Chapter 15
Ellis
If it bothers me that you’re still involved with him, and I’ve communicated with you that it bothers me, and you do nothing, the only thing really to do is remove myself from the equation . . .
I sigh and exit from my notes app and the text response I’m drafting out to Lacey. I had to put my phone on Do Not Disturb an hour ago because my pulse spiked in a bad way at every new response I got from her.
I can’t believe I’m reduced to writing manifesto-length texts back and forth with this girl. Forget her, forget her, just block her and be done with it. Forget about her.
Ugh, I could cry. I really liked her.
I rub the heel of my hand against my eye, and sniffle, exhausted.
We haven’t been saying anything new to each other in the last couple hours, just finding new, slightly more barbed ways of saying it.
I can’t believe she would draw this arbitrary line in the sand.
Bad guy. It feels so flat, an utterly un-nuanced line of thought.
Does she really think the world is so simple?
It’s aggravating that she’s so enmeshed with her ex that she can’t see his bullshit. I can’t imagine why she keeps choosing him over and over, why she hasn’t just left him in the dust by now. If not for us, at least for herself.
And yet, every time I close my eyes I see her in tears from our last words spoken to each other. Traitorously, I feel guilt curl in my chest, her hand around my heart.
The evening traffic crush drifts several stories below from the architectural trim I’m perched on.
I spend a lot of time dangling my feet over the edge when I don’t want to go back to the hideout, but don’t have anywhere better to be.
Cell signal is better up here, unfortunately.
I used to really like this spot until the big ass LED billboard across the street started showing Steel Heel baring his cybernetic gauntlets at the viewer, advertising nothing but his ego: BE A HERO in ten-foot-tall letters.
Whatever that means.
Maybe I just don’t want to face the fact that she just likes him better. Yeah, she slept with me once, but that’s probably nothing in the face of her relationship with Steel. This isn’t some fairy tale where you get the girl just for rescuing her from a dragon.
It’s not just jealousy; he really is bad for her. But maybe that’s not my call to make. I like Lacey. A lot. Even if she wasn’t interested in me romantically, I’d still want to know her, be friends. I don’t know, maybe I’m just telling myself that.
I didn’t think I was the jealous type, but sometimes I just think about her and Clayton.
Not on purpose. I never want to go down the rabbit hole of thinking about him and her together.
But sometimes I wonder how she ever became involved with him.
I mean, I know she’s a whole adult herself, but he’s got at least fifteen years on her, and maybe if he was like a hot silver fox I would understand, but he just looks like someone’s weird, divorced dad. Which yeah, he definitely is.
I know at this point I’m just being a hater. I don’t actually have a thing against weird, divorced dads. I’m sure some of them are ok.
What does she even see in him? Does he make her laugh? Is it just that he’s a powerful, rich man, and she was just unfortunate enough to be caught in his path?
I sigh and open a new note to draft out a different thought.
Hey, this is just because I care about you, but I don’t expect anything from it.
We can just be friends, if that’s what you need.
It makes me uncomfortable that you’re still really involved with your ex, but that’s really my problem at the end of the day, and I want to be more mature than making it your problem—
I think I’ve written this out like four times by now, and each time I get to this point and decide against it. She is responsible for who she decides to associate with. It says something about her, what she values. Something that maybe I haven’t been willing to believe because I’m attracted to her.
My phone pings, a noise that makes my adrenaline spike momentarily before I check it and see it’s just my favorite guy. The best thing about having a weird mutant brother is that even when he’s mad at me he has to put up with my bullshit.
I may have been sending screenshots of the conversation to Vin. I’ve sent enough that he insisted he didn’t want to know any more about it, but maybe he got bored.
He’s sent a disappointing reply: I dunno man. She’s got a point. You’re expecting a lot from her.
I’m so peeved about it, I call him.
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” I grumble instead of a greeting. Of course, he waits until I’m fighting with her to be pro-Lacey, and not like, when I needed him to say just one good thing about her to Maestro.
“When did I agree to that?”
“When I didn’t tell Dad you keep leaving the hideout door open and heating the neighborhood,” I nearly snap. I scrub a hand over my face and take in a deep breath. I can’t help but gesture at the stupid billboard as I insist, “He’s not the hero she wants him to be.”
“And that’s your problem?”
There’s some static and interference on the line as he grumbles and probably puts the phone in his pocket to annoy me. I watch the alleyway below absently, when a familiar, pink pom-pom hat snags the corner of my vision. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten my claws stuck in its fuzzy knit before.
I move before I give any thought to it, gravitating toward her. I scoot off the edge of the building, dropping silently down ten stories or so before I let my wings catch the air, slowing me down enough to land along the building’s frieze, where I can get a better look.
Lacey.
Of course it’s her, wrapped up in her winter coat. I can just barely hear the pattern of her boots clipping against the damp pavement. The wind picks up and plays with a few strands of her hair, and a terrible pang hits my chest.
I guess at the very least I should apologize for blowing up at her earlier.
She doesn’t need me to white knight at her; she’s her own person.
But on the other hand, if I just forget about it this time, it’s going to just hurt all the more the next time Steel marks his territory and she doesn’t do anything about it.
If I’m going to apologize, I don’t want her to think I’m caving on this.
I frown and prop the phone between my ear and my shoulder. “What do you think I should say, then?”
Vin sighs audibly, draws it out over several seconds so I don’t miss it. Then his voice crackles through the speaker. “Nothing. If you’re done with her, be done with her. I told you she was bad news from the start.”
“That’s not advice.”
“It is. You just want to argue her into being your girlfriend.”
I grimace so deeply I’m unable to respond. He’s always been rude, but that was uncalled for.
“Anyway, you think I don’t know you’re doing this on purpose? Just so you don’t have to get her phone for Maestro?”
“. . . That might be giving me too much credit,” I mutter. I don’t know why I thought calling him would help. He doesn’t know how to be helpful.
I text Lacey a quick, “Hey,” and watch her ignore it completely. Glad we’re both playing the Do Not Disturb game.
Sitting back on my heels, I contemplate as Lacey reaches the end of the block and turns the corner. We’re still fighting. She doesn’t want to talk to me. And after all that, I shouldn’t want to talk to her. But I need her to understand!
I decide I’m not going to follow her as she disappears out of sight. I shouldn’t keep watching her. She deserves privacy. My hand feels along the building’s brickwork for a grip, pulling myself to stand.
I’m not going to do it.
I’m not.
I won’t let myself. I’m not going to do it. In fact, I’m going to go home and angst in my bed for a while, maybe make myself sick on ice cream. Vin continues to lecture me, but I lower the phone from my ear so that I don’t have to be entirely present for it.
“She went that way,” an unfamiliar voice several stories below stops me.
I only just catch myself against the architecture, clinging onto my perch. Did I hear that right?
There’s a black van below on the street, no logos or anything on it, and a couple of guys leaning against it, staring down the corner Lacey just turned.
I watch as the two men exchange a few more words, one gets in the van and starts the engine, the other starts walking down the street in the same direction as Lacey. Just who are these goons?
Immediately, I’m moving along the frieze, following him at pace. I’m going to keep an eye on Lacey just a little while longer.
“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Vin’s voice comes through, startling me a little. I almost forgot he was still on the line.
“Mostly what you do is yell at me,” I sigh back.
I hang onto the side of the building for as long as I can but eventually have to go up higher to stay hidden, at least while I’m following them through busier parts of town.
Eventually the turns take us down quieter and quieter streets, and the buildings become shorter and shorter, and I can follow along walking across the rooftops.
In about seven blocks no one has looked up and spotted me. They never do.
Somehow, I can’t imagine this is the scenic route home for Lacey. Not when we’re on the end of town that’s close to the marshy edge of the river that soaks up every foul smell only to return it every slight weather change.
She stops, and I watch the man following her about fifty feet back duck behind another car. I grit my teeth. It couldn’t just be two people innocently going in the same direction, could it?
The orange streetlamp bathes the night in an unworldly monochrome. Lacey digs through her purse and pulls out a paper map and a pen, before she crouches beside a half-eroded manhole cover in the middle of the empty street to peer in.
More fucking ooze.