AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The suit came with some kind of fancy handkerchief, so I pull it out of my pocket and hand it to her. She presses her face into the fabric, leaving smudges of mascara. “Baby, you look so handsome. You really are grown up, aren’t you?” She sniffles. “Do you have a date?”
I seize on the excuse. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“If Kathy Renfroe asks you to stay after to help clean the gymnasium, tell her to stuff it. Even the student body president should get to enjoy his own prom.”
I stare at her for a moment, then pull her into my arms. I want my mom to tell me things are going to be ok. “I feel ridiculous.”
She laughs, leaning back and taking my face in her hands, stroking her thumbs along my cheeks like she used to do. “Don’t put your hands in your pockets and don’t slouch. Stand tall and look people in the eye when you talk to them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And as I kneel in front of her, she straightens my lapels and starts knotting my bow tie. She can’t have done that since my dad left when I was two, but her fingers don’t hesitate for a minute. I make eye contact with Ana, who smiles sadly. It’s one thing to remember and another thing to get lost in the past, but sometimes they bring you to the same place.
I see headlights through the curtains and scramble to my feet. “I love you, Mom.”
She squeezes my fingers. “I know you do.” And that’s something I don’t let her forget.
Victor
Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Gray never even asked me if I would go to the tailor. He just stood me in my front hall and did the measurements himself with a fabric tape measure and a pen in his mouth. He didn’t say a word as he examined the results, but his mouth was a flat line. As he carried my suit out the door, he paused. “Did you do coke again?”
“No.”
He hesitated. He fucking hesitated. That sanctimonious asshole Ethan ratted me out, tried to turn him against me, and it fuckingworked. I wasn’t even lying; they snorted it all before I could get there.
I slammed the door in Gray’s face.
When I got moved to the hotel penthouse last night to prepare for the event, Gray didn’t check on me. And he sent one of Dad’s grunts to return the outfit instead of doing it himself.
Now that I’m looking at myself in this suit, I want to call him back up here and tell him to burn it, to burn me, to burn the whole city, whatever he has to do to make this stop. It fits perfectly, and no matter how I stand in the mirror, I look weak. Small. Every day of the last six years written on my body foreveryoneto read. I imagine the Facebook comments, the tweets that are going to come from this:
God, he’s barely recognizable.
He couldn’t swim 50m if there was a mountain of coke at the end.
I take my jacket off and throw it at the mirror.
No wonder he needed steroids.
Get the man a fucking cheeseburger.
I’m going to be stared at, picked apart by strangers and, worst of all, by the people I used to know, and there are no doors I can close to stop it. I lie on my back, my arms thrown over my face, and listen to the strange, scraping sound of my breath. “You did this to me,” I moan, squeezing my fists until my bones creak. I whimper it into the crook of my elbow. “You did this to me.”
You were right, Gray. I can’t do this. Please let me go home.
But he’s not here.
Ethan
An anonymous black car with an anonymous driver delivers me to an anonymous security guard at the back door of a luxury hotel in downtown Seattle, like I’m a package of drugs in a crime thriller. I’m sure Victor would prefer me that way.
After examining my ID and making a phone call, the guard ushers me into a private elevator, swiping his card across a chip reader instead of selecting a floor. I assumed he was going to show me where to go and what to do, but he steps out as the doors close, leaving me to grip the hand rail and contemplate the depth of my mistakes. I stare at my barely-recognizable reflection in the sheet metal walls and try to imagine my face next to Victor’s on the front page of some celebrity news site.There’s one for your scrapbook, Danny.
The doors open on a soaring penthouse suite stained neon orange by the sunset outside a two-story wall of glass. Between the needle points of the skyscrapers, a burning sky sears its image into the waters of the Puget Sound, dotted by cranes and cargo ships. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
It also looks like a frat house exploded in here. I kick aside a discarded pair of jeans, staring at the empty alcohol bottles and bags of chips, the underwear and wadded up towels and empty suitcases. There’s a wet swimsuit hanging off the grand piano, dripping on the floor. “Hello?”
