“Dinner starts at eight. Wear the dress on your bed. Try not to be late.” Xavier peeked into my room for a minute, a day after my visit with Andrei. A day after I found out about the leaked video of Alex and me.
I pulled on the dress and the heels, taking my time straightening my hair and applying dark makeup, hoping for a funeral look instead of the forced celebration.
It was our engagementparty, and Xavier had invited all his friends, ignoring the fact that I, too, at some point had friendsand a life. He wanted to show me off. Show off that I came back to him—that hewon.
I stood in front of the mirror, refusing to let the tears fall again. This dress was almost the same as the one I wore when I met Alex—a little shimmery number with a plunging open back, accentuating my curves. Well. Accentuating what used to be curves.
I looked hot, devastated, and ready to die. I twirled around and noticed something on my skin. Hives. Red blotches decorated my entire back and neck, but I paid them no attention. This dress, like everything my body touched which belonged to Xavier, was giving me an allergic reaction.
Just to spite him, I arrived at the restaurant a whole hour late.
A Greek song played over the speakers as I walked to my seat, wishing to be six feet underground. But the song was beautiful. It was slow, the man’s voice was full of lament, and my heart clenched at the knowledge that men wrote songs about love. That there were happy couples out there, in this very restaurant, sitting with the loves of their lives.
“Mon ange! Tu es arrivée!”Xavier exclaimed, his new eyepatch not dampening his thirst for life. His eyelid needed surgery and stitches, and everything was still swollen, but he powered on, like a rodent infestation, impossible to kill and exterminate. Regrettably, even though his eye needed time to heal, he’d still be able to see out of it.
I sat down and stared straight ahead, ignoring all his friends and their wives and girlfriends, all of them here to witness the circus. So Xavier leaned in, clutching my wrist. “Sit nicely andsmile.Don’t embarrass me in front of my friends.”
As ordered, I faked a smile, and he seemed satisfied.
The evening dragged on, life bursting all around me, but I had only one thing on my mind.
Just this one last night. I could get through this. Just this one. Last. Night.
"Can I get you a drink, Miss?" the impossibly tall server spoke somewhere beside me, and for some reason, that deep voice sent a twinge of pain through me. I didn’t want a drink; I wanted to die, so I ignored him, just like everything else around me.
But he leaned down toward me, and then…well, then it was impossible to mistake that scent. Cigarettes, woodsy cologne, and darkness.
“What are you drinking tonight,Preziosa?”
44
Never Follow The Dead
Alex
“Alex! Alex! Oh my God! Alex!” A woman called out my name somewhere, her voice muffled, but familiar.
“Poshli, Sasha. Poidem so mnoi.”My father stood in the doorway of a dirty motel room, stretching out his hand to me. He asked me to come with him, but he was dead. I could see him, but also not.
“Alex!” the woman exclaimed again. “Alex, I’m so sorry! I’m sorry! What did he do to you…”
There was a familiar sweet smell, and an image appeared in my eyes. A woman. Tall, in a short dress, and with long, raven-black hair. But then she turned, and her face was just darkness. A dark cloud.
“Yes! Hi! I-I need an ambulance! Someone’s been badly beaten, I don’t know if he’s alive! Yes—”
“Poshli, Sasha!”My father’s voice boomed, and he was suddenlyinsidemy chest, taking my hand.
But then another voice cut through.
Ya vernus.
I love you.
I missed you.
I hate Preziosa. Think of something better.
Promise?
