Page 72 of Show Me How to Heal
Adam cocked his head, the flashlight lighting up his face from below giving him a creepy vibe. Like he was a kid in summer camp holding the flashlight under their chin while telling a spooky story. “Maybe you don’t need to go that far. If he kept everything from you, your behavior was justified.”
I wasn’t sure about that.
Telling him to go? Yeah, that might have been justified, but throwing him out, knowing there were paparazzi just waiting for him? Nope. That’d been cruel. The fact that it hadn’t crossed my mind what I was doing to him didn’t make it okay.
“Damn, I want to go talk to him now, but I have this stupid party to attend to. It sucks.”
Adam snorted. “According to social media, it’s a blast and everybody loves it.”
Great. At least others liked it.
“Well, then I’m going back to the party of the century. Do you want to come with me?”
A sad expression settled on Addy’s face. “I don’t think so. I don’t want people staring at me. And… it’s been a long day. I just want to go to bed and hide for a while.” The hurt in his voice was uncanny. I wanted to make him feel better, but I didn’t dare try to touch him again.
“You know my door’s always open. You can come by or call me anytime. And I know the same goes for Avery.”
“Thanks.” He smiled sadly, then pressed his lips together, eyes glistening. “I’m so grateful you haven’t given up on me.”
“Never.”
It’d taken three more hours until the party was finally over.
Three more hours of the same thing. Polite small talk, smiling, laughing, taking pictures, filming short clips here and there. Interviews, more speeches.
By the time I locked the door behind me, locking all the chaos in, I was fucking done with this day. Clean-up was a job for tomorrow or, more accurately, later today.
“Hey!” I jumped when a dark figure emerged from the shadows, my hand clutching my chest.
“What the fuck!” I shouted at the figure. “Don’t do that!”
“I’m sorry,” the person said, stepping under the streetlight in front of my shop so I could see them. At first, I thought it was Luke who’d waited for me, but I realized almost at the same time that it wasn’t him.
Yeah, the person in front of me looked kind of like Luke. The hair color, the shape of his face, his lips, everything was really similar to Luke, but it wasn’t him.
My mind was struggling to process being not at all attracted to someone who looked like my boyfriend. It was… a strange feeling, to say the least.
I was already staring at him for a few seconds before I realized it and shook my head to clear my head. “You’re… Moritz, right?” I asked, though I was very sure there wasn’t a third one of them running around.”
“Yeah. You can call me Mo.” He smiled at me, which made my brain hurt again because I was expecting Luke’s smile, but it wasn’t.
“I’m Zayne,” I introduced myself.
“I know,” he said, extending his hand for me to shake. “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too.” The handshake was even weirder. Then again, all this was surreal. Didn’t Luke’s brother live in Germany? “Uhm… what are you…” I trailed off, not wanting to sound rude.
“What am I doing here? Good question.” He shrugged. “Do you mean here in the USA in general? I wanted to support Luke. I know he fucked up, but he’s my brother, and I know how much he’s suffering. I’d underestimated his pain before and that’s not going to happen again. My parents agreed, I’ve gotHerbstferien— that’s fall break for students and teachers — so I took the first flight I could get.”
My brain got caught on one sentence.
“What do you mean you underestimated his pain before?”
Moritz looked over his shoulder, but by now, everyone had left, even the paparazzi. The security team had been great at handling them, and after they’d realized Luke wouldn’t show up, they’d cut their losses instead of standing outside in the cold all evening.
“I don’t know how much you know…” he began. “But he was hurt during the semi finale of the European Championship. Now, you need to know, my brother breathed football, lived football. Sorry, soccer. He’d started playing at age four and never looked back. He was aStürmer… I guess forward is the right word?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know soccer.”
