30. Rhett #2
We spend nearly two hours going over Shadow’s commands and routine.
Watching Ana’s joy and enthusiasm is my favorite fucking thing in the world.
I laugh, a sound and feeling I’d long given up believing could be pulled from me again in such long, genuine bursts, yet Ana’s antics with the dog are so endearing and entertaining, and— Fuck. I’m in such deep shit.
Leaving Shadow for an hour, we come to a nearby restaurant, and I don’t realize how much I’ve missed my friend. Even as I think of the term, it doesn’t seem enough for someone who’s never given up on me no matter how deeply I spiraled, nor how dark the path I strayed onto.
“How’s the job been going?” I ask him after our meal is finished.
Exasperation weighs on Xavier’s face, which makes me hook my brow in amusement. “It took a lot of persuasion, but they allowed me to take on a case I picked up myself out of curiosity, actually. There’s been a string of homicides they think are all connected.”
“A serial killer?”
“Kind of. But they don’t always kill.”
“What’s the common trace that leads to one person?”
Xavier winces. “Castration.”
I never would have expected that.
“Right?” he says to my strained reaction. My balls shrink as if to protect themselves at the mere thought. “It’s like their calling card.”
“Isn’t that a case for the FBI?” Ana asks.
He looks at me accusingly. “I see you forgot to tell your girlfriend about my existence altogether, not to mention my progression from SWAT to FBI last year. I’m hurt.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Ana says with a nervous chuckle. “Didn’t he tell you it’s all a ruse because of some tabloid on his first day that made us out to be America’s hot new couple?”
“Ohh,” he says, and then he leans back in his seat as he looks between us, puzzled. “Are you sure?”
Ana only spoke the truth, but it disturbs inside me. I don’t care about labels, but one thing is for sure: Ana is mine even if I’ll never be hers.
“It’s been a very busy few months.” I brush him off. It’s a poor excuse, and they both pin me with accusation.
“Well, anyway, everyone is at their wit’s end. It’s been going on for years, and when I stepped up to FBI it was practically cold.”
“But you warmed it up?” I muse.
He smiles deviously. “You know I can’t put down a challenge once it’s in my hands. But even I’m beginning to lose my shit over it. This person is like a ballerina around us. We get so close, but it’s like they want us to—like they get joy out of watching us.”
“Sounds like a typical serial killer characteristic,” I say.
Xavier hums, and I see his work start to fill his mind. “This person is not typical. I can’t place it.”
I’ve always admired his focus and determination. Once he puts his mind to something, he won’t stop until he achieves his goal, and it’s probably why we understand each other so well.
“Are you heading back to Philly for Christmas?” Xavier asks carefully.
I tense, having not brought it up to Ana yet.
She mentioned a party her father was throwing on Christmas Eve and he’d asked if Ana would perform at it, to which she replied she’d think about it.
Every other year they ask, she immediately refuses, and I can’t bring myself to tell her yet that I won’t be there but I want her to play regardless, knowing she’ll love herself for it, if only she’d push through the nerves.
“I don’t know,” I say tightly, feeling Ana’s eyes on me and being too much of a coward to meet them.
I’ve been warring with myself, wanting to be there for Ana to watch her play her violin, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do anything except give over to one night of drinking alone, visiting Sarah’s grave on the anniversary of my failing her, as I have done every year for the past three.
How can I bask in anything warm that day when she’s lying cold because of me?
“We should get going,” I say, slipping away into a detachment I know all too well.
Xavier gives me pitying eyes and I don’t want to unleash my resentment for it. I’ve enjoyed seeing him, but now I remember why I don’t deserve a consistent friendship. Or love. Or joy.
My goodbye to him is shitty, but it’s better this way. Guiding Ana to the car with Shadow, I’m distant and she knows it.
“You could have told me,” she says quietly, breaking our twenty minutes of silence. “I don’t need you by my side at all times.”
“I requested the leave from your father the day I took the job. Just for two days. Christmas Eve and the day. I kept it from you because you’ve been psyching yourself up to perform, and I worried my not being there would discourage you.”
“I wasn’t going to do it for you,” she snaps.
It comes from a place of hurt that lodges a knife in my chest. She thinks I don’t care enough, that she means so little to me that I’d abandon her on that important day. What she doesn’t know is that she’s everything to me, and I’m just a pitiful, scared coward.
“Good,” I say, forcing down my pain and hoping her spite toward me will see her through that performance if that’s what it takes.
Ana doesn’t talk to me again and I can hardly breathe with her anger toward me. It feels so wrong. I want to be angry with her—toward the world and all its wrongdoings—but I never want us to be angry at each other.