Everly After (26 page)

I smile up at him, tears in my eyes. “I’m fine.”

Beckett

I don’t leave Everly, not even when she flinches away. I know it’s not me she’s mad at. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.

I’m waiting for something to happen. For her not to be so reckless now. For me not to want to run away so badly. For her to want to kiss me again. For me to get my job back so I can leave this city. For her to…

Anything. I want Everly to do anything but act how she is now. She pretends to be happy. Fucking chipper, even. And then she goes quiet and drifts away, leaving me alone.

It’s been two week since Hudson was buried back in the States, but Everly keeps pretending as though nothing has changed.

She sits on the floor by the balcony, her knees tucked tight to her chest, smoking. I hate it when she smokes. There’s a lot I hate about Everly. You don’t think you can use that word when you love someone, and I do—love her, I mean. But I hate things about her, too.

Her selfishness. Her lies. Her smoking. That fake smile she puts on her face for me. The way she keeps saying “just” and telling me she’s fine when I know she’s in trouble.

But I love her, so I stay and wait. And wait. I have the sickest hope that, someday soon, she’s going to break down and realize that she’s not okay and she needs to do something about it.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

I’ve packed her things for our trip to Nice. Some charity event for her parents. I don’t think she’s moved all morning. The toast I made for her is still sitting on the plate.

Everly makes some noncommittal noise, grabs the toast, and flings it over the balcony.

“That was for you, not the birds.”

She shrugs and grinds out her cigarette.

This whole trip is a terrible idea. She’s supposed to give a remembrance speech about Hudson. I scoff. The girl can’t remember her name right now. Forming a few coherent paragraphs is going to be a stretch. “If we’re going to make the plane…”

She waves me off, standing up to shut the balcony doors. “Give me a minute.”

I wait as she grabs the camera I gave her. She goes into her empty bedroom, then comes out and goes into the bathroom, then walks around the kitchen. “I think…” She shakes her head and motions for me to follow.

“We have to go.”
I need to go
. “We’ll miss the flight.”

She slumps against the doorjamb, picking at her arm. Someone wrote “Return to Sender” on it in marker at the impromptu party she threw, and it won’t come off. I caught her trying to scrape it off with a butter knife last night.

“I don’t think I want to leave now.”

It’s her event, her terrible idea. “We don’t have to go. We can stay here or go to Étretat. But you asked me to take you, remember?”

“Sure, sure.” She’s so thin that her arms shake when she tries to open the stuck bedroom window. I tell her to move since I can’t touch her now. That’s a new rule. If I want to be around her, I have to forget everything between us. Like she has. Because whatever Everly wants, she gets. Apparently.

I hate her for this, too.

I want her to let me love her. I want that because I’ve never had that before. She takes it away and then flaunts it around as if she doesn’t have my heart in a fucking death grip.

I open the window, knowing where she’s heading. I follow her up, flashes of that night breaking into my mind. It seems so long ago now. I remember that sad confidence in her eyes, the ache I felt to hold her against me and warm her up. I did, too, but not now. We’re taking pictures of the wreckage. Of what used to be. Of the Everly before she found Hudson.

I’m standing right next to her, but I miss her so deeply, so fucking bad. I close my eyes and swallow back my frustrated sigh. She hands me the camera and pushes herself up onto the ledge. I hold my breath again and wait and pray.

What would your last thought be if you fell?

Her hair is pink now, a soft hush of pink. She dyed it while I was at my last appointment with the shrink. If it wasn’t so blotchy, I might actually think she always had pink hair. It fits her, strangely. There are bags under her eyes, and her cheekbones are a bit sharper, too. Everything about her is off—if only slightly. She’s battle-worn from grief and denial. And love. She won’t admit it, but I know she loved him in some strange way. I think she needed a friend. But you can’t love a person like Hudson without getting hurt. He’s a fucking Dean Moriarty.

The ugly truth is that not everyone can be saved. Sometimes there are sad stories, impossible ends you wish could be different. Some people are put on this earth to be giant fireballs who light it up bright and quick before they collide and burn down everything around them in a single, brilliant flash.

Hudson’s suicide has burned down Everly. I sort of hate him for that. For robbing me of her and her love. Of what we could have had. I guess I’m part of his wreckage now, too.

She wants a picture of me. I hold out the camera so we’re both in frame, but before I can snap one, she takes it back and leaves me standing alone in front of the Paris skyline. She’s talking about something, but I don’t listen. They’re empty words from an empty person.

We’re playing pretend now.

I delete the last picture as she climbs down the fire escape. No one needs of a picture of a guy hopelessly in love, with tears in his eyes.

Everly

Beckett rips the cigarette out of my hand when we step out of the cab.

“You can’t smoke here,” he says, pointing to a hotel sign. I hate how he keeps talking to me like I’m a child. I can’t do a lot around him, apparently. But I can’t do a lot for myself, either, so whatever.

I flip my hair and put on my sunglasses, my hands shaking as I do. The bellman takes our bags. I pause, waiting for Beckett’s hand to reach back for mine, but then I remember we’re not doing that anymore.

He steps away, turning his back on me. I feel like a little girl watching her prized balloon drift up, up, up into the sky, out of reach. But it’s my fault. I let go. This is what happens when you let go. Eventually, the balloon will pop or disappear, and I’ll still be stuck in place, crying because I let that string slip through my fingers.

I’m not sure I can right now. Cry, I mean. I feel numb and disjointed. Disconnected from the world around me. It’s happened before but on a smaller scale, never totally consuming. This time I’m not sure I’m searching for a way back. I can move around the world better like this—far from people, far from myself.

Beckett’s saying something to me, but I’m thinking that I need to buy more maps. The other ones…

Maps to Thailand, maybe. Or Croatia. Timor-Leste.

We’re standing in front of the lobby desk when I blink again. Beckett has my purse and is riffling through it. I laugh, turning away, amused that he thinks he’ll find anything resembling money. Out of the corner of my eye, I see he hands the clerk my passport.

My eyes land on the table in the center of the chic lobby, the bright tropical arrangement anchoring the overwhelming room. It hasn’t changed since my last visit.

Three summers ago, after freshman year of college, I danced all night at this hotel for a charity party. I remember laughing in my couture Dior, slipping off with friends to the private beach below. Our champagne glasses became champagne bottles as the tide changed and took more of the beach with each wave. I remember feeling Hudson’s eyes chase me around the party that night. He stalked me like some dangerous predator, and it ended with a drunken kiss on the balcony overlooking the ocean the next morning. Even after I vowed never to touch him again when we graduated from prep school. There was a dance then, too. The two of us twirling clumsily, giddy-drunk on the freshness of adulthood. Hudson hummed “Jingle Bells” in my ears, out of tune.

“Everly?”

I wipe the wetness from my cheeks and smile over at Beckett.

“The room’s ready. Want to go up?”

I peek behind me at the table once more, watching the ghosting memory replay of me and Hudson stumbling through the lobby, our bare feet sandy, the desk clerks yelling at us to keep it down. We flipped them off, too busy twirling to care about the table or the flower arrangement we sent crashing to the floor. He’d plucked an orchid from the puddle and tucked it behind my ear before he’d saluted the clerks and carried me piggyback upstairs.

I suck in a breath and lower my sunglasses. I grab my purse from Beckett and head to the elevator. He follows, standing beside me when the door closes. It’s quiet between us, but it’s going to be like that now. I’ll just have to keep lying to myself that it’s what I want.

But I don’t. I want my life back, and I want Beckett with me. I want that time in London again. I want to be the girl I was before everything happened.

I shadow him to my room, counting the black-and-white tiles underfoot. He looks so out of place in his Chucks and worn jeans. Everyone will eat him alive tonight.

A shiver chases down my spine. I can’t think about the party. It’s bad enough I’m here. I should have stayed in Paris.

“You’re staying with me?” I ask, following him through the door. There’s one bed, dressed in white in an all-white room. It’s too stark for me. I want to see wear and life, not sterile perfection.

“I’m taking the couch.”

He throws our bags down and shuts the door behind me. Beckett strides over to the wall of windows and tugs back the window sheers to a sweeping view of the French Riviera. The brightness makes me flinch, even with my sunglasses on.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says, turning to me suddenly.

I flop back onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling. I remember always looking down when I walked around, not wanting to be seen, and now I’m always looking up. I’m not sure I like this view any better.

“We can leave right now. No one knows you’re here yet.”

I feel him coming toward me, the uncomfortable pressure of each footstep mounting against my chest.

“We can fly back to Paris. Or grab a cheaper place in town. No one needs—”

“Why are you staying with me?”

He rushes over and tears the sunglasses off my face. They crash and break against the bathroom door. I sit up and blink. I liked those.

Beckett stands in front of me and leans close. I draw back, not liking him near me because it makes my chest knot up and I
feel
. I feel things, and I don’t want that now. I want to keep hiding where I am, and I want him gone. I don’t want to see him or hear him or miss his touch. And I do. I fucking miss him, but I can’t let him know that, either.

“You can keep hiding, Everly, but I know you’re in there. I’m not going to let you get away.” His face crowds me, his nose touching mine. “I won’t let you disappear.”

I look away, his breath hot on my cheek. I shut my eyes, pretending he presses his lips against me in a sweet kiss. “I want to take a nap now.” I scoot farther back on the bed, away from Beckett. Away from the promise of such a kiss.

“Yeah, of course.”

I hate how his disappointment tears at my chest. The failure, the regret—it’s worthless and means nothing to me.

He wakes me up when the room is dark. I slept another day away. It’s steamy in here, and I realize he’s taken a shower. I can smell his soap.

I guess I’m staring because he glances up from buttoning his cufflinks, the bathroom light flooding around him, and he says, “Didn’t think I could clean up?”

I ignore him and clumsily roll off the bed, my body still stuck in that strange fog. I rummage through my suitcase for the one dress for an occasion like tonight that I haven’t pawned and bring it with me to the bathroom. The steam from the hot shower releases the wrinkles from the slim skirt of black crepe, but nothing can fix how it doesn’t fit me any longer.

I frown at my reflection while I tug and pull, trying to make the bodice stay put, but it only slides down. The lace cutouts reveal the bones and pale skin of my body. I wasn’t planning on returning to the world charity events after I left for Paris.

I let it sag, not caring anymore.

If I look close enough, I can still see the fading outline of Hudson’s handprint on my cheek. I rest my fingers against it, fighting back the anger swelling up inside me. I stare back into the mirror, not recognizing the small part of me that wishes it would never fade. They’re the last things I have of him—the bruise on my flesh, the way my heart is broken.

Au cœur brisé.

“Everly?” Beckett calls from the other side of the door.

The panic gnaws at me. I thought I could do this. I thought I could come and keep pretending, but suddenly the walls are missing and it’s me left facing the world. I can’t.

I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

I open the door, my hand braced over my stomach. I can’t look Beckett in the eyes. I dart to my suitcase on the floor and scavenge through my things, then hide it in my hand as I reach for my purse.

“Just a minute,” I say over my shoulder. I close the bathroom door and sink against the counter, the pills clutched in my hand.

I take two, then put on my makeup. I wait, but I don’t feel any different. Maybe I’m too worked up. I swallow a few more, then do my hair. But it’s too fine and falls out of the pins, so I leave it down.