Chapter 17
Andy
There’s a blanket draped across Sloane’s legs that’s also strewn across mine, only because the fire blazing in the pit is insufficient and there weren’t enough to go around. No other reason, because we—Sloane and I—are friends.
“And you’re supposed to be…?” a newly joined Princess Peach in an iridescent mask asks. My fraternity’s annual halloween party usually has stricter guidelines, but a lapse in leadership meant that masquerade was all that made it onto the invitation.
“A barber,” I tell her, not bothering to clarify that I’m specifically a demon barber from Fleet Street, even when she squints at the streak of gray I impulsively added before walking over here with Ben. He’s since disappeared to God knows where, but he is not my problem.
They are not my problem tonight.
Sloane grins over at the girl, wistfully shaking her head. “A beautiful fool.” And I smile—can’t help it, but I do. She’s nothing like Daisy Buchanan and yet, I can see the ways she wishes she was.
If Sloane is careless, if she’s carefree and flighty and strong-willed, it’s because everyone’s asked her to be.
That’s what I’ve seen, and I think if anyone bothered to look they’d see it, too.
That Sloane’s care runs deep and wide, runs far and away, maybe.
I bet it feels easier to ignore it, to act like she couldn’t care less.
Flames play in her midnight eyes as she fishes for her phone in her bag, her shoulders stilling when she reads whatever she finds there.
“Shit. I need to go,” she murmurs, flinging the blanket off, standing. “You should probably come, too.” Her gaze catches mine, all that featherlight levity dissipating, replaced by the concern I know lingers just out of sight.
My stomach sinks, like it already knows, and I follow, the two of us shoulder to shoulder even though walking one behind the other would be faster. And it shouldn’t matter that even in this—a disaster waiting a few miles down the road—she wants me by her side.
“Gen needs me. She’s at Will’s.” Her jaw twitches as she heads toward the front.
The cavernous house is hard to peer through, what with the smoke and smog machines, and I wave a hand as we make the trek to the front yard. That car—Delilah—is parked worse than I’ve ever seen on a cluster of driveway stones.
“If this is your car,” Sloane shouts to no one in particular, arms shoving air at the Corolla parked behind Delilah, “move it!” Her hands find her hips, frustration creasing adorably between her brows.
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters, walking around the vehicle like she’ll find a magical key to move it herself.
“Come on. Let’s just go.”
“I literally can’t—”
Offering her my palm, I get her to give me the keys, telling her to trust me.
Where I expect more of a fight, I find nothing but surrender.
She drops into the passenger seat of her car, teeth pulling at her pink bottom lip as she pulls her bare legs up.
She lets me maneuver her car over the easement, between the Corolla and a truck, without so much as a scratch.
Her eyes are closed as we veer onto the little campus streets that connect every Astor landmark.
Fraternity Row. The practice gym. Churchill Hall.
The Mark Maxwell Arena. The Arboretum. The Athletics Center, connected to the Newhouse Health and Wellness Center.
Kellman Hall, where someone probably found the cure for polio.
Black metal poles shoot toward the sky, washing the road with golden light as we race toward Will’s apartment on the opposite side of campus.
“How’d you know how to do that?”
She pulls her champagne mask up and tosses it to the floor, shaking her hair out as it whips through the wind.
Nose tipped a rosy hue, she sniffs, and her hands wrap tighter around her folded up frame.
I hike my knee up, keeping the wheel steady, and shrug out of my letterman, tossing it in her lap.
She inhales, looking smug. “I’m honored.”
“You were freezing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. I like you, too,” she says, reaching over to ruffle my hair before falling back into her seat. “So what, are you secretly into street racin’? How’d you get us out of there?”
I wet my lips, dragging the bottom through my teeth as the memories start to resonate. “I learned how to drive on this.” It’s like a low, warm hum, remembering life with my step dad, and it pulls a smile from deep inside me.
Her face falls. “You’re jokin’?”
“I would not joke about this,” I laugh, chancing another glance her way. She’s shaking her head in disbelief, and I can tell something is churning inside her. “I mean, it’s just a coincidence, Sloane.”
“I don’t believe in those,” she says, slight alarm etched in a crease above her brow.
“Oh, right. You believe in God,” I tell her, flicking my gaze to the cross charm on her bracelet.
“I’m spiritual—there’s a difference,” she rebuffs, like the notion is an insult.
“Nothing wrong with it. Pretty sure Will went through a church phase…” I peter off just as she playfully knocks my arm. We take a left, getting closer.
“I just believe there’s a right way this is all supposed to go. And if that’s the case, nothin’s a coincidence.” She nibbles on her lip. “When you’re out of tune with yourself, with God or the universe, you get lost.”
“So if this isn’t a coincidence, what is it?” I don’t look at her when I ask it, just swallow against the wind the whips around us.
“A sign, I guess,” she says, helplessly. I flick my gaze over, watching as she traces her lips with one manicured finger. “That I’m headin’ in the right direction.”
“Towards me?” I joke, secretly self-deprecating, because if anything the universe should be steering her well clear of me.
“Maybe,” she admits, and my jaw twitches. “Maybe we were meant to be friends.”
I hum, nodding my head to myself as guilt churns deep in my gut.
I wonder if she can feel it, the way we’re actually pulled together by a thread that isn’t cosmic, but entirely fucking manmade; if she can feel the times I tried to snip it, only for her to tie it back together.
A thread, knotted in places that make all of this stronger than it needed to be.
“What happened to ‘it’s-definitely-not-fate’ Sloane?”
We pull to a light, the only car there, and wait.
“She realized you’re not a total ass-hat.”
“So it’s fate when you like me, a coincidence when you don’t?
” I chuckle, wrapping my hand tighter around the steering wheel.
I lean against the inside of the car door, knowing I could just blow this light.
There’s no cameras, but I like the way her stare’s trying to dig into my soul, like there’s something worth inspecting there.
“I never didn’t like you,” she mutters, mostly to herself, the light shifting to green.
We coast toward Will’s building, me unwilling to throttle the engine and her unwilling to ask me too. Like we both know this peace is about to be shattered.
“So you really think there’s a right way in all of this?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
Her certainty sends a flash of regret through me, and wonder what it’s like to still believe that everyone, everything, is good.
“I think what’s right for one person is wrong for another. And that feels pretty hellish to me. Doesn’t feel divine at all.” On some level, she has to know this. She can’t have existed in this world and skated past the realization that there’s a cost to everything.
She considers it, purses her lips before nodding.
“I think in the end, it all works out,” she says, her voice tinged with brittle hope as we park in front of Will’s building. I can see Gen, head in her hands, on a bench, and that hope does fuck all to prepare me for whatever I’ll find upstairs.
“Well…this is you,” I joke, and Sloane huffs on a thin smile, making no move to leave.
“And that’s you.” She tips her head toward the top of the building, rolling her lips together. “I had fun tonight. Makes me wonder why I didn’t give in to fate sooner.”
Because I don’t want to be just friends. Because I don’t want to be more but betray you. Because I don’t know how to do anything real anymore.
“I should get up there,” I say instead, watching her lashes flutter one too many times when I change the subject. Her recovery is impressive, her eyes rolling at Will’s mention.
“Everyone needs a cheerleader,” she laments as she steps out of the car. “Night, Spellman.”
“Night,” I tell her, shutting off the ignition but leaving the keys.
“Come on, man. Don’t do this, tonight.” I jiggle the handle, desperation finally taking over once I cross the fifteen minute mark.
I turn in a circle, wondering which of these neighbors would have a key, when the overnight attendant walks out of the elevator, confused. “I’m uh…his brother. If I could just—”
The man doesn’t flinch, just flashes a key card over the door handle and walks away. When I step into the space, the dull yeast of weeks old beer creeps up my nostrils while the shower loudly sprays in the distance.
So he’s alive.
I grab a trash bag, tossing everything more than half empty in the flimsy plastic before moving to his bedroom. There’s a Will sized dent in the sheets, and a Gen sized one, too. Hot steam pours through the crack beneath the bathroom door, and I bang on it loudly.
“Will. Will, it’s me. Andy.”
Nothing.
“I’m coming in,” I warn him before turning the knob.
And it isn’t so much that Will’s standing there in the shower naked, because I’ve seen every man on the team in various states of undress; it’s that Will’s skin is raw.
His face, his arms, his chest—they’re all as red as the tired veins traversing his bloodshot eyes, as the blood running from his hands down his legs, circling the drain.
I have to turn the water handle completely around, that’s how high he’s turned it up. When the fiery assault to his body stops, he blinks back into himself and sees me for the first time.
“You should go.”
“No fucking way, Will.” I disappear into his bedroom, pulling a fresh pair of sweatpants, shirt and underwear out of a drawer, and throw them on the bathroom counter.
When he emerges, I consider at what point I should call someone.
If telling someone to leave is grounds for a wellness check, or if the threat needs to be more substantial.
I decide that if he says the words, I won’t hesitate.
But he barely says any words at all. He collapses on my shoulder and cries, and I let him, until he falls asleep, his face twisting with the kind of guilt and self-hatred I only ever see when I’m alone.