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“Magic in a bottle. ”
He set out glasses and several bottles, then he performed a ritual of sorts, with spoons and sugar cubes and water. As a sugar cube melted into the liquid, the absinthe changed color, becoming a foamy, milky green.
He handed her the glass.
She stared at him.
“Trust me. ”
She shouldn’t. Still, she brought the glass slowly to her lips, took a small sip. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “It tastes like black licorice. Sweet. ”
As she drank, the night seemed to waken. Breezes blew the hair across her eyes, waves slapped against the shore, the rusted metal of the abandoned plant creaked and moaned.
She was well into her second glass of absinthe when Paxton took hold of her hand, turned her palm up. Tracing the lines in her palm, he let his fingers move up, along the sensitive flesh of her inner arm, to the first silvery scar.
“Blood can be so beautiful, so cleansing. And the pain only lasts for a second—a beautiful second—then it’s gone. ”
Marah drew in a breath. The absinthe was relaxing her, making her light-headed, and she wasn’t quite sure what was real until she looked at Paxton and stared into his golden eyes and thought, He knows. At last, here was someone who understood her. “When did you start?”
“After my sister died. ”
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“How doesn’t matter,” he said, and it struck a chord with her, deep and clear. People always asked what had happened to her mother, as if it mattered whether she’d died of cancer or a car accident or a heart attack. “I held her as she died, that’s what matters, and I watched them put her in the ground. ”
Marah reached over and held his hand.
He looked at her in surprise, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Her last words on this earth were, ‘Don’t let go of me, Pax. ’ But I had to. ” He took a breath and let it go. Then he downed his absinthe in one drink. “It was drugs that killed her. My drugs. That’s why the court ordered therapy. It was that or jail. ”
“Your parents?”
“They divorced because of it. Neither can forgive me, and why should they?”
“Do you miss them?”
He shrugged. “What difference would it make?”
“So you didn’t used to be like…” She nodded at his look, embarrassed by her question but intrigued. It had never occurred to her that he had been different once, a normal high school kid.
“I needed a change,” he said.
“Did it help?”
“No one asks how I’m doing except Dr. Bloom, and she doesn’t really care. ”
“You’re lucky. Everyone asks me how I’m doing, but they don’t really want to know. ”
“Sometimes you just want to be left alone with it. ”
“Exactly,” she said, feeling a heady sense of connection. He knew her, saw her. He understood.
“I’ve never told anyone that before,” he said, gazing at her with a beautiful vulnerability. Was she the only one who could see how broken he was? “Are you here to piss off your dad? Because—”
“No. ” She wanted to add, I want to be someone else, too, but it sounded stupid and too young.
He touched her face, and his touch was the softest she’d ever known. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“I do now,” she said.
