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He turned it on. The game started right away as he sat on the floor, stretching out his legs and patting the space between them. She sat down between his legs, and he held the controller in front of her to explain the buttons. She watched as he navigated the first board.
“Mario’s a rite of passage. You’re nobody until you’ve conquered it.” His tone was serious, yet youthful and innocent. It made her smile. “Here, finish this part.”
She took the controller. “But what if I kill him? He can die, right?”
“He comes back to life. It’s not like we’ll have to plan a funeral.”
It took her three tries to get the coordination to jump him over things. Carmine grabbed their drinks and sat back down, pulling her body against his chest.
The next few hours passed as they fell into a cycle. She’d kill the character, and Carmine would complete a level so she could try the next one. Haven could feel the alcohol in her system, her limbs tingly and head foggy. She found it nice, the two of them doing something so childish and carefree. He was giving her parts of a life she’d missed out on.
She was playing a board with a bunch of turtles when Carmine nuzzled into her neck. Distracted, she ran the character right off a ledge and tossed the controller down in frustration.
“Does my drinking bother you?” Carmine asked, taking a swig from the bottle of vodka.
“You don’t drink enough for it to,” she said. “You aren’t a mean drunk like Master Michael.”
“I’d like to kill that guy,” Carmine said. “You don’t know how bad I want him to suffer.”
She shook her head. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not? You can’t seriously care about him.”
“No, but I do care about you. I don’t want you to hurt people. I don’t want you to be a killer.”
Carmine pulled her back to him tighter, kissing the top of her head. “You know, I never knew what I wanted out of life. Going to Chicago always made the most sense, but now that I have you in my life, I’m starting to see it differently. What you want matters, so if you don’t want me to do that shit, then I have to really think about it. It’ll be your life, too, and you mean a lot more to me than any of them.”
She smiled as his words washed through her.
Carmine took the game apart and put it back into the box.
“I wondered what was in those,” she said. “I worried it was just more porn.”
He laughed. “It’s where I keep the old me.”
She sat down on his bed with her drink as he pulled out a small box, digging through it briefly before pulling out a black picture frame. She took it from him carefully, her gaze resting upon a photo of a woman with bright red hair and eyes the same color as Carmine’s.
Haven couldn’t breathe. It was the face she had seen repeatedly in her dreams, the angel in white that glowed in the sunlight. Emotion ripped through her, her voice a broken whisper. “She’s an angel.”
Carmine took the frame from her, but instead of placing it back into the box, he set it on his desk. “She is,” he said quietly. “Now, anyway.”
* * *
Dreams filtered into Haven’s sleep that night. It was a dark, cloudless night, the glow of the moon illuminating the scene in her mind. She was back in Blackburn again, a fresh-faced little girl with nappy hair, trying to squeeze by to see out of the stables. “What’s going on, Mama?”
“Nothing that concerns you, baby girl,” her mama said quietly as she tried to shoo Haven away. “Go lie down.”
“But I’m not tired,” Haven argued. “Please, Mama? I want to see.”
“Nothing’s happening,” she said. “It’s all over.”
Haven gave up on trying to go around, instead getting on the ground and scurrying between her legs. She could faintly make out the outline of a car with the trunk open. On the ground beside it, motionless, lay a person. “It’s Miss Martha!”
“Hush,” her mama said. “You don’t want them to hear.”
“Sorry, Mama.” Haven tried to whisper, but she couldn’t help herself. She watched as Miss Martha was placed into the trunk, her eyes closed like she was sleeping. “Where’s Miss Martha going?”
“Away from here,” her mama answered.
