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Ian turned on the truck and pulled into traffic, but his silence only lasted until the first red light. “If you won’t talk, I’m more than happy to. I’m so sorry, Alek—about the piano, for going behind your back, but I’m not sorry for getting you the help you need. Something is wrong. I’m afraid to leave you alone. I’m afraid to sleep.”
If Alek was talking to Ian he would have suggested that maybe Ian was the one who needed a psychiatrist.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. Please. Say something. Even if it’s that you hate me. Say something.”
But what could Alek say? Ian had lied to him, again. There was no one he could trust, except for himself, although even that wasn’t necessarily true because according to the doctor, his brain was completely unreliable. He had to choose between two shit choices: quitting the piano and thus breaking his uncle’s promise, losing all of the progress he’d made, or risk losing the use ofbothof his hands.
How was he going to jerk off? He couldn’t rely on Ian to lend him a hand.
By the time Ian parked the truck in front of the Victorian he was practically begging.
“Please, Alek. Please. I love you. Please.”
Alek was unmoved.
Ian reeled back and hit the steering wheel. The horn bleated. Alek jumped. A murder of crows started from the trees. The silent treatment was turning out to be anything but.
Alek unbuckled his seatbelt and gripped the door handle. “If it means you’ll shut the fuck up, fine. I’ll talk. You lied. Again. I don’t know what I want to do about that yet, but I do know one thing: the game is off. You don’t get to ask me questions anymore. You don’t get my trust.”
“Alek, please. I’m sor?—”
Alek opened his door and slammed it shut on Ian’s apology, then had to wait at the front door for Ian to unlock it, which ruined the smooth getaway he had been trying to make. While Ian trailed behind him like a ghost, Alek went to his old room.
He closed the door, snicking the lock shut before Ian could follow. Perhaps slamming the door in Ian’s face could be his new hobby. He searched the top drawer of his dresser until he foundthe bottle of oxycodone that Ian had insisted he pick up from the pharmacy just in case. He tipped the bottle, tapped a single pill into his palm, and tossed it into his mouth, washing it all down with a glug of vodka from the bottle pre-fall Alek had left on his dresser. Maybe if he got some sleep, as Dr. Modorovic suggested, he’d wake up as the same Alek’d been before the fall.
“Alek,” came Ian’s muffled voice through the door. “Are you okay?”
“Things are going just swimmingly here. I’ll be sure to tell you if that changes and I feel like ending it all.”
Alek crawled underneath his bed frame and lifted the loose floorboard hiding place he’d made for himself. He retrieved the velvet sack that contained his uncle’s piano key and then crawled back out from under the bed. Clutching the key to his chest, he got into bed, and stared at the ceiling until the beginning tingles of narcotic-induced bliss sparked up and down his nerve endings, and he finally fell asleep.
His dreams were the same as they always were, but when he looked down at his arms as he forced his uncle under the water, the lifeless body that floated to the surface wasn't his uncle’s. It was Ian that he drowned.
30
IAN
There was a nailhead poking out of the baseboard across the hall from Alek’s room. Ian would have to fix that. He was sitting with his back against Alek’s locked door, had been for an hour now. Alek was asleep. Hopefully. If Ian pressed his ear against the door, he thought he heard snoring.
He’d talked himself out of taking the door off the hinges twice already. What if Alek had slashed his wrists and his blood was coagulating in a puddle on the floor?
Would Alek really leave him? By suicide or less fatal means?
If Alek broke up with him, if he disappeared, the way he was right now… Ian couldn’t let that happen. He rubbed his hands over his face. The stress was getting to him. Since Alek fell, nearly every minute felt like the moment before a jump scare in a horror movie.
Sitting outside Alek’s door wasn’t going to fix anything. He rose to his feet and crept quietly down the hall. In the kitchen, he ripped the calendar off the fridge and sat at the dining table. He called the psychiatrist first.
“I was about to call you,” the receptionist said. “Dr. Dhawanhas been updated by Dr.Mordor—Sorry.Modorovitch. We were able to save a virtual appointment for him at 8 AM tomorrow morning.”
“He’ll be there.”
The hand surgeon was not as accommodating. The earliest appointment was six weeks out. He shot a text to Dr. Modorovic. Maybe she could pull some strings.
If he dropped off the prescription now, Alek could try the sleeping pill tonight. He had left Alek before for groceries or work, but the more Alek’s mental state deteriorated, the more he worried what he’d come back to.
Shoving his anxiety aside, Ian wrote a note and left it in front of Alek’s door.
On his way out, he swiped the truck keys and Alek’s own car keys off the hook by the door. Alek could escape on foot. He could hurt himself in any number of ways. But Ian did what he could.
