Unease crept down AJ’s spine. “Meaning?”
Noah sighed. “Honestly, anything I could get my hands on. And anyone,” he said. “They call it sensation seeking. It’s a pretty common response.”
Her stomach twisted. “So much for not wanting dead-eyed actresses.”
“I wasn’t going to save them,” said Noah bluntly. “But I could save you, or at least keep you the fuck away from me.”
AJ’s eyes welled. “You could have told me,” she said. “We could have handled it together—”
Noah gave her a cold smile. “Oh yeah, nothing says ‘adaptive coping strategy’ like someone barely above legal drinking age going to someone under the legal age of consent with a life-and-death situation. That would have been great.”
“Better than you being a coke whore in the valley for two years.”
“It was eight months,” said Noah quietly. “I had to get it together togo be with my mom. You were gone by then,” he added, before AJ could ask. He rubbed the heel of his hand in his eye.
“Watching her—watching everything that was—is—going to happen to me…Age, it’s so fucking terrifying. But seeing it also got me to focus. I found a good team of doctors and made a plan, like you said. Knowledgeisagency. That’s also when I got serious about acting.”
AJ sat stunned. He had based his entire response to this on something she’d made up seven years ago in an improv game. She said the only thing on her mind. “You should have told me.”
Noah took a deep breath and exhaled. “I didn’t know how,” he admitted. “At first I didn’t have the words. Then I didn’t want to. I was mad. Like, really mad.”
AJ gaped at him. “At me?” she asked. Noah nodded. “What for?”
His eyes were full. “For existing,” he said. “For showing me things I wouldn’t have known to want if not for you. For being everything I can never have.”
AJ didn’t know what to say to this; he didn’t seem to expect a response. “After a while, so much time had passed I figured it was better just to let it lie—that by then, it was less selfish just to let you hate me and move on with your life.” He looked pained. “For what it’s worth, Eudora was always appalled by how I handled it.”
AJ bristled. “She’s one to judge.”
Noah gave her an inquiring look.
“You know how she ended things, right?” said AJ, unable to conceal her anger.
“Yes,” said Noah. He frowned. “I asked her not to tell anyone. She was…honoring that. And I think, in her head, she was setting you free.”
Setting herfree?
You’re perfectly fine. Average.
A precision strike to make sure AJ left and never looked back. Or asked any questions.
This was too much to absorb. AJ hadhatedEudora for the last seven years. To hear now that it had all just been theater…AJ looked at Noah with the full force of her regret.
“It didn’t work,” she said finally.I’m here.
Noah closed his eyes and bowed his head. “AJ, the weight is tremendous,” he said at last. He looked at her. “I could never burden another person with this.”
I can’t be with youwas what he meant.
AJ’s mind slowed in response, snagging on an image of Noah at his mother’s bedside, staring down the horrors in his own future…all this ash inside him. That’s what it was—the extinguished hopes for his own possibilities.
But AJ was undaunted.
“You could try,” she said, and felt a distant rumble from deeper within the darkness. There was something in there, beyond what he was showing her, that agreed. She could feel it.
Noah shook his head. “There’s no point,” he said. “Either way, one of us is fucked.”
“You don’t know that,” said AJ. “How could you? We don’t even know whatusis.”
