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She leaned in, kissed her cheek, and then walked off.
Orion spent too long contemplating the words, the strides Shelby seemed to have taken while Orion was hiding in her apartment, fantasizing about murder, and Jaclyn was injecting poison into her veins, numbing the horrific pain.
By the time she turned around, the cemetery was empty except for her and Maddox. It seemed like the entire world was empty.
She glanced around. That bitch, Shelby, had fucking ditched her.
For the thousandth time that week, Orion wished she could drive. It turned out she would have to learn, take a test like everyone else. She was not ready at all to start learning, to be in a car with a stranger.
She hated the lack of independence that came from that. The reliance on people. April had told her all about Uber, downloaded it to her phone and everything. Orion thought the idea of getting into a car with a total fucking stranger was insane. Before she was taken, all people were doing was warning you against that. It seemed this world was all about advertising certain kinds of dangers but forgetting about others.
Orion sank her teeth into her lip, staring at Maddox. She had her phone in her purse, and she was trying to decide whether potentially getting murdered by a stranger on Uber was worse than being in a confined space with Maddox.
He didn’t move. She waited for him to do something. To push himself on her. To rush to save her from the mental breakdown teasing at the edges of her consciousness.
But he didn’t. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, ten feet away from her, staring. Waiting.
She sighed, cold creeping up from her toes. Walking toward him was like walking on fucking death row.
“Then why don’t you go and introduce yourself?”
Shelby’s words echoed in her mind. She had uttered them as if it were that simple. As if a fucking handshake was going to fix everything.
Of course it wouldn’t.
But it would be something to show him that Orion was not Ri. That he could not hold on to that version of her he’d kissed on the porch. Just like she couldn’t hold on to a version of her.
For now, at least, he wasn’t going anywhere. She had tried silence, hostility, and it wasn’t working. What was the worst that could happen if she took Shelby’s advice?
“Hi,” Orion said. She felt awkward. Confused. Bleeding from the inside out. Just when she thought she might get even, be able to move forward, fucking Jaclyn pushed her back. And she couldn’t be angry at her because she was dead. Being angry at a dead person wasn’t right. Also, it wasn’t productive.
“Hey,” he replied.
She waited. For the questions, the benign ones asking her if she was okay, how she was holding up. Nothing came.
She swallowed. “I’m Orion,” she said.
He blinked, his face empty of expression. She wondered if he thought she was going crazy. It didn’t matter.
“I am twenty-four years old and I don’t have a driver’s license,” she said. “I don’t own wine glasses. Twitter, Instagram, and Uber are among the many, many words I don’t understand. I can cook a lobster bisque from scratch.” She sucked in a breath. “I came out of a basement two months ago, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be normal or anything like the girl that was kissed on a back porch ten years ago.” She sucked in a harsh breath after spewing all of those words. She wished she could swallow them back down—too much of herself was out there. “I’m never going to be right. I’m never going to be normal.”
Maddox’s eyes danced with light and darkness, hope and fear. “Nice to meet you, Orion,” he said, voice slightly rough. “I’m Maddox. I like pineapple on my pizza. The only thing I can cook is ramen. I drink too much whiskey. Don’t sleep enough. I have a short temper. I’m a cop because I want to save everyone, because I want to make up for the one person I didn’t save.”
The words thrummed between them, beating like a living thing.
“Nice to meet you, Maddox,” she said, her words small.
They stared at each other for longer than was appropriate, longer than was safe.
“Guess the no license thing means you need a ride?” Maddox asked, a lightness to his voice that they both knew was a lie.
Orion wanted to collapse with relief. She didn’t need any more truths right here, in front of her best friend’s grave.
“Yeah, I’d like a ride,” she said quietly. “Thanks.”
They didn’t speak on the ride home.
Maddox put on music that was familiar to her and comforted her. Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Green Day. Orion wondered if he’d created the playlist on purpose.
He didn’t press her. Drove easily, one hand on the wheel, the other resting lazily on his thigh. She spent a lot of time pretending not to look at his hand. A strange pull kept her eyes from going there. She didn’t quite understand her fascination with that hand.
