17. “Toxic Til the End” - Rosé
“Toxic Til the End” - Rosé
Walker
I’m not sure what I was expecting to find in front of the Archives this morning, but it certainly wasn’t Heath, early and holding out a to-go cup that looks suspiciously like the ones from Cafe de Olla.
“Hi,” I say cautiously as I walk up.
“Hey.” He returns the greeting with a smile, making those ridiculous dimples pop.
I give myself a mental slap. I have one job and one job only.
He hands me the cup. It’s warm. I do my best not to touch his fingers as I take it from him.
“Still your favorite, I hope.”
I take a sip, and to my surprise, it’s the exact vanilla chai I was wishing I’d had time to pick up this morning. “You remembered?”
He shrugs, like remembering your ex-girlfriend’s favorite drink for two years is perfectly normal. “I don’t see how you can drink something hot when it’s a million degrees outside.” He pulls his T-shirt away from his body and lets it snap back.
I know he’d much rather be in the ocean than inside an airless library .
“I really appreciate this.” I hold up the cup and incline my head toward the building. “And you coming with me.”
He shoves his hands into the front pocket of his linen shorts. “Ready?”
I follow him inside while fighting a mental battle in my head.
Wise Walker : You will not dwell on this for another second.
Mad Walker : But that was a sweet gesture!
Wise Walker : We don’t know what that was, but it’s too risky to think about.
Mad Walker : But he looks so incredible in that baby-blue T-shirt. And those dimples!
Wise Walker : Those dimples are hereby a forbidden topic of conversation.
This time we head directly to the back room with all of the G.R. Huntington books. Heath picks up The Haunting at 83rd Street and settles into the armchair in the corner. Is he really going to read again?
My eyes keep straying in his direction, waiting for him to set the book down and pull out his phone, but he doesn’t, genuinely engrossed in the pages. He lifts his head, and I quickly avert my eyes, pretending to consider the bookcase behind him.
“Need something?” he says.
Now that I’m committed to my farce, I move around the table and scan the shelves next to him. “Just thought I saw something over here that looked interesting.” I pull a random volume from the shelf and flip through it.
He leans forward in the chair, holding the book in front of him. We’ve been here for thirty minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him hold still for this long.
As if he can read my thoughts, his knee starts bouncing, causing the book to jostle. I smile at the familiar motion. He’s like a giant conduit for electricity, always moving, always pulsing with energy .
Five minutes later, he discards the novel and stands.
“You okay?” I say without looking up. This is the most disjointed and discombobulated research process I’ve ever executed.
I keep hopping from book to book, hardly absorbing anything I’m reading and forgetting to take notes 90 percent of the time.
A monkey could write a better dissertation than me at this point.
“Just restless,” Heath says. He peers over my shoulder. “Find anything helpful yet?”
“Some,” I say noncommittally. The words swim on the page in front of me. The heat of him is seeping through my lightweight top, making it hard to concentrate on breathing, let alone something as complicated as reading.
“I could help if you tell me what you’re looking for.”
I snap the book shut. He doesn’t move back. With the bookcase in front of me and him behind me, I have nowhere to go. “It’s hard to explain.” I have no idea why it sounds like I’ve just climbed three flights of stairs.
“Okay” is all he says.
I turn around then, suddenly anxious to get a look at his face. His eye is still a mottled purple, but the edges are tinged with yellow.
“Does it hurt?” I ask. I gently run my finger along the bottom of the swelling.
He catches his breath between his teeth, and I immediately drop my hand. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“It’s not too bad.” He looks at me with something like trepidation in his eyes. “I’ve had worse.”
A memory flits back. “Like your surfing accident?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Pretty sure my mum thought I was dead.”
“You were out cold,” I point out.
“Just a concussion.” I don’t know if he’s even aware he’s doing it, but his fingers rub absently over the scar running through his eyebrow.
We all panicked when we received the call that Heath had had a surfing accident. Fortunately, his uncle was there and fished him out of the water after his board nailed him in the head. I don’t want to think about what could have happened if he’d been in the water alone.
“Does your mum . . . ?” I’m not sure how to say it without making things more awkward.
“Does he beat her too?”
I bite the inside of my cheek and nod. Mad Walker tucks “can still read my mind” into her dress pocket with a smile.
He scratches the scar and drops his gaze to his feet. “Yeah.”
“Is that why you stay?”
“Maybe? I don’t know.”
“And your sisters?”
“Cami is the only one still living at home. He doesn’t usually hit her when I’m around. Julie and Val moved out before it got very bad.”
I’ve met his oldest sisters a handful of times.
Juliette is a business lawyer for the family company.
Valerie is married to a wealthy philanthropist and sits on the board of several charities.
Camilla is only two years older than Heath and used to give us rides sometimes before we were old enough to drive.
“Have you tried convincing your mum to leave?”
“She won’t. She’s determined to overlook his ‘ flaws.’”
“Flaws? God, it’s not like routinely getting spinach stuck in your teeth.”
His chuckle contains 25 percent mirth, 75 percent sadness. “She’s convinced everyone is capable of change.”
Irritation boils in my gut. There is nothing worse than a woman who stays with a man out of the belief that she will be the one to change him.
“People don’t change,” I say .
He looks at me then, really looks at me, and a procession of memories choose that moment to whirl through my mind like a kaleidoscope.
Our first kiss in the rain after slipping out the back door of a club, drunk and crushing on each other.
Stargazing in Switzerland and telling him I loved him.
Taking out his family’s sailboat until we were sunburned and sex crazed.
Getting coordinating tattoos of the Big Dipper so they synced up when we put our wrists together.
Our first time, on the beach, and washing sand out of my hair for an entire week and not caring.
A shrill ringing slices through the moment like a sharp blade. I jump backward and reach for my phone in my bag on the table.
“Hi, Mum,” I answer. Heath picks up his discarded book and leans back against the bookcase.
“Walker?”
I close my eyes. The tears in her voice are as obvious as my hand in front of my face. This can only mean one thing, and I don’t want to have this conversation here. Or anywhere. “Mum, can I call you back?”
“I really need to talk to you, ninita.” This is punctuated by a loud sniff.
Fuck. At least I’m not in the main part of the Archives. I’m pretty sure phones aren’t allowed out there. Heath is still engrossed in his book.
“What is it?” I say, even though I can recite the words with her.
“You were right.” Here we go. “I caught him on the phone with another woman.” She sniffs again. I picture the wheel of brie on the counter next to her.
“I’m sorry, Mum. ”
“At first he tried to tell me it was his new assistant, but I called Carla. She answered, which can only mean one thing.” The last word comes out as a wail.
I don’t want to hear this. I warned her it would happen, and she didn’t listen. She thought—like always—that this time would be different.
“I confronted him about it when he hung up, and he just grabbed his things and left. Why am I such a fool?” she moans.
“You’re not a fool, Mum.” I look up to find Heath’s eyes on me, a slight furrow in his brow. “But you can’t be too surprised by this.”
“I should have listened to you, but I really thought he had changed this time, carino.”
“This is what he does, though. He cheats. He’s a cheater. You can’t change that in a person,” I say.
Heath’s eyes have softened with sadness. I turn so I don’t have to see him. I cannot handle that while having this conversation.
“Maybe you could come over tonight. We could watch Gilmore Girls and eat—”
“I can’t tonight. I have to study.” Eating brie and crying over my dad is the absolute last entry on my list of things I want to do tonight, right after scrub the toilet with my own toothbrush.
“What about tomorrow night?” She sounds so torn up that I hate to do this to her, but the truth is, I’ve been there for each one of her breakups. They never get any easier, because she never learns from her previous mistakes.
“I don’t know, Mum. I’ll have to see.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
“You’re not a bother.” I exhale quietly so she can’t hear me through the phone. “I’ll call you soon, okay?”
After I hang up, Heath looks at me again. I give him the barest of glances before returning my attention to the bookcase. I select a new book from the shelf. It’s time to focus on what I came here to do, or I will end up in the exact same place as my mum.
The floorboards creak as he moves across the room, but I don’t turn around. I’m not in the mood for this conversation either.
“Hey.” He’s right behind my shoulder, and his voice wisps across my neck with the slightest of touches. It’s his way of asking if everything’s okay.
I offer him a quick, tight smile over my shoulder and turn back to the book I’m holding.
I’m fine, everything’s fine, go away, please go the fuck away.
He presses two fingers against my back. It feels like a branding iron. I close my eyes.
“Walk, please talk to me.”
It’s been ages since someone has called me that. I squeeze my lids together even harder. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Is your mum okay?”
I nod, emotion making my throat thick. “She will be.” He’s waiting for more, so I say as lightly as I can, “My dad cheated on her again.”
His fingers drop from my back. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
I shake the tension from my shoulders. “It’s fine. She’ll recover. She always does.”
“That doesn’t mean either of you should have to go through this.”
I attempt to swallow the lump of emotion in my throat. It refuses to dissolve. “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you fall in love with a cheater.”