by Sarah Fine
“Please.” He said it so sharply that she went completely still, and he cursed himself. He got out of the car and walked around to her side, then opened her door. He knelt at her side while she stared straight ahead, and then pressed his lips to her bare shoulder as he wrapped his arm around his waist. “I’m so sorry, Lela,” he murmured against her skin. “But I’m going to make it up to you.” He continued to plant tiny, gentle kisses along her shoulder, smiling as she shivered. He knew that shiver. He loved it.
She turned her face to his, her amber-brown eyes keen and questioning. “What’s going on?”
He sat back. “What? Nothing.”
She frowned. “Are you sure? You seem so tense.”
He stood up and tugged at her hand. “I… just want to get going. Come inside.” He was twenty feet away from vindication, but it felt like fifty miles. He pulled at her fingers and sighed with relief as she unbuckled her seatbelt, though she looked unhappy. He turned toward the house with his fingers locked with hers, prepared to drag her if necessary. So close.
And it was either going to be great or horrendous. She would either be happy, or she would see him as complicit in this disastrous plot. She would wonder why he hadn’t saved her from it.
He had left his fate in Tegan Murray’s hands. What on earth had possessed him to do something so stupid?
Lela allowed him to lead her up the crumbling walk to his front door. His hands shook a little as he tried to fit his key in the lock. I have faced countless Mazikin. I have been to hell and back. This is what I’m scared of?
So he did what he did best, and improvised.
“Goodness,” he said. “I’m so nervous that I’m shaking.” He pushed the keys toward her. “Will you open it?”
She gave him a concerned look. “Are you serious?” She took the keys from him. “Okaaaay.”
She put the key in the lock. Malachi held his breath and moved in close behind her, prepared to hold her back if she felt the need to punch any innocent party goers who dared shoot confetti at her. He should have disagreed more vehemently when Tegan announced her plan. He should have—
Lela swung the door open.
“SURPRISE!” came the shouts from inside, along with the popping sounds of the cannons going off. Lela jerked as confetti engulfed them, and then went still again. Malachi quickly moved beside her so he could see her face, framed by dark curls littered with bits of paper and sparkles.
Her eyes were wide as she took in the sight. Everyone was smiling, confetti in their hair, punch cups in their hands. “Happy birthday, Lela!” called Tegan, leaning on her crutches and waving her discharged confetti cannon happily.
Lela blinked. And then she smiled, a stunned, bemused curve of her lips. “A surprise party,” she said quietly. “Wow.”
As her friends rushed forward to greet her, pressing between her and Malachi, he stared at her face, looking for any clue as to how this felt to her. She put her hands over her mouth as Jillian and Tegan took her by the arms and led her into the living room. There, balloons were clustered against the ceiling, at least a hundred of them, and from each one hung a spiraling ribbon. Affixed to each ribbon was a picture mounted on construction paper. Lela touched one of the pictures and then glanced back at him, her eyes shining, and the knot of tension inside him loosened. This was good. She was all right.
He accepted a cup of punch from Laney and leaned against the wall, happy to watch for the moment.
“Did she give you a hard time?” Laney asked.
He shook his head. “She handled it quite graciously.” His gaze traced Lela’s curvy form as she looked at yet another dangling picture and laughed. “Tell me about the photographs.”
“We just wanted her to see that she was one of us now,” Laney replied. “Tegan and Ian came up with it. We put out a call for pictures that included Lela, from graduation parties and graduation day, from our beach trips and stuff. It turned out we had a bunch of them.”
Malachi looked down at her. “That was a lovely idea.”
He spent the next few hours watching Lela navigate the strangeness of having so many people there just for her. He could tell it was a foreign situation for her, one she was not entirely comfortable with, but she smiled and laughed and ate and drank and seemed to have a lovely time.
When Ian asked if anyone wanted to go to a late-late show, Malachi saw his chance, though. He put his arm around Lela’s waist and pressed his mouth to her ear. “What would you say to staying here?”
She leaned back against him. “Best idea ever.”
He happily waved all their friends out the door, his heart pounding now for an entirely different reason. “I have a present for you.”
“Yeah?”
He went back to his room and brought out the three wrapped, flattish rectangular packages. “Three presents, actually.”
She took them from him and sat down on his couch. She gave him a sweet, happy look as she began to open them, and Malachi closed his eyes. Please let this be right.
“Oh,” she squeaked. “Oh my God.”
His stomach fell. He opened his eyes to see her staring down at the photograph, which he’d placed in a weathered wood frame, part of a set they’d seen in a shop in Middletown during one of their beach trips. Her eyes had lingered on those frames for the longest time, and so he’d driven back down and purchased them a week later. But the frame wasn’t what he’d been worried about.
In the photograph, Nadia grinned at the camera, her arm linked with Lela’s. A tear fell onto the glass pane over the picture, and Malachi sank onto the couch next to her. “I thought…” He touched her shoulder. “I just thought you might…”
“It’s perfect, Malachi,” she whispered. “She looks really happy. Like, real.” She wiped her eyes. “Where did you get this?”
“Diane. I asked her if she had one of the two of you together.”
Lela rubbed the tattoo of Nadia’s face she carried on her inner forearm, a haunting image that had made it possible for Lela to save her friend. “I love it.”
She opened the next picture. It was of Lela and Diane at graduation, one he’d taken on his phone. Pride and happiness glowed from both of them. Lela chuckled. “Also perfect.” She arched her eyebrow and held up the final wrapped present. “So what’s in this third one?”
He put up his hands. “Find out.”
She opened it, uncovering their own smiling faces, their sandy shoulders and brown skin. Every time Malachi looked at that photo, a “selfie” he’d taken of them at the beach in June, the only thing he could think was thank you.
Lela stared at it for a long time, her fingers brushing over the worn wood of the frame. And then she said, very softly, “This is us now.”
“Those were my thoughts exactly.” He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned in to him.
She tilted her head up and kissed his cheek. “You were stressing pretty hard over this party, weren’t you?”
He laughed, heavy gratitude and happiness settling inside him once again. “Let me put it this way: destroying a Mazikin nest is simpler.”
Until Neither of Us Can Wait Another Minute
Fall of Lela’s sophomore year at University of Rhode Island
I walked to the exit of the URI library and sighed. It was pouring. Wet orange, yellow, and green leaves littered the walk, and rain lashed the glass doors between me and the outside world. In all my preparation for tonight, of course I hadn’t thought to pack an umbrella.
And my car was parked half a mile away. “It’s okay,” I muttered, touching my hair, which I’d spent a stupid amount of time on this morning. “It’s not like he hasn’t seen you at your absolute worst already.”
I gritted my teeth and jogged through the rain, my sneakers splashing through puddles, soaking my socks, my curls collapsing in soggy clumps around my face. By the time I made it to my Corolla in the student lot, I was soaked to the skin. I groaned as I hopped into the driver’s seat and slammed my door shut, shivering in the
fall chill. “This is not a bad omen,” I told myself.
No omens allowed. Tonight was going to be amazing.
Malachi and I had been slowly moving toward this for months. Over a year, actually. When we’d first decided to take things slow, I hadn’t really known what that meant. All I knew was that I wanted him. And I knew he wanted me. But both of us were scared of awakening the ugly memories in my head—he didn’t want to hurt me, and I didn’t want to lose it in front of him. Not exactly romantic.
But the last year had redefined my idea of romantic a little bit.
I started my car and drove off campus, heading north, my stomach a ball of nerves. “You’ve already decided,” I said. “Even Kim said you were ready.” Yep, even my therapist.
Yep, I had a therapist.
It had been Malachi’s idea, actually. For all I know, he’d gotten it from Tegan. In fact, that was probably how it happened. But after we’d pushed things a little too far one afternoon and I’d felt physically ill at the memories it aroused, he suggested it. “Not for me,” he said. “Please don’t do it for me. But I would be happy if you did it for you.”
I totally did it for him. I wanted him to know I was all in, and so I got over my automatic suspicion and signed up to see someone at the URI counseling center in the fall of my freshman year. I was eighteen. An adult. My records were mine. So I figured it was okay. And Kim turned out to be all right. Better than all right, really. She was on my side. She got to know me, and then she helped me face stuff that I never thought I could. She brought Malachi in and talked to him, too.
I never thought it would be romantic to take my boyfriend to meet my therapist. And it didn’t feel romantic at first. It felt awkward and weird, and Malachi and I actually had to talk about stuff instead of hoping we would just be able to magically guess what was on the other’s mind. But I think it made Malachi more confident—and that was romantic.
Earlier this week we had made our decision.
Tonight, we were going to the store together. We were going to buy condoms. And then we were going to go back to his house, and we were going to have sex.
I let out a half-hysterical giggle as I had that thought. Not because I wasn’t taking it seriously, though. In fact, I was taking it so seriously that I’d done my best to leave nothing to chance. It was just… wow. Just wow.
My windshield wipers squeaked as they swished sheets of water off the glass. I turned on my headlights. “Jeez. Nobody told me a monsoon was coming,” I muttered as I got on I-95.
My phone rang, and I held the steering wheel with one hand as I answered. “Hello?”
“Lela.” It was Malachi, but his voice sounded wrong. Ragged.
“You okay? I’m on my way to your house.”
“I’m not there.” He was breathing hard. “Are you driving?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
“Could you pull over for a moment?”
“I just got on 95.”
He was still out of breath. A faint siren sounded off in the background. “I’m at the intersection of Centerville and Toll Gate, right next to the exit,” he said. “The Burger King parking lot. Could you come get me?”
What the hell? “Sure. Are you okay?”
He paused a bit too long for my comfort. “I’m okay. Just in a bit of an accident. But I’m fine.”
“What? Okay. Okay. I’m on my way.” My throat was tight. It was all I could do not to floor it.
“Please drive safely,” he said before hanging up.
It took me fifteen agonizing minutes to reach the exit, but as soon as I did, I could see the red lights of the emergency vehicles. “What the fuck,” I whispered.
And then I saw it: a semi-truck stopped halfway across the road—and Malachi’s little Hyundai wedged underneath it, the roof peeled back like the lid of a sardine can. I screamed. Shaking, I called his phone again, but it was off.
“He said he was okay. He said he was okay,” I chanted. Traffic was backed up and only one lane was getting through, so it took me another fifteen minutes to navigate the final quarter mile through the major intersection to the Burger King, which was just on the other side of the wreckage. Longest fifteen minutes of my life to that point. When I pulled into the parking lot, there was an ambulance parked there, its rear doors open and a few EMTs clustered at the back with some firefighters. I parked nearby and jumped out, caring not in the slightest for my hair or my stupid clothes as I launched myself into the pelting rain.
“Hey,” I called, my voice strained and high-pitched. “Malachi Sokol? Is he here?”
One of the EMTs looked up at me and jerked his thumb at the back of the ambulance, right as Malachi poked his head out. The sight of him nearly leveled me. He jumped out of the back, and the EMTs responded by shaking their heads. “You need to buy a lottery ticket, kid,” said one of them. “Never seen anyone get so damn lucky.”
Malachi’s clothes were soaked and clinging to his body. His black hair was plastered to his head. His olive skin was paler than usual, but he looked relieved as he came toward me, his arms rising from his sides. I barreled into him, knocking him back a step, my arms already wound around his waist and my face pressed to the hollow of his neck. “What the hell happened?”
“The truck tried to beat the light, and it turned left in front of me. I couldn’t stop in time, and my car slid in the rain. It went under the truck.”
“Oh my God. How did you—” How did you not get decapitated? But I couldn’t even say it. The thought was too horrifying. I’d lost him before, but if I lost him now… “How did you survive?” I asked in a choked whisper.
“I ducked.”
I let out a cough of laughter. “You… ducked.”
“I couldn’t do anything else. But the car is small and low to the ground, so I suppose there was enough room. When everything stopped moving, I was able to open the passenger door and crawl out.”
I pushed away from him and looked him up and down. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
He threaded his fingers into my hair and leaned his head against mine. “The emergency medical workers have checked me. They tweezed shattered glass out of my ears. My pockets were filled with it, too. But apart from a few nicks”—he showed me a few tiny scratches on the backs of his hands, then turned his head to show me a few on the side of his face—“I’m completely fine.”
“So what do we need to do now?” My fingers were balled into his shirt, holding tight.
“I’ve already spoken with the police. They’ve ticketed the truck driver, and they say it was not my fault. My car is totaled but it will be towed. They said I’m free to go. I’ll need to call my insurance company.”
I clung to him, the rain pouring down on us, just reassuring myself that he was still here and okay. “I guess I should take you home, then.”
He tipped my chin up. “I think we have a stop to make first,” he murmured, brushing his lips over mine and making me shiver.
“Are you serious? You were just in a major car accident.”
His dark eyes were full of promise. “And as you can see, I’m unscathed. It would take more than a few scratches to keep me away from you tonight.” As he spoke, his fingertips slid under the collar of my jacket to touch the goosebumped skin of my neck, making my whole body pull tight.
“Let’s go. Right now.” I was breathless. Full of anticipation.
As I took his hand and led him back to my car, my phone rang in my jacket pocket. I ignored it. But as I got behind the wheel, it rang again. I fished it out to see Diane’s number. Frowning, I answered.
“Hailey ran off again, baby,” said Diane, breathing hard. “I couldn’t stop her. I’ve been calling every place I know for the last few hours. No one’s seen her. Has she called you?”
I groaned. “No. What happened this time?”
Malachi’s brow furrowed as he turned to me. He touched my hand and I laced my fingers with his.
“She found out her mom’s parental rig
hts are being terminated,” Diane explained. “That there’s no chance of going back. I tried to calm her down, but then she took off. I was hoping she’d tried to reach you, maybe, but since she hasn’t, I’m about to phone work and tell them—”
“No. Don’t. You’ve already missed twice in the last month because of her.” I gave Malachi an apologetic look. “I think I know where she went. I can go get her.”
Malachi squeezed my hand and leaned his head back against the seat. Shadows of rain drops slid down his harshly gorgeous face.
“Baby, you don’t have to do that. I’m her foster mom—”
“And I’m her foster sister. I know that neighborhood, Diane. She’s probably with that loser boyfriend who was hanging around.”
“She’s not supposed to see him! He’s twenty, for God’s sake, and she’s a baby!”
Hailey might be a baby, but she’d lived through a lot of shit, and right now she was probably looking for any kind of comfort she could find. I closed my eyes, having a sudden, weird flash of one of the residents in the dark city, growing himself a bottle of alcohol and chugging it down. “I’m going to find her and bring her back. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Take her to Ro’s, all right? My sister’s ready to look after her. And if you hit any trouble, you call the police, you hear me?”
“I will.” But it was best not to involve them—their solution would be to arrest people, and the last thing I wanted was for Hailey to end up at the RITS for something as stupid as running away. She was on thin ice, though—this was the eighth time she’d run, and her case worker was probably pissed.
I hung up the phone with a sigh. “I have to do this, Malachi. I’m so freaking sorry. But Diane can’t miss more work, and I know exactly where Hailey’s gone anyway. I can drop you at your house.”
He chuckled. “Do you truly believe I’d let you go alone?” He opened his eyes and turned to me. “Aren’t we partners?” Our fingers were locked together, and our grips turned fierce. “Isn’t this part of it?”
“You’ve just been through—”
He leaned forward and gave me a stern look. “Of all the things I have been through, this does not even rank in the ten worst. Maybe not even the top one hundred. Let’s get going.”
