Page 7 of Lair

Greg gives me a look—Good luck—and sidles off for the bar. A grin tugs at my lips as I watch him go. “He’s not so bad, you know.”

Cailee glances over her shoulder. “Yeah, I know.”

I watch my best friend. Once, I would have been beyond excited at all this. Going out, bars, being on our own. The buoyant thrill of possibility, of knowing anything could happen. Anybody could happen. But that was gone now. No dancing for me. No flirting. Not after what happened.

Not after Josh.

Cailee turns to me with glassy eyes, and that’s when I know it’s coming. I beat her to it. “Cailee. Honey.”

Her lips pout. “But what am I gonna do without you?” she wails, dramatically flinging her head back, and I feel my eyes sting and open my arms. “Oh, babe, c’mere.”

She walks into them, plopping her chin on my shoulder like a lost puppy. “You better call me. Like, all the time.”

“I will.” I stroke her hair.

“And get me hired on the same boat once you’ve seduced the owner.”

“Of course.”

She sniffles. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

When she draws back, her cheeks are shining. I wipe at them. “You gonna hook up with Greg tonight?”

Her face screws up as she thinks about it. “Yeah. Probably.”

I snort. “Good ole Cailee.”

“Damn right.” She pauses, assessing me. “You’re still not gonna party with me, are you?”

I shake my head.

She nods, and we look into each other’s eyes. She’s suddenly very solemn. “Don’t worry. The right guy will come around. You just need time.”

I have to swallow the lump in my throat before I respond. “I know.”

We’re holding each other like prom dates by the time Greg comes back.

THREE

It’s a twelve-hour flight from Fort Lauderdale to Nice.

I’ve never flown before. I grip the armrests of my seat like a child as we rumble into the sky, my heart hammering against my sternum. I only open my eyes once we’ve reached cruising altitude. All around me, fliers look bored, staring out windows or scrolling through movie selections. Of course they’d be calm. They’d have no reason to feel like a fugitive.

I didn’t feel this way when I drove with Cailee across the US and saw the sign for the Sunshine State flash by. With Cailee, I could pretend that Florida was merely a girls’ trip, a mad interlude that would soon end and bring me back home. Back to Josh.

But this—this is final. There’s no going back from this.

This is real.

Absurdly, infuriatingly, I feel like I’m betraying him. As if, deep down, there is something wrong with the world.

This is what he’s taught me. To need his approval so badly that the very idea of disagreeing with him, let alone defying and leaving him, makes me physically sick, my insides twisting into knots.

A sudden, wrenching agitation overtakes me. I’m trapped here. I have to escape. I have to sleep. I fumble out melatonin pills and knock them back, expecting my adrenaline and chronic insomnia to keep me up. But I crash at once.

I dream of Josh, as I always do. I see our beginning when he lavished me with attention. Him taking me into his garage hung with old Nirvana posters where he plays guitar for me, making me feel like he’s led me into his secret world. A place of enchantment where I trust him completely, where I am so addicted to his love that I will do anything, endure anything, to get it. Then the dreams come in jagged flashes as the dark Josh who had always been lying in wait comes out. I see him questioning where I was, demanding to see my phone. I see his dark, judging looks, his contemptuous smirk. As if he’s grown weary of me, or my devotion disgusts him, perhaps scares him. I see him pushing me away, almost as if in anticipation of my eventually abandoning him. As a way to make me prove my love to him. To absolve himself of his behavior by projecting it onto me. I see him twisting my words until the tears are gathering plump and trembling at the corners of my eyes. I see the noise and chaos, shouting and things breaking. I see him punching a wall by my head and leaving me to slide down it and hug my knees, my eyes as blank as stones.

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