Page 74 of Bottoms
“You need to wake the fuck up, Vanessa,” Colten said harshly as he set the cup of coffee on the table. It looked like the perfect cup of coffee with the perfect amount of cream and sugar. But I knew the lie. It tasted like hot swamp water. Everything tasted like swamp water.
“I am awake, Colten,” I snipped. The sleeves of Fynn’s hoodie covered my hands, shielding me from the heat, as I pulled the cup toward me. “Which you should know because you’re the one that woke me up,” I mumbled.
“There,” he exclaimed.
I narrowed my eyes as I looked up at him.
“Talking. Talking is a start. Can we start over?” He said, sitting down in Tanner’s seat.
I took Fynn’s into the garage and set it on fire yesterday. That was the day I stopped hoping he would come back. That was the day I accepted Fynn was dead.
I looked back up at Colten, grabbed my pills off the table, swallowing them dry. My jaw sprung free to show him I took them like a good girl. He glared at me every time. Today, my lips considered moving into a smile, but it never happened. Smiling was too close to feeling.
“Hi, Nessa. How are you?” Colten said, looking hopeful. I hated when he looked at me like that.
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head and looking into the depths of my coffee for advice. “That’s one of the not allowed questions.” We weren’t talking about how I was.
“But don’t you see that’s the problem? You just keep circling the same drain,” Colten said, causing me to knock over the cup as I stood up from the chair. My heart hammered in my chest, and my arms shook. I pulled them across my chest, letting the excess material of the sweatshirt hide me.
“Don’t use his words,” I sneered. Deciding that I had enough breakfast and had earned a nap.
My feet carried me along as I looked at the empty spaces on the walls. The art and sculptures were boxed up and stored in some kind of storage. If we ever needed money, we could sell one and live the good life for the rest of our lives. We had a storage unit full of them. All we had to do was wake up in the morning and survive until we went to bed.
All that was left to do was survive.
I opened the door, slipping inside like a ghost before my feet halted. It was the smell. His smell. I looked around wildly. I wondered where he was before I realized I was standing in the middle of his room, not mine.
I looked down at my body, my hair flopping into my eyes. Wondering why it would bring me here, of all places. I turned to leave, but a ding from the computer stopped me in my tracks. My heart burst to life, and my feet raced into his chair. Touching the mouse to make the screen jump to life.
There was an urgent notification stating that they were still missing confirmation on the last job he took. The tiny bit of hope I had allowed myself to feel, that he had found a way to reach out to explain where he was, burst. In the space hope vacated, other emotions pushed their way. Stretching and tearing through me until tears streamed from my eyes, and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Finally, a ragged breath tore into me, and I sobbed it back out. My arms and legs curled me into a ball on the chair.
I just wanted to disappear, too.
If I couldn’t have them all, then the abyss could just keep me this time.
Why didn’t it just keep me?
Arms wrapped around me, scooping and carrying me over to the bed. I nuzzled into the smell of gun oil and looked up sharply to see soft blue eyes staring back at me. The eyes of Nik. I had forgotten for a moment that he also smelled like Fynn.
He pulled me into his chest, holding on to me as tremors wracked my body. He held me steady.
I must have fallen asleep at some point. When I woke up, it was the middle of the night, and Nik was lying on his back beside me, snoring. Another ding sounded from the computer, helping me to remember what woke me up in the first place. I needed to turn the speakers off. There was no one left to reply to the messages, anyway.
I powered on the screen, clearing away whatever messages that woke me up without bothering to read them. I searched around the desktop for the settings, wishing that Fynn had gotten with the times and at least used touch screen tablets. He had always grumbled something about security.
I saw a text document marked private, and it piqued my interest. I looked over my shoulder, checking that Nik was still sleeping. Turning back to the screen, I opened the document, and a box popped, asking for a password. I tried “Vanessa,” but that was incorrect. My brain scratched and clawed through my memories, trying not to remember him, while also trying to figure out a personal password. It wasn’t working.
I got up from the chair, abandoning my quest rather than a stroll through memory lane.
“My butterfly.”
I stopped. Straining to figure out where that came from. I turned back around slowly, making my way back over to the computer while all the hairs on my arms stood. The little box waiting for me to type in the answer.
I hit enter.
A page opened; well, far more than one. It was thousands.
This was Fynn’s personal electronic journal. It looked like he had started documenting his life around his senior year. The first few pages talked about stress and pressure in school. His dad wanted him to get into Columbia, not buy his way in. Fynn thought it was ridiculous, since he went to class all day and helped his dad’s IT department in the evening.
