“You don’t have to be sorry,” he replies with his fingertips still pressed to my jawline. “I just wanted to answer your question from earlier, when you asked if I’d ever lost anyone close to me.”

My heart is throbbing in my chest as I wonder if maybe one of the names tattooed on him belongs to her. “What was her name?”

“Anna,” he breathes so softly I can barely hear it. His fingers push harder against my skin.

But it’s enough to know that it’s not either of the names on his arm.

I let a breath ease from my lips. “Did your dad raise you, then?”

“Yes,” he answers in a tight tone, pulling his hand away from my face. “But honestly, I pretty much raised myself.”

I want to say something comforting, but I can’t think of anything, so I say the first random thing that pops into my head. “If you could have one wish, what would it be?”

He pauses and when he speaks again, his voice sounds lighter. “Is that one of your twenty questions?”

“It is.” I turn to my side and our fingers untangle from each other. “And you’re already down to eighteen.”

He captures my cheeks between his hands, bringing me back to him, and even though I’m drunk, I can feel the intimacy in the touch. “I can’t tell you the one wish I would make right now, but I can tell you the one thing I want to do right at this moment.” He sketches his finger down to my lips and brushes his thumb back and forth across the bottom one. “I’d… I’d like to hold you.”

I don’t know him well enough to know if he’s feeding me a line, but the conflict in his voice, like he’s afraid to say it, makes me believe that he’s not. I inch my body forward so we’re flawlessly aligned from head to toe, and then he brings his fingers away from my face, creating a path down my side. When he reaches my hip, he slips his finger underneath the bottom of my shirt, tenderly skimming my skin and eliciting heat between my thighs, and my body uncontrollably curls into him. But he only does it for a second, then he digs his fingers into my outer thigh and pulls on my leg, hitching it over his hip. Every single aspect of our bodies link perfectly together, and it feels amazing in the sense that it actually is him and me lying here together. There’s no ghost memories, no need to figure out why Landon did it and who I am without him. There’s nothing but silence.

“If you could have one superpower, what would it be?” I pick up right where we left off, because I want to continue with this seamless moment of simplicity.

He smoothes his hand down the back of my head. “The power to forget. What about you?”

“The power to understand,” I say, nuzzling my head against his chest as I yawn. “Or the power to save.”

He keeps smoothing my hair down as he rests his chin on my head. I expect him to question me about my answer, but he doesn’t, and I don’t question him about his.

“What’s one thing you’re afraid of?” he asks.

“Unknown places,” I say without a second thought.

“I’m unknown,” he points out. “Does that mean I freak you out?”

I shake my head. “I already told you that you remind me of someone I used to know.”

“So that makes me familiar?”

“Kind of… I guess… God, you probably think I’m crazy.”

“I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve met in a long, long time.” He fingers envelop around the back of my head, he slides his chin off the top of my head, and tips his chin down while I angle mine up. We meet in the middle, looking at each other at the precise moment my heart skips a beat.

“What if I kissed you right now?” he asks, his lips mere inches away from mine and his warm breath lightly tickling my skin. “Would that be familiar?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. “It wasn’t at first, but now…”

He lightly grazes his lips across mine, gentle and barely existent. “Now what?”

My thoughts are muddled, and it’s hard for me to picture anything but Quinton. I grip the front of his shirt and crash my lips against his. It’s the fourth time we’ve kissed, and each time it gets easier. I’m still not sure who I’m thinking of when I kiss him. All I know is that at the moment my head is clear and at peace. And maybe that’s my answer. Or maybe that’s what I tell myself to make it easier to kiss him.

Chapter 15

July 29, Day 71 of Summer Break

Quinton

I wake up the next morning feeling a lot more weighted then I did the night before. My first instinct is to slap Tristan awake and ask him where he put the stash. But then I look down at Nova in my arms, and I become conflicted, and I have no idea why. The bad in me wants to bump a hit and disappear, but the good wants to lie here, hold her, and make her happy. It’s strange, because two months ago I had nothing and now suddenly I have something, but I don’t know if I want it. I know I don’t deserve it, but still, want and deserve are two different things.

I lay in the tent for a while, arguing with myself inside my head, and finally Tristan sits up. He starts rummaging around through his bag, humming to himself, then he notices I’m awake and he frowns.

“Have fun last night?” he asks, giving an accusing glance at Nova cuddled up against my side.

“It’s not what you think,” I say, my arm muscles tightening as I decide if I should pull away.

He opens the small plastic bag and starts packing the pipe. “What am I thinking?”

I glance at Nova. She seems content, motionless, her breathing soft, and I hope she’s asleep. “You think I slept with her.”

He laughs acerbically as he closes up the plastic bag and nods his head at Nova, who is sleeping soundly with her head resting on my chest. “Well, you did.”

“Yeah, but we just slept. We didn’t…” I lower my voice. “We didn’t have sex.”

“But you kissed her?” he asks, and when I don’t answer he adds, “You knew I liked her.”

“I know,” I say, letting out a loud exhale and say the only thing I can think of. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I really screwed up… I always do…”

Shaking his head, he puts the mouth of the pipe up to lips and positions the lighter over the bowl. “Sorry doesn’t take back the fact that you kissed her.” He flicks the lighter several times before he gets a constant flame to burn. “I mean, do you even like her, or is this just another one of your Nikki things?”

“It’s not like Nikki,” I tell him defensively, as smoke fills up the tent and my mouth begins to salivate.

He sucks in a deep breath, traps it in his lungs until his eyes start to water, and then releases it. “Then what’s it like?” he says, coughing, smoke puffing from his lips.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say, my eyes fixed on the pipe, because every single part of me craves it so fucking bad. I know as soon as I take the first hit, most of my problems will be forgotten for the moment and my life will go back to how it was, where I’m contently high and my emotions are shut off. But do I want to go back to that? “I’m still figuring it out.”

He assesses me as smoke fills the tent. “What if I said to back off? Would you?”

I feel light-headed from the smoke and the heat circulating in the tent. “Yes, but only because I owe you.” It hurts to say it, but it’s the truth. “Just say it—say you want me to back off—and I will.” It feels like an invisible piece of sharp metal reslices the scar on my chest open because I know I’ll do it, back off if he asks me, but it won’t erase the feelings I’m developing for Nova, feelings I thought died over a year ago.

He keeps his eyes on me with the pipe and lighter in his hands. He glances at Nova, then back at me, and grabs a clean shirt out of his bag. When I first moved into the house, he talked about her a lot. I didn’t get it, because he barely knew her, yet he seemed obsessed with her. But I’m realizing how easy it is to get caught up in her and her sadness and the way she gets nervous and embarrassed and how she seems to see the world in a different light. God, how did I let myself get to this place?

“I’ll back off.” He tugs the shirt on, scoots toward the door, and climbs out, taking his pipe with him and letting fresh air inside. Then he leans back in. “I just hope you know what you’re doing, because from what I’ve seen you like to mess around, and she doesn’t seem like that.”

He’s striking a nerve. I remember the first time I slept with someone after Lexi was gone. I was high and there was this girl, and even now I can’t remember her name. She acted like she was into me, and my head was too obscured by alcohol and weed to do anything else but act upon it. After it was over, I felt numb, and feeling numb felt better than feeling the agony, loneliness, and guilt. So I kept screwing around and doing drugs, and after a while it became a part of life for me—a habit.

“Are you sure?” I say and it feels like my scar splits open even more.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replies and I feel both relieved and terrified, because he’s no longer an obstacle, which means I can actually be with Nova. Shit. Guilt, shame, and longing choke me. “I have sort of a thing going on with one of the girls from last night, anyway.”

“You’re going to take your pipe out there?” I ask, as he begins to zip the tent back up.

“Yeah… I got some stuff to take care of,” he says, and then he gets the door zipped up entirely, leaving me in the tent with the lingering scent of my weakness. A few moments later, I climb out of the sleeping bag, leaving Nova alone, while I go chase down my addiction.

After I find Tristan and get my much-needed hits, I don’t go straight back to the tent. I’m not feeling better for some reason, and it’s making me panic inside. Weed usually calms me—clears out the dark thoughts in my head—but now I feel guilty for smoking it, yet I feel guilty when I don’t, and the amount of guilt colliding inside me brings me to the ground.

Luckily I’ve made it out to the car by the time my knees give out. I draw my knees up toward my chest and rest my arms on top of them, lowering my head. I keep taking deep breaths, telling myself to calm down and breathe, but the fucking problem is I really don’t want to want to breathe at the moment. I want my lungs to stop working, along with my heart, and my thoughts, and my guilt, because I can’t fucking take it anymore. I want to end my life and leave everything behind, but for some damn reason my body won’t respond to what my head wants, like it’s waiting around for me to change my mind.

Tears start to fall from my eyes and I keep my forehead pressed to my knees, begging for everything to go away. Begging for silence. And all I can do is go back and smoke some more weed and hope it gives silence to me.

Nova

I open my eyes to the sunlight blinding me and my cheek resting against someone’s firm chest. At first I start to freak out as I search for the sun, bursting with the need to count the seconds it takes to move over the horizon. But I quickly realize that I’m in a tent, and I can’t see the sun rising because it’s already way too hot and bright for it to barely be waking up. It’s already radiating into the tent and heating up the air in here, and there are a bunch of voices and noises outside that I don’t recognize.