Page 17 of Only If You're Lucky
“What is with you lately?” I asked her then, not bothering to hide the disdain in my voice. The judgment, the scorn, the frustration that I had been keeping bottled up at that point for far too long. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Likethis,” I said, throwing my arms up, gesturing to it all. “He’s just a boy, Eliza. Since when do you change yourself like this for a boy?”
“I’m not changing myself—” she started, but I interrupted her before she could finish.
“Yes, you are. You’ve been different. Distant.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she muttered, and I let out a scoff.
“Try me.”
She looked up at me then, front teeth digging into her lower lip. I raised my eyebrows, egging her on, and watched as her eyes darted back to the window.
“There’s nothing wrong with letting him look.”
I stared at her then, disbelief washing over me, the thin line between danger and desire evaporating completely and melding the two together into something else entirely. It was so classically Eliza: driving without a seat belt, diving into the marsh when the tide was too low. Sometimes I thought she genuinely enjoyed the prospect of getting hurt, the threat of impending danger dangling over her heightening the sensation of being alive.
“Pretty soon he’s gonna want to do more than just look,” I said at last, my arms crossed tight. “What are you going to do then?”
Eliza just shrugged, ignoring me, lifting her pen to her lips and chewing on the cap in the same mindless way she used to saunter down the dock, adjusting the triangle of her bikini top before flipping onto her stomach and untying the straps. She was doing it on purpose, I realized, all of it cunning and calculated and entirely for him: cracking the window but never opening it completely. Flashing a glimpse of her bare back before clicking out the light and closing the curtains, letting him wonder what was happening in the dark.
I shot another look out the window, squinting my eyes against the inky beyond, and in that moment, I swear I could see him: a silhouette in the distance, standing on the dock.
The outline of Levi watching us both.
CHAPTER 15
I wake up to the sound of rolling thunder, a shuddering through the house I feel deep in my bones.
We’re three weeks into summer and the noise reminds me of that very first day, the bloated clouds encroaching on campus turning the sky a marbled gray. The way I had glanced out the window as the four of us sat on my bed, the spray of rain suddenly fogging up the glass. I remember thinking Levi had summoned it, somehow, his presence alone turning a perfect morning into something dreary and dark—but the truth, I knew, is that summer storms are normal around here, those reliable rumbles showing up as soon as the sun peaks in the sky. Those flashes of lightning; the torrential rain.
Quick, violent things that disrupt everything before disappearing again once they’ve found their release.
We ended up skipping the party at Kappa Nu, opting instead for a girls’ night in. And I was grateful for it, relishing the opportunity to both avoid Levi and settle into my strange new life. Nicole and Sloane latched on to my stories about him immediately, swigging straight from a bottle of bourbon they brought into my bedroomwhen I described the way we once found a cigarette butt smoldering in the grass outside Eliza’s window, proof of him moving even closer in the night.
“What a perv,” Sloane said, her hand wringing the bottleneck, mindlessly twisting. I watched as Nicole shivered, long fingers pulling my duvet tight around her shoulders. I didn’t tell them about how Eliza had picked it up, though; that curl of a smile as she rolled it slow between her fingers. The way she lifted it higher until her lips grazed the spot where his had been. I didn’t want them to blame her, somehow, but I also couldn’t help but feel a little thrill about the way we had all started to settle in so seamlessly together—though the irony wasn’t lost on me. The fact that Levi Butler was the thing bonding us all together when he was also the one who tore Eliza and me apart.
“Yeah, just stay away from him,” I said, turning toward Lucy next. I expected to find her nodding along, eyebrows bunched in the same cloak of concern, but she seemed more fascinated than frightened, drawn to the danger just like Eliza.
The more I talked, the more I watched, the more I realized how alike they really are.
It was the little things, at first. Things that made me do a double take every time Lucy walked into a room, my mind believing, for a single second, that it was Eliza instead. It doesn’t matter that they look so drastically different: Lucy is dark, dangerous, a blur of black curls and bronzed skin compared to Eliza’s fair hair and freckles. Lucy has blue eyes, Eliza had green, but beneath the surface, they’re so much the same: the way Lucy walks with an acute awareness, swaying the important parts of her in a way that causes heads to turn, throats to clear. The decibel of her voice, loud enough to command attention before dipping into something more intimate in the moments that matter. Making you feel likethe only one in the room. But then those things got even sharper, clearer, and I couldn’t tell if they were really there or if I was just imagining them, overlaying Lucy over Eliza like a sheet of tracing paper, my subconscious trying to copy her completely. Every last curve. The little tics that no one else seemed to notice: Lucy tugging twice on a hunk of hair before pushing it behind her ear. Rolling the diamonds of her necklace between her fingers when she was deep in thought or gnawing on a pencil, dreamy and deliberate, leaving little bite marks behind in the wood.
I roll over in the dark now and grab my phone, limbs slippery and duvet damp. The last few weeks have stretched by without incident since that confrontation at Kappa Nu, Levi going back to the Outer Banks and leaving me in a strange state of quiet unease: I’m happy he’s gone, but at the same time, I know he’ll be back. I try to tell myself that maybe he’ll change his mind, go to another school or at least pledge another house. I tell myself that I can handle it, that this time will be different.
I tell myself, but I never believe it.
I tap my phone now and watch as it glows in the dark, eyes squinting as I search for the date. I’m hoping to find it flipped over to tomorrow. Hoping to learn that I’ve slept straight through it, spent the worst hours of my life entirely unconscious. Hoping to feel the relief of a new day flood into my chest, release the unrelenting pressure from my lungs—but of course, it’s still today. Eliza’s death day.
One year since the night it happened. A full rotation since she’s been gone.
They don’t know when she died, exactly, though the coroner estimated it was sometime just before midnight, about two hours from now. I roll back over, eyes trained on the ceiling, a single bead of sweat snaking down my spine and the gentle sound of rainon the window numbing me into oblivion. The storm gave me a plausible excuse to stay in bed—to refuse to turn on the lights, peel myself from the covers—though everyone seems to instinctively understand what today is, why I’ve locked myself in here without explanation. I’ve heard the muffled sound of footsteps as the others approached from down the hall and stopped in front of my door. I’ve felt them hovering, waiting, before giving up and leaving again. I’ve ignored their gentle knocks, their throat clearings, allowing myself this single day to slip back into the person I was last year. This cracked-open shell of a thing I never wanted them to see. If I were a stronger person, I would have gone home for this. I would have spent the day with the Jeffersons, cozy in their living room as we swapped stories about her, laughing and crying and licking our wounds. I would have visited my parents, maybe even the spot where it happened, laying flowers on the ground in memory of her.
Instead, all I can do is lie here, counting the hours until it’s over. Until today turns into tomorrow and I can finally breathe.
I hear another rumble, but this time, it’s not coming from the sky. It’s coming from my stomach, gaping and hollow beneath the covers, and I remember with a sense of curious detachment that I haven’t eaten all day. I sit up and attempt to turn on the light, only when I twist the switch nothing happens, so I fling the covers from my legs before walking across my room and stepping into the hallway, following the familiar hum of voices upstairs.
