Page 139 of Murder

“Discovered?” He smiles, but it’s more sweet and sad than teasing.

“As they say.” I arch my brows.

“Did you like it? Modeling?” he asks.

I bite my lip and shrug. “I was in a different place then. Honestly?” I blink down at him. “It made me feel good. Important. This is weird to say, but I was hanging out with Elvie’s family a lot, and compared to them, I felt like a nobody. Almost like a groupie. So the modeling made me feel like I fit in more. And then I got the part of Jessica in End of Day, this indie film, and that was even better. That whole time period, when I remember it…” I shake my head. “It was like one long Christmas morning. And then I got a record deal.” I can hear the wistfulness in my own words. As if he can feel the way my heart squeezes, Barrett’s gentle fingers stroke my side.

“I thought I had it all. I mean, I kind of did. Elvie and I were serious, or I thought we were. I bought a little house. I could tell myself…you know, in retrospect, that I had always been going there. I put myself up on this stage in my head, and even before I had an album…” I swallow. “I never had an album.” I laugh, and even to my own ears, it sounds a little bitter. “I was living the dream in my own mind. I’m kind of glad it was so good. Probably even better than reality would have been. So there’s that.”

Barrett’s lips meet the inside of my wrist. He looks up at me with this wondrous expression on his face. Wondrous, yet serious. Sincere. “Have I told you I think you’re fucking incredible?”

My cheeks sting. My lips curve, all on their own. “I’m not,” I tell him honestly. “At all. In my position, being positive and moving forward was the only option that made sense.”

I cup my hand around his face. “I think you’re the same way. That’s the feeling that I’m getting, anyway.”

He pushes up on one elbow, resting his cheek in his palm. “What do you mean, Piglet?”

I smile at the name, then sober some and look into his eyes, so he can see the sincerity in mine. “It’s just this feeling that I get from you. That you’re really trying.” I smile down at him. “That, and one of my gardenia trees is shedding petals that end up in your pockets when I do laundry.”

He cuts his eyes away from mine and makes a funny kind of embarrassed duck face, which I have to struggle not to laugh at.

His eyes boomerang to mine. He’s smirking, but it really looks more like he’s struggling not to laugh. “You found those, huh? I need to get my own tree.”

“Just to pull its petals off?” I ruffle his hair.

“You make it sound bad.” He gives me a mock sad look.

“Mine can spare some petals. Only for you.”

He chuckles, looking a little embarrassed. “I’ve been…smelling them.”

“Exposure therapy.”

“Something like that.”

“And? How’s it going?”

“It’s working, I think.”

I beam. “That makes me really happy. Don’t be doing it for me, though. I can give those plants away.”

“Nah.”

“Have you ever thought of talking to someone? Like a PTSD type person? Tell me if you feel like I’m being pushy. Because I don’t want to be. I’m not.”

He takes a long breath and blows it out. “Those people help?”

“I think so. You’re doing amazing on your own,” I add. “Unless there’s something I’m missing, you’re not doing half the things a lot of other people do in your position.”

“Like what?” he asks, looking skeptical.

“Drinking. Drugs.” I shrug. I don’t want to sound like some kind of lame after school special, but it’s true: it is impressive that he’s held himself together so well.

I watch Barrett’s face, but there is nothing to be found on it. Maybe a vague haunted expression, which I could easily be imagining.

“No,” he finally says.

A grave look passes over his face: there and quickly gone.

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