Chapter 10 Mariella
“You look cute,” gushes Anna two weeks later, surveying my high-waisted jeans and beige coat. “Is that mine?”
“Everything I wear is yours,” I say, passing her laptop over the bar at Tilly’s.
“Thanks, I want to study during my dinner break.” She tucks the computer away and mindlessly wipes the bar with a cloth. “Hey, are you okay? You were calling out in your sleep again last night.”
I fiddle with the large buttons on my coat. “Yeah. Sorry.” I force a laugh. “I’ve always been a vivid dreamer.”
I rub my eyes. Every night since stopping my medication, I’ve dreamed of my mother on my eighth birthday, and of me kissing Parker.
I rouse multiple times a night. Heart racing.
Body humming. Volatile electricity emanating shockwaves toward my periphery.
Each morning I promise myself I’ll make another appointment with my psychiatrist, Dr Williams, to get more medication.
But as the sun sets, I long for those minutes wrapped in my mother’s arms while she’s alive and lucid and healthy.
She’ll tell me how much she loves me, and I’m not ready to let go. I can’t.
I need to understand what happened to her, and I know in my gut I won’t uncover answers while I’m sedated by my medication.
Anna places a cocktail on the bar between us and I peer toward the bouncer at the door. He only let me inside because Anna slept with him last semester.
“Are we allowed to drink in here?” I ask.
“Course not,” she says, lifting it to her lips and taking a healthy swig.
She forces it into my hand and I take a sip. Sweetness and citrus and alcohol saturate my taste buds.
“Any word from the hospital yet?” Anna asks, stealing another sip.
“Not yet.” I’d filled out the forms and returned them the day we visited the hospital.
“They said it might take a while, though.” I slump down onto the bar.
“I did hear back from the engineer. Can you believe I paid him six hundred dollars to tell me the bedrooms in my house are not structurally sound and I should not, under any circumstances, enter it?”
“I’m so sorry,” Anna says and I feign a smile.
“Thanks.” With property taxes and utility bills I could barely afford my house before the fire. There’s no way I can pay to fix it. What am I going to do?
“Ella,” Anna whispers, tipping her head toward the door, where Parker and Rose have entered. I sit up and take another sip of my cocktail.
“I still can’t get a grasp on their relationship,” Anna says, watching them find a table. “Maybe they’re hate fucking?”
I choke on my drink. My eyes track Parker as he takes a seat at an empty table in the corner while Rose orders drinks from Christiaan.
“She looks sick,” Anna says, once Rose rejoins Parker.
The rings under Rose’s eyes grow darker by the day, and her black jeans are hanging off her.
She sits beside Parker, their heads lowered in a seemingly intense conversation, despite the loud, squealing cheerleaders wedged around the table next to them.
“She looks worse every time I see her,” I say in a low voice.
Anna’s eyes flicker toward them. “I think they’re arguing,” she says.
I subtly glance toward their corner of the bar. Rose throws back her drink and storms toward the bathrooms, leaving Parker frowning at the amber liquid inside his tumbler.
“I’m going to go,” I say, sliding off my stool.
“Okay. Thanks again for bringing my laptop. See you at home later?”
I nod and beeline for the exit, but as I pass the women’s bathroom, a strangled cry has the hairs on my arms rising. I immediately turn and follow the noise inside.
Rose is muttering to herself, leaning over the sink as she splashes water onto her face. Her black hoodie lies discarded on the bathroom floor, and her elbows jut out beside her body, nothing more than skin and bones.
“Hey, are you okay?” I ask.
Her head snaps up, wild eyes searching beyond her own reflection. “Is that really you?” she whispers.
“What?”
Rose whips around, the tense lines around her face easing. “I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t keep doing this without you.”
“Rose, it’s Ella. I live in the apartment opposite yours.” I edge toward her.
She’s staring directly at me, but her gaze is unfocused, her face bathed in a sickly green hue from the restroom lighting. Tears well in her large eyes. “Fuck, I’ve missed you,” she says, flinging her arms around me, and I’m inundated with notes of sweet green apple, jasmine and musk.
I stiffen and gingerly pat her back.
“Rose? Is everything okay?” Parker’s voice rings out from the other side of the door, startling Rose. She pulls away from me, shaking her head. “Rose, please come out,” Parker calls again.
She wraps her hand around the door handle, her onyx eyes glistening. “I’ll kill him for what he did to you,” she whispers over her shoulder, then she flings open the door.
I grab her hoodie and chase her into the bar where Parker is waiting.
Rose crashes into his chest, muttering under her breath. He wraps his arms around her, and I notice a few small, rounded Band-Aids spotting his forearms. He turns to me and my heart stutters, but his gaze is focused on the patrons behind me. “What did she say to you?”
“She—Nothing. She was confused.” Why is he more concerned with a restroom conversation than the state of his—friend? Girlfriend? “It’s okay,” I mouth to Anna, who’s watching us from behind the bar.
Parker picks Rose up, the muscles in his arms shifting to easily accommodate her weight. In his arms, her tall frame folds into something tiny and fragile, like a bird fallen from a nest. “I’ll take you home, Rose,” he says, stepping past me.
I chase him to the door. “She needs help, Parker.”
“If you want to help her, then help me get her back to our apartment.” He shifts on his feet beside the door, his rigid arms encasing Rose. “Can you get the door?”
I hesitate. “She needs to see—”
“Trust me, she’ll be fine after she rests,” he says, and I tense.
He’s talking as if I’m overreacting. As if Rose’s turn isn’t concerning. As if—
“Has this happened to her before?” I ask.
He slowly turns toward me, almost unwillingly. His golden gaze settles on mine and the air vanishes from my lungs. “Ella, please help me?”
I want to refuse, but my skin’s crawling at the number of people staring at us. “Fine.” I open the door for him. “I’ll help you, but tomorrow you need to take her to a doctor.”
We step out into the brisk, clear night, the drunken chanting and conversations fading with each step from the door. I wrap my coat around my chest, and jog to keep up with Parker’s long strides.
Rose is mostly silent in his arms, but with each sharp inhale or incoherent mumble, his head drops to her face.
How did I get myself into this situation? I should excuse myself and go back to the bar, but Parker asked me for help and there’s no way he’ll be able to get the apartment door open while holding Rose. Plus he’ll need someone to enter the code to get inside the building.
I sneak a glance at him. His mouth is tense, eyes focused on something in the distance.
“How long have you known Rose?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“About three years,” he says in a rough voice.
We cross the road and walk between two buildings. Campus is littered with Halloween decorations. Carved pumpkins with evil faces track our steps as we pass. “She’s lucky to have you. To take care of her like this.”
“Yeah, well, it’s easy when she’s this docile. Normally she’s a colossal pain in my ass,” he says, his tone lifting despite his harsh words.
“Does this happen to her often?”
“Sometimes.” His brows draw in and he scans Rose’s face. “Trust me, she’ll be back to her old, charming self soon enough.” His eyes flicker to me, as if he can’t quite look away.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m sorry for ruining your night.”
“You didn’t. I was about to leave anyway.”
“Didn’t want to stay and party with the cheerleaders?” The corners of his mouth twitch.
I cringe. “The whole party cheerleader thing isn’t really my scene. You?”
“No, the skirts never fit right.”
My laugh breaks the quiet night air and I brush my fingertips over my lips. “You know, I still don’t know anything about you.”
I catch his smirk—a cat playing with its meal. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Where are you from?”
“Such a generic question,” he says. “I’m disappointed. Come on, Ella, ask me something unique.”
“Fine.” I purse my lips, studying the shadowed columns stretching across the sidewalk, broken by rings of amber streetlight. “What makes you happy?”
He stares at me for a moment, and the smile on his face dissipates. His gaze drifts somewhere over the buildings in the distance. “The ocean. Anything in water, really,” he says eventually. “Swimming, sailing, surfing. There’s something about it that makes me feel… free.”
“That’s how I feel when I’m reading. I love the escape. Being able to jump out of my head and into someone else’s. Or drawing by the river. It’s peaceful. It’s like, I can shut everything else out and just focus on one minute detail at a time.”
He nods in agreement. “What do you like to draw?”
Silas’s dark brows flash through my mind, the tortured intensity in his blue irises. “People. Their features. If I don’t understand something about a person, I’ll try and capture it.” I laugh. “But if I can’t perfect it, I get really frustrated.”
“Is that your favorite place? The river?”
I nod. “Beneath the flame trees. You?”
“There’s this place I—”
Rose mumbles something and Parker winces, our brief reprieve broken. We continue the rest of the walk in silence, only stopping beneath the spiderweb-draped archway of Bromley House while I select the entry code.
“There’s a key in her back pocket,” Parker says once we’re standing in the corridor between our apartments. He shifts Rose’s weight. “Can you grab it?”
I pull the key from her black jeans and spend five minutes trying to unlock the door.
Finally, it opens and I step aside for Parker to enter.
Their apartment’s smaller than Anna’s, and it lacks warmth—empty of personal objects, no books filling the barren shelves or photos on the walls.
There’s an empty space where a lounge should sit, and aside from some papers stacked on the dining table, the place appears unoccupied.
I follow Parker to the sole bedroom and hover in the doorway. Two single beds are positioned on opposite sides of the room, separated by a small desk bearing a clunky laptop. Parker eases Rose onto one of the beds as if she’s made of glass and brushes the dark brown hair from her face.
“Okay, thanks. I’ve got it from here,” he says, ushering me back into the living room. He hovers in the bedroom doorway and glances back to Rose.
My cheeks flush. I’m being dismissed, but now’s my chance to confront him, or at least try to understand my abnormal dreams and unhealthy infatuation while Rose is indisposed. I doubt I’ll get another opportunity.
I sit at the dining table and turn to catch Parker exhaling. “What kind of work are you doing with Professor McGregor?” I ask. He crosses his arms over his chest, and my eyes snag on the bulge of his biceps. “Is it for your PhD or something?”
“No. I’m not studying.” Parker moves toward the front door, but I’m not leaving without answers.
“Why were you in McGregor’s lecture the day we met?”
Parker smiles, but his gaze darts back to the open bedroom door. “I told you. Professor McGregor is helping us with something.”
“What?” I’m fiddling with a loose piece of paper on the desk when it dawns on me—Rose must be a psychology patient of McGregor’s. My stomach clenches. It’d explain why the topic makes him so uncomfortable. And here I am pressing him like an insensitive idiot.
I push my chair away from the table, disturbing the papers littering its surface. My own neat handwriting pokes out from the bottom of the pile, and I freeze. Lowering my head toward the table, I push the papers aside and frown at a photocopy of—
“My schedule?”
“I can explain that.” Parker steps toward me, his eyes wide.
Why would Rose and Parker have a photocopy of my class schedule?
He runs a hand through his short, dark blond hair, and an unnerving feeling of déjà vu courses through my body. I abruptly stand. “I’ve met you before, haven’t I? I mean, before McGregor’s lecture.”
“No, you haven’t,” he says, but his smile is strained.
“Why are you lying to me?” I ask.
He turns to look me square in the eye. “I would never lie to you, Ella.”
My heart kicks into a gallop. “Then tell me why you have my class schedule,” I say, searching his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?” My stomach twists and something clicks—Parker and Rose appearing everywhere I go. My paranoia. The feeling of being watched. “Have you been following me?”
Parker links his hands behind his head and tilts his face to the ceiling. “Can you please wait until Rose wakes up? Then I promise she’ll explain everything.”
“Explain it to me now.”
Parker doesn’t move any closer. “It’s difficult.”
I take a step toward him, my trembling hands tucked into my armpits, arms crossed over my chest like armor.
“It shouldn’t be. Why can’t you ever give me a straight answer?
” He looks back to the bedroom where Rose is resting, as if willing her to wake.
“Parker. Answer me.” My voice is louder now, my pulse pounding in my ears.
“Because I don’t want to mess this up.”
“What are you talking about?” At what point did I start yelling?
He turns back toward me. “This,” he says, and he gestures between us. He opens his mouth as if to elaborate further, then snaps it shut.
“Parker, talk to me,” I beg.
“I can’t.” His eyebrows furrow, and he turns away from me. “Fuck!” he shouts. “I can’t do this again.”
“Again?” I march toward him, not stopping until my face is inches from his. “I knew it. We’ve met before. That’s why you’re in my dreams.”
He sucks in a sharp breath, his body still. “You need to leave. Now.”
“Parker, please.” I edge closer still and reach for his forearm, but he jerks away, as if my touch is toxic.
A thick vein pulses over the strained muscles in his neck. “Ella, you’re acting crazy,” he says, and I flinch.
Crazy. Mad Mari. Hearing those words from his mouth cuts much deeper than I care to admit, ripping open the tender scars I’m forever trying to mend.
“Go!” he yells.
Tears welling in my eyes, I fling open the door and run from the room.