Page 89 of Pretty Black

I wasn’t frantic this time.

I was cold and calm.

He wasn’t with any of the other guys. They all slept. No one woke to Iris leaving. Part of me wondered if he’d gone elsewhere to do it so no one could stop him, but it felt wrong.

I believed him when he said he wasn’t suicidal.

This felt different.

Had he finally run?

“We need to take this seriously, because when normal people go missing, we aren’t worried we’ll find them face down floating in a pool of their own vomit—ODed— or worse. Who’s he with?” Alexander screamed. Iris hadn’t answered his calls for days.

“He wouldn’t tell me.” I knew what worse meant. He didn’t have to say it, and I knew he was capable, which left no argument. “You can’t keep him in a cage.”

“Fucking watch me. He has responsibilities he can’t just vanish.”

The conversation clawed itself from the depths of my brain, and in hindsight, it predicted our future. Had I known then… I don’t know what I would have done. If Alexander hadn’t trapped Iris, we wouldn’t be back together. We wouldn’t have had this summer.

What if he goes back to that guy?

My brain rejected the notion.I knew he loved me.

But what if he was out of my reach forever?

Could I live with it ending like this?

TWENTY-NINE

PRESENT DAY

Iris Black

His hands were cold, so cold.

I slipped a hand into his pocket, finding the cigarette case I’d given him for Christmas with my first paycheck. The first real money I’d had, and I knew he’d been eying one for a long time. I’d had his initials etched on the inside while the outside had the thin outline of a dragonfly. He loved them. He had since he was a little kid. Always telling me they were good luck.

I pulled the case out of my pocket, rubbing my thumb over the dragonfly. “Why do I have to miss you so much? You told me it was selfish to ask me to keep living. You should have fucking kept living, and I don’t care if it’s selfish.”

I took another Xanax, pulled my coat tighter around my shoulders, and headed towards the train station.

The city was silent.

There were times when I thought love was a curse. A thing humans did to torture ourselves. Because we were all leaving here in boxes and attachments meant pain.

Why was existence so full of pain?

I got on the Orange Line and took a seat in an empty car. The city lights whirled by, streaking in the blurred windows. How many times had I taken this train to go see Caspian? How many times had I told myself I’d escape this place, and yet I returned here in my mind night after night.

This fucking placed trapped me.

“I found someone who loves me. I don’t know how to tell you that you were right. Maybe I want to live. I just wish you’d given it a shot, too,” I whispered, wondering if he could really hear me. If he even cared to listen from the place he was in.

It wasn’t like the roof.

I felt so far from him.

I got off the train before the end of the line, stumbling down the stairs to the empty parking lot. “Is it better? Did you find peace?”

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