by Ella James
“Milo,” he said.
“It’s me!” I pulled back, beaming up at him. I giggled like an idiot.
Gabe smiled, and it seemed kind of the same. A little dimmer, maybe. Somehow, he’d moved his arm from around me and I had grabbed his wrist. I didn’t remember doing it; I was like a jellyfish, moving with a tide I couldn’t see.
“You look…the same, kind of.”
“So do you.” He grinned, and that second, he really looked the same.
I wanted to ask how he was doing. If he’d remembered anything. I wanted to tell him about the guys that had snooped around our house. I really, really wanted to hug him one more time, and feel those worn-out jeans, that brown and green button-up pressed against me, with Gabe in them. I wanted to touch his soft copper hair. He’d had a headache last I’d seen him. Did he still?
My mouth was disconnected from my brain.
I said, “How are you here?”
“It’s this thing you might have heard of. Walking.” He raised his eyebrows. “Driving.”
“They let you drive?” I blushed at my stupidity, my crassness, but Gabe just shrugged. “Guess they think I won’t get lost again.”
“Seriously, though, what brought you here?” I couldn’t stand the suspense. Especially when he looked down at his shoes—some kind of strange loafers—and then back up and said, “What do you think?”
I had no idea. “Do you know someone in the orchestra?”
He laughed. “I do. And she plays beautifully. You didn’t tell me that.”
I blushed. “But how did you know—”
“Your calendar,” he said.
Right. I had a monthly calendar tacked to my wall. Thinking of Nick reading it, remembering it, coming here… It made me feel like melted chocolate.
I smiled shyly.
“So really,” I said, stepping closer to the wing of the stage, which was already starting to be cleared. “How’re you doing? Anything… well, anything?” I asked.
Gabe shrugged. Same ole Nick (Gabe). “Probably gonna start school soon.”
“Really. Wow.” He nodded, but not in a wow kind of way. He looked bored. Unhappy. The next question was hard for me to ask, but I forced it out. “Do you remember anything?”
His discomfort was in every little motion: his clenching shoulders, flexing hands. “Not really,” he said, looking at the floor. It was shiny, freshly waxed; I could see our reflection in it.
“Well that’s okay. I guess. Or not.”
He looked at me, and I could tell he was about to spill. He was going to open up.
And then my mom appeared.
“Milo!” she sang, clapping her hands together as she came up behind Nick, who turned around and blinked at her.
“Milo,” she repeated. “Who is this?”
“Um, this is my friend Gabe. We met at symphony camp last summer.”
He nodded gamely, and he introduced himself as Gabe DeWitt. Mom took up a few minutes of time, and then she pointed to her watch, a pocket watch put on a strap. She took a step away and said, “We need to leave in a few minutes.”
When Mom was gone, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no problem. I should maybe go.”
“You sure?” I felt like an idiot for asking. A big, fat, needy idiot.
“I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”
I forced a smile. “C’mon. We’ve seen trouble. This is just a few minutes of talking. It can’t be that bad.”
Nick smiled a little, too.
“I want to know how you are,” I said, a bit too earnestly. “How are your friends? Have you still been having headaches?”
I asked that one with meaning. I could tell Nick got it.
“Nothing,” he said. He dropped his tone a notch. “I tried it on my grandmother’s arthritis, and she’s still taking painkillers. Everything’s…normal.” And, with a weirdly proud expression: “I hear I even have a girlfriend.”
I can only assume my face betrayed me, because the next instant, Nick was laughing. “Not that I need one.”
I smiled, and it was fake as fake, and before anyone could notice anything, Nick had me behind the curtain, his big hands on my shoulders, his sweet face right there by mine.
“Milo. Thanks.”
He kissed me. And the next second, he was gone.
21
Sunday came and went, one long haze where I wore my crappy sweatpants and an old shirt of my dad’s and read part of The Catcher in the Rye and walked to Dad’s marker. By the time I got home, it was raining—just a stupid little drizzle.
I was never going to see Nick again. I just knew it. Something about the way he’d said my name, and thanks. I wasn’t an intuitive genius, but it didn’t take one to get that he was saying bye to me.
Maybe even Bye, and keep my secret, please.
By dinnertime, I hadn’t eaten anything, and Mom was back up at the turbines doing something I hadn’t listened well enough to know, so I fixed myself pancakes (another formerly off-limits food) and ate five and then an apple for good measure. I liked apples.
When I started feeling itchy, like jumping jacks would be a perfect way to counteract the pancakes, I made myself eat a chocolate chip cookie. Then I settled on the couch, my phone in hand. Like Nick would call.
I was calling him Nick because it didn’t matter, and to me he would never be Gabe. Gabe DeWitt was someone else’s friend. Nick had been mine.
For the longest time, I watched the Weather Channel and I wondered why it mattered. Why he mattered. I had friends. I had school. I had music. I didn’t need a guy. So why did I feel like I had lost something?
Maybe it was lack of closure. How the whole thing had gone down. First I shot him and I’d thought I had given him amnesia. Then we’d found out what had really happened. Except that had made no sense, and there were other things that somehow made even less sense, and I’d spent a lot of time worrying about who Nick really was. And what he was. It was strange to think, but some of the stuff that he could do—if he was really doing it, he shouldn’t have been able too.
Which was probably part of why I couldn’t forget him. I couldn’t forget the things he’d done, and nor could I explain them. It was driving me crazy—the mystery of it. As I’d learned with Dad, I wasn’t a big fan of the unknown.
My rationale made sense, except when I sank back into the couch cushions and shut my eyes, I was feeling his arms around me. Imagining his lips on mine. More than the kiss—I’d finally been kissed!—I relished the other sensations. I liked the weight of his hand on my back. I liked the warmth of his body, the shape of it: so bulky, so much larger than my own. I liked the expression on his face when he looked at me.
About nine, I broke my embargo on the TV news and started desperately searching for Nick stories. I started calling him Gabe again and promised God that if Gabe and I could keep in touch, I’d be a good friend to him. It didn’t have to be anything romantic.
I admitted to myself that maybe I was missing Gabe so much because S.K., Bree, Halah, and I were spinning in such separate orbits. Then I admitted maybe that wasn’t the whole reason.
It was 10 when my mom text’d and said that Turbine Three was down again. At 10:30, I drifted to sleep—my bleary eyes fixed on the news, still awaiting a story about Gabe.
*
The revving thunder of a motorcycle brought me out of my dream and back into the living room. Years after my dad had sold his first bike—an old Harley FXR he’d called The Hoss—and moved onto more sophisticated, more expensive bikes, the sound of an approaching Hog still made my chest clench.
I pushed myself up on my elbows, glancing at the one-handed clock above our mantel as I followed the sound down our driveway.
It was only 11:21 p.m., so not unthinkable that someone would be dropping by. I shoved my blanket off and stood, stretching till my muscles ached. It was probably one of Mom’s technicians, confused about how to get up to the turbines at night.
By t
he time I made it to the kitchen window, the best one for scoping out the driveway, the bike and its rider had gone behind the house. I rubbed my eyes and headed back into the den, where a window by the front door could give me a view of the backyard if I craned my neck just right.
With the turbines on the mountainside as they were, it surprised me that anyone ever came to our house, but sometimes techs did. Half the time, the distance down our driveway was enough to help them see the flashing lights and realize they’d missed their mark. The other half, they wound up at our door.
I was wondering what kind of dummy could fix a broken turbine but couldn’t see a bunch of them perched on the side of a mountain, when I heard a crashing sound in my bedroom, followed by my name.
My blood froze.
“Milo?”
The voice was Nick’s.
He sounded hoarse.
All I could think as I ran up the stairs was that he had remembered. He had remembered the wreck, and he had come to my house. His name was Gabe, I reminded myself as I topped the stairs. His name was Gabe—and he had come to my house.
I found him standing in the doorway of my room, wearing ripped jeans and a shredded grey Polo shirt.
In a millisecond, I knew something was wrong. His face was twisted, those brown eyes wide as he panted.
“Milo. I… Shit, I’m sorry.”
He covered his eyes with his hands for a second, then brushed his fingers through his already messy hair. His right arm was noticeably stiffer; I looked closer and saw that his wrist was swollen, dappled black and blue. I could tell by the stiff set of his shoulder that it hurt to move.
“What’s going on?”
He looked at me, his face a mask of angst. He groaned, and rubbed his palm back through his hair. “I shouldn’t have come here, but I didn’t know where else to go.” He inhaled deeply, shoulders rising. “I had to go to the hospital for a test, and when I left, I thought someone had followed me, so I went to the library to lose them but when I came out they grabbed me—”
“Who!”
“These guys in suits. Black guy and white guy. One of them hit me—” he rolled his right shoulder— “and I ended up in an SUV. I fought them and I—”He took a deep breath. “I got out. When I landed…” He glanced at the porch door. “I took someone’s bike.”
“A Harley,” I said stupidly.
And felt stupid for thinking about how stupid I sounded.
Gabe hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
My mind raced, so it was hard for me to think of what to say. Men in black suits, a SUV… I could feel my body start to buzz.
“Don’t be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for, okay? I’m glad you came. Sit down.” He cast a dubious glance at his jeans—ripped down one side, I realized now, from his scuffle with the road—but I put my hand on the curve of his back, pressing lightly. “You sit down on the bed, and I’m gonna get my phone and—”
“No!” And softer: “Please don’t get your phone.”
“Okay, I won’t. I won’t call anyone. Okay?”
He nodded, and the guilt was back. “Milo,” he said, “I think I lost them, but… I’m not sure. I shouldn’t have come here. I can’t believe I did.”
“It’s okay. Come here…” I tried to be gentle as I wrapped my hand around his good elbow and led him to the bed. “Sit. Wait. I’m gonna go to the bathroom and get a few things, and then we’re gonna split.”
I rifled through my cabinets and raced back into my room with my battered Easter basket full of first aid stuff. As I across the rug, Gabe looked down at the mattress and half jumped, half toppled off the bed.
He cursed.
“What?!”
I got close enough to see the answer: His blue jeans, on the right side, by his hip, were stained crimson.
He pulled up his shirt. Through the mangled fibers of the denim, I could see torn flesh.
“Holy crap. That’s bad. Really bad.”
He grunted.
“Just…take those off—or pull them down. We need to clean that.”
He looked up, like he was just remembering I was here. “I don’t need to. It’s okay.”
“Yes you do, and no it’s not.”
I don’t know why I didn’t tell him about Sid and Diego. If I had, Nick might have actually gotten away. But the shameful truth is, I didn’t even think about it. I think deep down, I just didn’t want to be left behind.
22
He still tried to leave. Tried to stand up, said he needed to move.
“Are you insane?!” I grabbed his good hand. “Sit down! What the heck is wrong with you?” This time, I helped him back onto the bed. Bustling around him like a humming bird, I propped a pillow on his lap and helped him move his arm onto it. “Don’t worry about getting blood on my sheets. They’re old.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. If they followed me…”
We were both quiet for a moment—both straining our ears. “You’re okay. You should rest for a little while.”
I rifled through my stuff, found an old bottle of Hyrdocodone—from when I’d gotten my wisdom teeth removed—and shook one out into my palm. “First things first.” I held it out. “Painkillers.”
His teeth were clenched. “I don’t need one.”
“Take one for me?”
He shook his head. “I need to be on my game.” Another deep breath, accompanied by a longsuffering look I would never have put on Nick’s smooth face. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something—probably apologize—but then he closed it. A second later, his face twisted in a look that made me blush. “You’re too nice, Milo.”
I was glowing like Rudolph’s nose. I could feel it. I pulled my hair around, over my blotchy chest and neck, and I tried to look busy putting the cap back on the bottle. A million thoughts whipped through my head, but only one came out.
“I’m not this nice to everybody.”
When I finally dared to look at Gabe, he was looking at me, too.
I felt like someone in a movie as he raised his left hand and touched the ends of my hair. When he lowered it, he looked sad, but in a way that might be good.
“You can put the pill back. I don’t want it.”
“You need to take at least a half. It doesn’t do anything major. Trust me. It was worthless for my wisdom teeth.”
I grabbed a bottle of water from my nightstand and held it out to him, along with the pill. He looked at my windows, and I put my hand on his knee. “If they were on you, they’d be here by now. Right?”
When he still didn’t take it, I ran my pointer finger very gently over the puffy skin of his wrist, and Gabe’s body tensed.
“See?” I pulled away.
He broke the pill in two and swallowed one half.
“If they come,” he said, as I grabbed a roll of gauze, “I’ll run, you stay here.”
No way in a million years was that the plan, but I figured why argue.
“They won’t come.” I stood. “BRB. I’ve gotta go downstairs and get you an icepack.”
I checked the windows on the first floor, my stomach in a large knot. When I saw no headlights, I grabbed an ice pack and a soft, clean rag and dashed back up the stairs.
Gabe sat, still and quiet, as I wrapped his wrist with gauze.
“Do you feel like filling me in on things?”
He sighed, and I handed him the ice pack, which he draped carefully around his wrist.
“You know, we did this backwards,” I muttered. “I should have had you help me with your pants, and then we should have put the ice on your arm.”
Without a word, Gabe rolled onto his side, used his good arm to unbutton his fly, and hiked his jeans down, giving me access to his hip—and a blush-inducing amount of skin.
But I didn’t have much time to focus on that. His hip was bruised and scraped and swollen, like the wrist. “Oh, Gabe.”
“’S not Gabe.”
I dabbed a gauze square in alcohol and hov
ered over his hip. “Hold your breath, okay?”
But as I cleaned the cut, he talked through gritted teeth. “I’m not him. I feel…nothing for them. My grandmother, my ‘friends.’” Those brown eyes flickered up to me. “It’s not like with you.”
