“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Well,” Carmen said as she gently squeezed my hand, “you are away from home, away from your parents. I mean, that’s what your twenties are for, right? Figuring out who you are and what you want.”
“Absolutely,” Atlas agreed, raising her drink. “Here’s to self-discovery and all the messy, complicated feelings that come with it.”
We clinked glasses, and everyone smiled, but I noticed Marley’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
And for reasons I couldn’t explain, that bothered me more than anything else.
VIII
“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”
— Mark Twain
Chapter Nine
Marley
The cool night air bit at my skin as I leaned against Atlas’s car, taking a long drag from my cigarette. The smoke burned warm in my lungs before I exhaled slowly, watching it curl into the cold and dissolve.
The parking lot was mostly dark, lit by a few tired streetlights that stretched long shadows across the cracked asphalt. A group of people stumbled past, their laughter echoing off the surrounding buildings as they made their way to a waiting car.
It was past one in the morning, and the night had that particular stillness that comes when the world starts winding down. A few stragglers lingered near their cars, some smoking cigarettes like me, others engaged in hushed conversations. The faint scent of tobacco mingled with the crisp winter air and the faint smell of spilled beer from the alley behind the club.
“She’s into you,” Atlas said, her voice cutting through my thoughts. “You know that, right?”
I turned to face her, noting the knowing look in her eyes. She had positioned herself against the hood of her car, arms crossed, studying me with that inquisitive stare that had made her my best friend and occasionally my biggest pain in the ass.
“She’s straight,” I said, taking another drag. “And basically engaged. She’s totally off-limits,” I said with a grunt. Even saying it left a dull ache under my ribs.
“Off-limits, maybe. Straight?” Atlas raised an eyebrow. “Did you see the way she looked at you tonight?”
I flicked ash to the ground.
“That wasn’t straight-girl curiosity, Mar. That looked a whole lot like longing to me.”
“So what if it was?” I said. “She’s got some guy waiting back home. Her whole life is mapped out already.”
“And?”
“And I don’t do complicated.” The words came out harsher than I intended. “You know me. I prefer simple and available with no strings attached.”
Atlas snorted. “Right, because you looked so unaffected when she mentioned her soon-to-be fiancé, or should I call it her soon-to-be husband?”
I remembered that moment too clearly, the tightness in my chest and the sudden urge to punch something solid.
“Look,” I said, taking another drag, “maybe there’s some attraction there. Fuck. It doesn’t matter, though. I am not blowing up someone’s life for fun.”
“Since when do you avoid chaos?” Atlas asked. “You practically court it.”
I didn’t answer because the truth was more complicated than I wanted to admit. There was something about Kelechi that made me want to slow down, rather than dive in. Which was both new and annoying.
“This is different,” I muttered.
“How?”
I searched for a version of the truth that didn’t sound pathetic.
