Page 69 of Aftertaste

“Let’s do this every year,” Everleigh declared.

“I’m in,” Maura agreed, mouth full.

“I mean it! Promise. As long as one of us wants to go.”

“Of course we will. Always.”

It was the happiest they’d ever been.

SOFTLY, BESIDE HER,Konstantin gasped.

“I got her, Maura. She’s here.”

Maura felt her palms go slick. She opened her eyes and watched him peel apart a package of Reese’s, slide a peanut butter cup onto her plate.

“Wait,” she said. “Pick up the other one. Cheers me.”

His eyes went wide. “The dent! I was wondering what that was.”

He smiled, lifted his candy, tapped it against hers, and she was so glad that it was him there, that the first person she’d let in since her sister was gone, the first person who made her feel like she might be able to love again, was the one who’d help her bring Everleigh back.

And then Maura was eating the Reese’s.

She hadn’t had one in years. They didn’t taste good to her. Not anymore.

She bit through the crimped chocolate shell, snapped it the way she’d snapped at Everleigh on the phone the day she died—Trick-or-treating!? Aren’t you too old? I’m in college, Ev! I have plans! I’ll see you next weekend, okay?The peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth, gluey, clung the same way shehad—first to the sheet in the morgue, where she’d gone to identify Everleigh’s body; then to the box of her ashes; and then to the memory of Ev herself, her funky clothes, her violet hair, her brief, passionate, glittering life. The sugar laced everything like poison, like all the things Maura had pumped into her own body afterward—booze and drugs, pills of every color, anything to keep herself from feeling—until that time it went too far and she’d seen, firsthand, how Ev had suffered. And as she swallowed, the cumulative effect of the Reese’s Cup—how you couldn’t stop at just one bite; how it tasted fake, manufactured, but you wanted to finish anyway; how there was a second one waiting to follow up the first—became that loop of addiction, of lying, of one thing leading to the next, the avalanche she had found herself in, Maura’s slippery slope, the one she’d been trying for so long to outrun, and which this last, desperate attempt—right here, right now, Everleigh, and her, and this fucking piece of candy—might finally bring to a close.

KOSTYA WAITED UNTILEverleigh appeared. Her lights—he should have guessed—materialized in lilac, delicate orbs that arranged themselves into someone he almost recognized. Like a younger Maura—those same wide, flickering eyes; the same stance; the same (he smiled when he saw it) purple hair. He kissed the top of Maura’s head as he left, squeezed her shoulder.

“I won’t be far,” he told her, “just in case.”

But she didn’t call.

Instead, an hour and a half later, on his second milkshake at The Flame, Kostya tasted something strange.

A Reese’s. Another one. That same notch in its side, like a calling card.

Everleigh’s.

But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Especially since—he checked the time—no matter how slowly she had eaten, surely Maura had finished that Reese’s by now.

Surely, Everleigh was gone.

!!!!!!!

WHEN THE AFTERTASTEappears it’s just a shimmer in the air, liquid and melty, like someone’s cracked an oven door. An aroma pours out of it, mouthwatering. Soul shaking. Like Reese’s, but also like memories.

You follow it right back to Maura’s embrace.

SEEING HER AGAINis everything you’d hoped. There’s laughter and secrets and the slowest possible way to eat a peanut butter cup. She tells you everything. That after you died, she screwed up her life. That she tried so hard to help you. That all she wants now is to leave Death behind. To live. To love someone again, this man who makes her full.

She doesn’t want to hold you back anymore.

You can feel it, the moment she lets go, your Hunger spirited away. Chased out by what’s now spreading through your chest: relief, and closure. Love.

You let her go, too.

When you tell her goodbye, when you say you love her one last time, you’re so sure. Stupid hopeful. Convinced this has worked out like you’d imagined, that any minute you’ll be on that train, leaving the Food Hall far behind. Moving On.

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