyer of the Ursinus Mansion, my sister’s choice of venue for her and Ben’s big day, their own place too small for the number of family and friends and coworkers they’ve got between them. It’s ten minutes until go time, and outside guests are already in their seats, Ben and his dad and their buddy River already milling around near the flowered arch at the end of the aisle. I’m hoping the scent of it isn’t too strong, remembering the way the air inside the restaurant had felt thick and close and too fragrant last night.…
No.I make the voice in my head stern, scolding.It’s not going to happen again.
I take a deep breath through my nose—the same kind Greer wordlessly coaxed me into last night, and rally a new determination. I’ve made mistakes with Kit, especially in the last few years, but I can’t be anything other than perfect for her on her wedding day. I can’t be anything other than her calm, resolutely in-control brother, no matter what the fuck happened last night, no matter what’s been happening with increasing, frightening frequency.
In the mirror, the expression I see reflected back at me is blandly calm, smooth as a lake in the early morning, not even a ripple of the nerves lying beneath. For a second I have a disturbing flash of how I must’ve looked last night in that alley, clutching Greer’s hand, the back of my neck bathed in a hot, prickling sweat. Her small, cool palm had been a strange antidote, my blood slowing in time to the pulse I’d felt under her skin, and when the whining, white noise in my head had faded, the thing I’d wanted most in the world, only for a second, was to bring her body against mine, to feel that steady pulse everywhere.
It’s not going to happenagain. Not now.
I look down, adjust the cuffs of my dress shirt beneath my suit jacket, slowly inhale through my nose. But when I look up again it’s an effort not to jolt as I see an older version of me, to the left of my shoulder—still tall, still lean, though with a more desperate, hungry quality than what I see in myown reflection.
