Chapter 10 #2
in Italy?” I try to jog their memories, but they just look at me with blank stares. “He broke up with me at the end of the
summer because he was actually living in Italy and never once mentioned that he was only home for the summer until the day before he was leaving?”
Still nothing.
“Super-Catholic guy who would ask me to take Plan B after each time we slept together even though we used condoms, and once put one in my parents’ mailbox?”
“Oh my god, him?” they say in unison.
I roll my eyes. I’m glad we remember only the important things here. “Yes, him. And he doesn’t even remember who I am. Did
you see him just now? All ‘How was everything?’” I say in a tone meant to be his. “I mean, who does he think he is?”
“The owner of this restaurant—” Dani says.
“Ugh, whatever,” I cut her off. “Just tell the boys I started my period or something and text me when Marco goes away.”
Annica leaves the bathroom, but Dani hangs back awhile longer. “Are you okay?” If Dani had a catchphrase, it would be that.
“I’m fine.” I saw Marco, he’s alive, he owns a restaurant. Whether or not he has the journal page in his possession, it no
longer seems to matter.
She gives me a sad smile before leaving the bathroom, and I need another drink. I text my mom to say we ran into some old
high school friends, and we’ll be out late. She responds and tells me to stay out of trouble.
If only.
Dalton is getting off work when we wrap up with dinner and invites us back to his place for a party.
He lives right in downtown North Winwick, close to the small college that makes up half of the city.
From the view of his living room window, I can see Marco’s restaurant.
I catch Dalton up on the real details of why I bolted from the table since he had to stand there and also awkwardly watch me run away.
“Oh, gross, he really doesn’t seem like that kind of guy,” Dalton says. “And he’s thirty, so what was he doing with a nineteen-year-old
while he was, what, twenty-eight?”
Asher opens his mouth, likely to make a professor joke, and I cut him a look that says don’t you dare. “In his defense, I told him I was twenty-four at the time,” I say.
“At least he comped our whole meal after you ran to the bathroom,” Annica says. “He thought the food made you sick.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Do any other exes of yours own restaurants? We can go try that again but order more this time.”
“Aren’t you guys listening? He didn’t even recognize me! I was that insignificant in his life. Meanwhile I wrote a whole—”
I cut myself off now.
Annica hears it of course. “Wrote a whole what?”
Dani talks over her. “With a face like his, he’s probably dated half the planet, probably can’t remember any girls at this
point.”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” I say, pouring one shot, two shots, three shots’ worth of vodka into a red Solo cup.
Dalton manages to fit more people into a one-bedroom campus apartment than I ever thought possible.
Annica has been really hitting it off with him, and now they’re partners in a beer pong game against Dani and Charlie.
Asher is in the corner of the room whispering in the ear of a brunette, who laughs and bites her lip.
I stand leaning on the kitchen island, looking through my phone.
I want to talk to Wes. More than that I want to be friends again.
Part of me wishes we never did what we did last summer because then he might even be here right now.
And we’d laugh and tease each other the way we used to, with that unspoken thing between us. I open Wes’s contact and start typing.
It’s officially been a week since you kissed me in 157.
I wish you wouldn’t avoid me so we could talk about it.
This weird thing between us. I just miss the way things used to be. I miss you—
“I wouldn’t send that if I were you,” Asher says, grabbing another beer from the fridge after peering over my shoulder. It
makes me jump so hard that I drop my phone on the counter. I pick it up and delete the message I typed out. “Wes, Sam, and
Jake are all at Ray’s right now with Marissa’s friends.”
“Good to know.” I go back to watching the beer pong game from the counter.
“You know, with your track record, I’m starting to think Wes is a little too young for you anyway,” Asher says. “The restaurant
owner, the professor . . .”
“It’s better than what I can say for you. That girl you’re cozying up to is in high school.”
He scoffs. “No she’s not—she goes to college with Dalton.”
“Is that what she told you?” She could very well be in college.
I don’t know her; I just want to rattle Asher back, since he seems to love constantly doing it to me.
I want to see his face fall with disappointment and replace his constant smug facade, just once.
He looks back over at her, assessing. I raise my eyebrows at him.
“Creep,” I say, before taking a sip of my drink and peeling away from the counter toward the couch.
I do my fair share of drinking and even take a hit—and I do mean just one hit—of a community blunt before Asher snatches it
right out of my hand.
“Do you think that’s wise?” he asks, handing it to Charlie and plopping down on the leather couch beside me, putting an arm
around the back. Dani glances over at us from the other couch, where she sits with Charlie.
I roll my eyes. “What are you, my keeper?”
Asher leans in. “I came on this stupid trip to your shantytown—now tell me what Wes said.”
I sit with my arms crossed. If I turned my head toward him we’d be nose to nose. “It’s not a shantytown, you jackass.”
He breathes a laugh in my ear. “Just tell me what I want to know.”
I turn to face him, thinking he’ll back away, but he doesn’t. “He doesn’t want the resort. I’m sure if something better came
along, he would take it. There, happy?” I can feel Dani’s and Charlie’s eyes on us, because I’m sure from where they’re sitting
it looks like we might kiss.
Asher smiles. “Ecstatic.”
I turn my gaze back and watch Dani and Charlie quickly look away, pretending like they’re watching the game of flip cup going
on behind us.
“Now you have your answer and I did my part, so you can leave me alone,” I say. He only leans in closer, lightly pressing his mouth to my neck, and I nearly jump out of my skin. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“My part,” he says.
“He’s not even here.”
“Once again, he’s not the only one we need to convince,” he says, his eyes darting toward our friends.
I scoot away from him. “I changed my mind. I don’t think I want to do this.” I think about how I felt probing Wes for answers
about his future. How wrong it felt knowing I was only asking for Asher.
“That’s not what happened at Euros, Miss ‘Ugh, I suck at this.’” He mimics me messing up the pool shot.
“Sloane, let’s get next game!” Dani says, grabbing my hands and pulling me away from Asher. “Is he bothering you?” she asks
when we’re away from the couches.
“No,” I say. “It’s fine.”
The weed and the vodka start to mix together in my system, and I pass out senseless on Dalton’s tiny black couch. The party
roars on around me as I doze off.
The smell of smoke wakes me from my cross-faded sleep. Not weed or cigarette smoke, but something heavier, like a bonfire.
It’s still dark, aside from the glow of something orange that lights up the room. Dani is curled up on the recliner next to
me, Charlie and Asher are on the floor, and everyone else is gone. I slowly peel myself from the leather to peer out the window,
only to find Marco’s restaurant up in flames.
I blink a few times, thinking maybe I smoked a laced blunt. Maybe it was some synthetic weed that makes you hallucinate. But when the fire still blazes bright before me I start to really panic.
I run over to Dani, shaking her furiously. “Dani, wake up, there’s a fire.” I nudge the boys with my feet. “There’s a fire!”
I say a little louder.
She startles awake. “What? A fire?” The boys both stir on the ground. Charlie only groans at the disturbance.
“Marco’s restaurant, it’s on fire!” She gets up this time, almost toppling over the boys, who are groggily propping themselves
up and rubbing their eyes. I drag her by the hand to the window. “We need to call 911 or something!”
The boys come to the window, and I run over to Dalton’s room, banging on the locked door. Annica opens it, wearing an oversized
Wildcats T-shirt, my high school mascot. “What’s wrong?” She squints at me through sleepy eyes.
“The restaurant is on fire. Wake up Dalton—we’re going down there.”
It seems someone already called 911 as two fire trucks and police arrive on the scene. Other nosy bystanders begin to crowd
around the blaze at nearly four in the morning. The police start to roll caution tape around the perimeter, keeping everyone
at a safe distance. We all just stand there in silence watching it burn. I’m waiting for the moment that Marco shows up with
a devastated look on his face seeing his life’s work up in flames, though I know his dad has enough money to build him five
more restaurants by tomorrow. But Marco never arrives.
“Fuck, now I need to find a new job,” Dalton mumbles.
“At least it burned down after your shift,” I say. “Or you’d need more than a new job.”
We watch them put out the rest of the fire. Marco must not know. He’ll come to work in the morning and find nothing but the
charred remains.
A firefighter comes from the rubble. “We got a body!”
Oh no.
My hand flies to my mouth as the six of us audibly gasp in unison. I glance all around the street. There’s no parking lot
for the restaurant, just street parking, and less than fifty feet away is an all-black Tesla, the same one that used to pick
me up for dates two summers ago. Marco wasn’t here to witness the fire because he was in it.
“I need to walk away for a minute,” I tell my friends before heading in the direction of his car. I take deep breaths with
my hands on top of my head as the shock of the fire starts to wear off and my hangover sets in. As I get closer to Marco’s
car I notice the folded white piece of paper under his windshield wiper. It can’t be. Please, don’t be, I think to myself
as I take the paper from the windshield. When I unfold it, my fear is confirmed. It’s another scanned copy of my journal entry,
the one about Marco.
Today we are here to mourn the loss of not just Marco St. James but also the girl I was before I met him.
Gone is the naive, sun-kissed girl lost in summer romance.
That version of me was laid to rest with Marco, both suffocated by long, humid nights and lies.
He was the type of guy mothers warn their daughters about.
He was the monster under your bed—or rather, in it.
Or on the couch. Or on the bar. You get the picture.
But his death was not for nothing, no. For if he didn’t take my old self down with him, I may have fallen for another just like him. And that is a fate worse than death.
Arrivederci, you motherf—
“Sloane?” I hear Dani say, walking up behind me.
With shaking hands, I crumple it up and shove it into my coat pocket. I frantically look all around me to see if there’s someone
out there watching, waiting for me to find it. Was this even meant for me to find? What the fuck is going on? My breathing is ragged now, with my hands shaking uncontrollably.
“Are you okay?” she says.
“Yep, yes.” I let out an unsteady breath.
“I know you didn’t really like him but . . . what a horrible way to go.”
“Yes,” I whisper, looking back over at the billowing smoke. “Horrible.”
“We should get out of here,” she says.
We all walk to Dalton’s apartment parking lot, where my car is, after saying goodbye and getting our belongings from his apartment.
The group is quiet as we all pile back into my car. I sit frozen at the wheel. We’re all thinking it but no one is saying
it. This is my third ex to die in less than two months.
“Do you . . . need one of us to drive?” Charlie asks from the back seat.
I almost feel like I’m imagining it as a white Jeep Wrangler, the same car Miles Holland drives, speeds past the lot.
“What?” I ask, distracted, but Asher is already at the driver’s side telling me to get in the back.
The fifteen minutes to my house drag on forever as music plays low in the background.
I stare out the window completely zoned out, with my hand on the printed eulogy in my pocket.
The slickness of my sweating palms starts to dampen the page.
Asher parks the car and everyone starts to walk toward the house.
I go around to my trunk to look for a pair of slippers or slides, realizing I only brought the heeled boots that I’ve been wearing since we got here yesterday.
When I open my trunk my heart stops. A red gasoline container sits in the center of all the clothes, shoes, and other miscellaneous items that I’ve tossed back here over the years.
I look around to see if anyone else caught a glimpse of what’s in my trunk, but my friends have now congregated by the garage door, likely waiting for me before entering the house.
I can only stare at the container. I know I didn’t put this in here.
I’ve never once kept a gasoline container in my trunk.
“Sloane, are you coming?” Annica asks. “We’re waiting on you.”
“Y-yeah,” I stammer out, closing the trunk without grabbing the shoes.
I lie down in my old bed, staring up at the purple-painted ceiling. Jonah, Ryan, and now Marco. I repeat their names in my
head like a grocery list. Jonah, Ryan, Marco, Jonah, Ryan, Marco. I go to turn on my side and the crunch of the paper in my
pocket makes me flinch. Jonah’s death felt like a cruel twist of fate. Ryan’s felt like a bad coincidence. Marco’s feels like
a murder—I think of the red gasoline container in my trunk—and I’m the intended suspect.