Page 157 of Ecstasy
It didn’t last nearly long enough.
“Zara.” Alex’s tone is serious, his fingers flexing around mine. I turn to stare at him, still holding back the tears. I don’t want to cry anymore.
“Let’s go to the beach, yeah?” he asks me, running his thumb over the top of my hand. “We’ll stay as long as you want. We can stay until Halloween, if you want to. We can dress up or not and go out and drink orange juice, or not. We can do whatever we want.”
I rub my thumb against my sternum, the pain in my chest nearly unbearable. And I don’t know what it’s for. I don’t know what it’s for and I don’t know if I want to know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know.
Eli is being buried this weekend.
I want to tell Alex that. I want to tell Alex we should go to the funeral, but then I think back to Rihanna Martinson’s funeral. Eli comforting her mother.
Eli Addison, the fucking murderer.
I don’t think he was born insane. Maybe his mother broke something in him. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was the brother he’s never met. The pictures she sent that felt to him like she was poking at him. Telling him how he would never be Adonis.His middle name. His father told us that.
He never told anyone. Not even Alex.
Was she crazy, too? Did she know how much she hurt him? Did she only want to reach out?
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
“Do you regret it?” I ask Alex, unable to hold it in. We haven’t discussed what he did. He held me that night in his arms, in my bed. And we didn’t talk about it.
He looks out the driver’s side window, and I see him swallow. “He was my friend, but I never really knew him.” He laughs without humor. “He was my friend, and my roommate, going on four years. But I never fucking knew him.”
I close my eyes, resting the side of my head against the seat, still facing Alex. “I don’t think he knew himself.”
Silence echoes in the confines of the Jeep.
It’s so heavy.
It’s so fucking heavy, but Alex doesn’t let go of my hand.
“I don’t know if things could’ve been different. If he had gotten help. And I’m not a murderer, Zara.” He turns to look at me and I pry my eyes open even though they’re so fucking heavy, too.
Everything is just too much.
“I’m not a murderer,” he says again, his voice cracking. “I’m not,” he pleads with me, even though I didn’t say anything. His dark eyes are shining with unshed tears. His voice breaks: “I’m not, but I couldn’t let him do that to you. I couldn’t risk him doing that to you again because I love you, Zara. I love you, princess.”
He chokes on those last words and I climb across the console, sitting in his lap, my legs stretched out over the passenger seat. I let him bury his head in my neck. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, feel him sob against me.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, his fingers digging into every inch of my body he can find as he sobs harder. “I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t let him… I couldn’t let him hurt you.”
And when the tears flood my own eyes, I just let them. I just let that knot loosen in my throat and I let my heart ache and we cry together.
We cry together over someone who might never have cried for us.
We hold each other, and we don’t let go.
Not for a long, long time.
51
Alex
Halloween night,we go to the boardwalk. There’s a carnival, clowns on stilts walking along the bridge over the canal, people dressed up in costume. The smell of funnel cake and popcorn in the air. There’s not a lot of people here, considering it’s the off-season, but I think Zara likes it best that way.
