11. Jinx
Jinx
The second Cyrus's shower cuts off, I'm on him.
"We need to talk."
Cyrus yanks the bathroom door open with a towel slung low on his hips and water still dripping down that stupidly cut chest of his. He startles hard enough that his hand twitches toward a weapon he isn't wearing because he's naked.
Unless he counts his dick as a weapon, which is fair. It has left me in a bad state on more than one occasion, and if it were any other occasion, I'd definitely make a lascivious comment.
But today, I'm laser focused. Mostly.
"Jesus, Jinx." He drags a hand down his face, pushing water off. "What the fuck is wrong with you? How many times have I told you that you can't just jump out at people like a fucking serial killer?"
"Says the actual serial killer."
"I'm not a—" He stops, because that's a losing argument and we both know it. He shoves past me into the hall, dripping everywhere, and I trail after him. "What do you want? I just got in five minutes ago. I haven't even—"
"It's time for an intervention."
That stops him. He turns around, one hand still keeping the towel from a wardrobe malfunction I definitely wouldn't complain about. His glasses are still fogged from the steam because he's too fucking blind to get out the door without them.
"An intervention," he echoes.
"Ellie. Now. We've got a few hours, maybe, while she's at the 'office' with Kade. So we need to figure out what the fuck we're doing." I'm talking too fast because I'm freaking out and realize I sort of buried the lead here. "It was my day to shadow her at school."
"And?" he asks impatiently.
"And I watched her buy pills off a fucking dealer, Cy."
Cyrus's expression wipes itself clean. Water drips off the ends of his hair onto the hardwood in his silence.
"What do you mean, a dealer?" His voice has dropped low into that register that means trouble. "Ellie's not… she's not the type to have a fucking dealer, Jinx."
"Apparently she is."
"You must have misunderstood. She's got a prescription, and she took the others from Marney, she's not—"
"Not this time." I push off the wall. "This wasn't a bathroom stash or her mom's cabinet. This was a guy. Some scummy college townie in a beanie handing her a baggie behind the coffee place."
I see the wheels turning behind the fog. "You're sure?"
"I've been doing this as long as you have, Cy. I'm fucking sure."
He exhales through his nose and turns away. He walks into his room and I follow because boundaries have never been a strong suit of mine. He yanks open a drawer and steps into sweats one-handed with enviable coordination.
"We can't let her take those," he says firmly.
"No shit. That's why I ambushed you at the shower like a lunatic instead of, I don't know, waiting for you to be dressed and emotionally regulated.
" I sit down hard on the edge of his bed.
"She won't be able to do shit under Kade's nose, so we've got until she gets back.
But if we tell Kade, Tank is going to peel our skin off. He was very clear about that."
"I'm aware."
"He drew a picture. It was crude but it got the message across."
"I know, Jinx." Cyrus pulls a shirt over his head and when it comes free his glasses are crooked. He fixes them quickly, because Cyrus can't not fix crooked things. "Okay, first we need to search her shit. Thoroughly this time, now that she's gone."
He's already moving, so I catch up with him in her doorway.
This room always makes me feel weird. It's a shrine to the version of her that used to exist, and now the real her lives in it. The two versions keep blurring until I don't know which one I'm angry at anymore.
But the truth is… neither. I've never been able to stay angry at Ellie. That's half the problem.
"This feels gross," I say, watching Cyrus opening drawers like he's a crime scene investigator. "Going through her stuff."
"You've been sneaking into her dorm room and stealing her shit for years," he reminds me.
"That felt gross too. I just do it anyway."
He ignores me, looking through her closet, rifling through clothes. He pulls out a winter coat I wouldn't have thought twice about. I would have given up when the pockets were empty, but he pulls something out of the lining.
A bottle.
He shakes it and it rattles, full of pills.
"Our girl's sneaky," I mumble, peeling back the blankets to check for more. She obsessively makes this bed every morning. Wouldn't be surprised if she stashed something here. I lift the mattress and the box springs, but there's nothing.
Cyrus keeps looking and I can tell from the sound he makes he found something. When I look up, he's holding three small bottles of vodka between his fingers.
"So she's an alcoholic and a pill popper," I sigh. "Our little Ellie's all grown up and auditioning for the Real Housewives of the Trailer Park."
"Drinking on this shit can kill someone easily, by the way," Cyrus mutters and keeps going. We both do.
There's a shoe box under the bed, and I'm the one who finds it because I remember how to think like her. You'd think I'd be better at it, all things considered.
I slide the lid off and my stomach drops into the basement.
"Cy?"
He looks over and comes to crouch beside me.
It's not just Xanax. There are three different bottles, two with her name and one with Marney's, and behind them, tucked in the corner, more tiny liquor bottles. The pill bottles are empty, but that's hardly a comfort.
We look at each other for about a minute, because neither of us knows how to fucking process this. There's the world we thought we knew and the world where Princess Ellie stashes benzos and meets creepy guys in off-campus alleys for drugs, and those worlds do not reconcile.
"This is worse than I thought," he says quietly. "Ellie isn't managing her anxiety, she's fucking drowning. Slowly."
I look at the box. Everything in it is arranged. Even now, even sick, even sinking, she's got the bottles lined up by size and the little liquor soldiers standing at attention.
For years, Ellie Riggs knew me better than anyone, and I thought I knew her. I thought I knew where her pain ended and began, and the names of the demons that kept her up at night, but none of them were this ugly.
I'm not making that mistake twice.
"So what do we do?" I set the lid back on the box because I can't look at it anymore.
Cyrus is quiet, thinking. "We confront her," he finally says. "Ourselves, just the two of us, before we bring anyone else into it. That includes Kade and Tank. I don't trust either of them to be logical where she's concerned."
"You trust us?" I challenge.
He grunts. "What other choice do we have?"
"She'll bolt. She's a runner, Cy. At least she trusts Tank, more than she trusts the rest of us right now.
" It hurts to admit, but it's true, and I can't blame her.
He never wanted any of this. Neither did I, but I went along with it.
Selfishly, I thought having her like this was better than not having her at all.
"Fine," he mutters. "But if he turns into her own personal Hulk and bashes our heads in, I'm blaming you."
"He won't," I promise. "He loves her. He'll see this as the threat to her it is, and she'll listen to him."
"And if she doesn't?" he challenges.
That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?