Page 19 of Your Echo
I reach up to tug on one of my gauges. We still haven’t moved any farther down the street.
“To be honest,” I explain, “I probably deserved getting cheated on. I wasn’t the world’s greatest boyfriend. Adam, though—that bastard really was a fucking dickhead.”
Stéphanie smirks. “For some reason, I don’t have trouble believing you about the world’s greatest boyfriend thing.”
I place a hand on my chest. “Hey now. Weren’t you just trying to pull me out of my pit of self-loathing?”
“Sacrement,” she swears. “Again with the tortured artist thing. Can’t you shut it off?”
“Nope. I have to keep it running twenty-four seven. I know you thoughtthiswas the money-maker”—I wave my hand in front of my face—“but really it’s up here.” I tap the top of my head.
“Up there must be a scary, scary place.”
I leer at her. “You have no idea, Stéphanie.”
She shifts her backpack higher up on her shoulder. “You sure about that, Ace?”
“No.” The tension is back, a knot tightening between us. “No, I’m not sure about that at all.”
She jerks her chin towards the end of the block. “My street’s right up ahead, so I guess this is goodnight.”
I wait for her to leave, but she doesn’t move.
“Goodnight, then. Enjoy sleeping like a normal person. I’ll be up there”—I point towards St. Laurent—“being loud and annoying.”
I’m not sure if I’ll go out tonight, but it’s not like there’s anything stopping me. Sometimes I wish there was—some concrete barrier, some gate I could put up to keep myself away.
“Ace.” Stéphanie steps closer, so close I can see the individual strands of her pale eyelashes and the shadows they cast on her cheeks. “Take some advice and don’t go there tonight. Just tonight. Give it a try.”
A sound forms in the back of my throat but doesn’t turn into any words. All I can do is watch as she lifts a hand up between us. She holds it hovering there, her fingers trembling, before she clenches it into a fist and lets it drop. Then she’s walking away, pale legs and pink Keds carrying her around the street corner and out of sight.
There’s a bench on the other side of the road. I cross over the asphalt to sit down on the perforated metal seat, pulling my phone out to glance at the time.
9:45PM. Just over two hours until all the clubs will be full. I could hit up one of the cheap student bars and be properly buzzed by then. JP would probably come out if I asked him to. There’s no better wingman than JP. He gets all the girls’ attention by jumping around like a ridiculous fuckwit on the dance floor, and then he brings half a dozen of them over when he comes to talk to me at the bar. We could have ourselves a grand old Thursday night.
I glance up at the lights of St-Laurent, at the never-ceasing trails of people traipsing up and down the road. Wherever you end up on that street, you never end up alone.
I flip my phone from hand to hand, staring at the spot where Stéphanie and I stopped. When I do finally dial a number, it isn’t JP’s.
“If this is a last-minute request for me to be your wingman tonight, the answer is no.”
“Calm your tits, Cole. That’s not why I called.”
He grumbles something unintelligible. The fucker is always grumbling.
“I, um...” I swallow. I should have planned something to say before I called. “I just wanted to say that...I...um...”
“Are you drunk?”
“No!” I realize shouting probably isn’t going to convince him that’s true. “No, I’m not. I’m not drunk at all, and the reason I’m calling is to say that I was...uh...”
I hear the muffled sound of a woman’s voice. Cole puts his hand over the microphone before he says something back to her.
Roxanne.
Remembering the look in her eyes when she found me on her balcony that morning helps me pull my shit together.
“Look, Cole, I was an ass. I was two asses. I was like...one of those animal costumes where one end is the head and one end is the ass, except both ends were the ass and...I...um...”
