Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1)

by Whitney Barbetti

  After a while, I whispered, “I ruined your Christmas. Your favorite day.” If I was sorry for anything, it was that. I wouldn't apologize for who I was, just the things I disrupted.

  “Today was not one of my favorite days,” he said hollowly. His head came toward my face and brushed my hair away. “But this is better.”

  I scooted closer toward him and framed his jaw with my hands. “Merry Christmas,” I whispered. “I'm sorry.” I leaned forward and brushed my lips over his. “I love you.”

  He sighed against me, his breath warm and welcoming. “Merry Christmas.” His eyes closed, and his hands came up, holding mine to his face. “This is all I want,” he whispered. “I left today. Went down to the Fisherman's Wharf. I walked along the dock, shivered against the cold and all I could think about was how deeply I missed you.” His eyes opened. “That's why I came back.”

  It made me want to sigh, hearing him say that. “Because you missed me?”

  “Because I can feel your presence as poignantly as I can feel your absence.” With his hands over mine, he glided them down to his chest, pressing my palms against his heart. “Because both are a choice, I choose your presence, even when it'd be easier to choose absence.”

  His heart beat several times beneath my palms. “Because I don't want easy, Mira. I want you. Even if it means holding you while you bleed out. Even if it means waiting for you to manage your pain in a way that doesn't hurt you or me. Even if it means a hundred repeats of the night before.” He winced, exhaling a short breath. “But, I’m begging you with all that I am, to never do that to me again. I can’t tell you what it was like, seeing you the way you were.”

  My chest tightened. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how he must have felt, staunching my blood, holding me in his arms while my head lolled around, unstable, unconscious. I tried to imagine what it’d be like finding him the same way. But blood was easier to stomach when it was my own. I swallowed and tried to pull my hands from his chest, but he held them still.

  “I'm not leaving you, Mira. I'm staying. I love you.” He let go then, brought his hands to my hair and kissed my forehead. “I'm not leaving,” he whispered.

  Minutes later, I was falling asleep.

  The following morning, Six brought me to his apartment, wary of leaving me alone but still needing to work. I watched endless talk shows while Six pored through papers in his files, knocking some to the floor. Nothing was neat and orderly, so I bent to pick them up for him. A couple pictures fell out, one of them I instantly recognized as Lydia. The woman Six didn’t like to talk about.

  I looked up to the photo on the wall, the one I'd first seen upon walking through the apartment. Lydia and the little girl, Cora, stared back at me. I held the photo up to Six. “This is your friend, right?” I asked, looking between him and the photo. “Lydia?”

  He glanced quickly, stilled. “Yes.” He looked back at the box, then to me again.

  “She was practically family?” When Six nodded, I held the photo up to view. “She’s very pretty.”

  “She was,” he agreed, and yanked the photo from my hand.

  “How’d she die?”

  He shook his head, indicating he didn't want to talk about it. Which was exactly the reason I wanted to talk about it.

  “I’m sorry. I know, I’m pushing. But I want to know who she was. For you.”

  Six looked at me, eyes filled with secrets. “She killed herself.”

  Something itched in the back of my brain. The way he stared at me, the way he dared me to say anything, made me uneasy. The night before rang in my head.

  I didn't know what to say. I thought of all the times Six had rescued me and all the ways he'd pulled me out of the mess I'd found myself in. “Did you love her?” I wasn't sure why I was asking. Maybe I wanted to feel pain.

  “I did.” He brushed a hand down his face. “I think I always thought I was going to marry her.” He said that second sentence almost absently, because he glanced at me and shook his head, seemingly wishing away the fact that he'd said that to me.

  Marriage. We hadn't talked about it. Was it too early to talk about? I didn't know. Six was the only person I'd been with this long, the only person who hadn't left me. I could see this being long term.

  “Would you marry me?” The words escaped my mouth before I had time to wish them back. Six stilled, turned to me, eyes wide.

  “Is that a question? Or an offer?”

  I sucked in a breath. “I'm not proposing.” Or was I? I wasn't entirely sure. “I'm asking if you'd ever consider marrying me.”

  “You need help, Mira.”

  The words were a blow, hitting me solidly in the center of my chest. And he knew it, because he turned his head away from me. And he didn’t apologize. Because he wasn’t wrong.

  I wasn’t Lydia. I wasn’t someone worth marrying, not when I was inconsistent, and still so feral. How could I make a vow to someone, promising them all of me, when so much of me was incomplete?

  As we fell asleep that night, all I could think about was Lydia, who had killed herself. And the many times the man who lay beside me had tried to save me from doing the same. Though I'd never actively pursued suicide, I hadn't actually made sure to avoid it. But the despair I felt when Six told me I needed help made me wonder if I should even be here.

  Most of all, I wondered why Six stayed with me. Was it only to keep me from killing myself, as Lydia had? Or did he truly want me, despite my baggage? Or, more troubling, was he attracted to people who needed fixing? Like me.

  18

  Spring 2003

  Six moved around my kitchen slowly, but as if in a dance. No awkward, jilted movements. Steady, sure, purposeful in everything he did. When I looked at him, I saw everything I’d ever wanted, wrapped in muscle and skin. Which was probably why I loved watching him as much as I did.

  “I wish you were allergic to shirts,” I said, gesturing at his shirtless torso. He wore pajama pants and nothing else.

  Six laughed. My favorite sound, next to the beating of his heart. “Seriously? What kind of reaction would shirts give me?”

  “Hives. Everywhere.”

  He looked down at his broad chest, tan skin stretched over taut muscle. A line of hair traced a trail to the top of his waistband. “I think that'd be uncomfortable.”

  “That's okay.” I shrugged and rubbed my fingertip into the grooves on the table. “Because then you'd stop wearing shirts.”

  I heard the clatter of plates and continued my random spoken thoughts.

  “I cleaned out the freezer this morning.” Of alcohol.

  “I saw, earlier.” He set the plates in the cupboard. “You dumped them?”

  I nodded, licking my lips. “You know that spike at the top of The Empire State Building was originally meant for parking blimps?”

  He didn't look fazed by the direction of my question. “I heard that once.”

  “I think I’m going to make brownies. Your mom's recipe. She gave it to me.”

  “Oh?” Still, he didn't seem fazed. It made me nervous, to think that he expected this from me. Not because of the expectation, but because he wasn't running away. He wasn’t afraid of me. He was the first person in my life who I hadn’t managed to scare away. And I’d tried.

  I watched as he fed the fish, tapping his finger lightly against the glass. Henry the Fourth swam in his tank, happy to have someone give a shit about his existence.

  Sorry, Henry. It's not you, it's me.

  “What if we get all the way to Henry the Eighth? Wasn't he the one who was a total jackass to all his wives?” I blurted out, my thoughts way ahead of our spoken conversation.

  Six chuckled, the sound warm and rumbling in his stomach. “Yeah, we should probably keep him in solitude.” He braced his arms on the counter, my favorite pose, because it only made all the muscles in his arms more obvious. “You know, you’re more than what people probably expect?”

  “Wh—wha?”

  “You’re smart
. You know a lot about a lot of things.”

  “I know a little about a lot of things,” I corrected him.

  “And you’re well spoken.” He stood. “Why didn’t you go to college?”

  I tapped my chin with the tip of one finger. “I think that was during my destructive phase.”

  He motioned around the apartment. “Was that different than now?”

  My apartment wasn’t that bad. “Yes, it was. I crashed my mom’s car. That was after stealing it. And that was after I had stolen one of her credit cards and racked up the balance.”

  “What’d you buy?” He seemed afraid to ask.

  “A bus ticket.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  I sighed. “I wanted to get away from her. From L.A. Mostly her. I guess I thought that San Francisco was far enough that I’d have distance from her, but not so far that I wouldn’t be able to go back if I needed to.”

  “And did you? Go back?”

  “No.” I stood and stretched my arms over my head. “I like the city. I like the weather here. Milder. I felt like my skin would slide off my bones in L.A.” I turned to the stack of canvases against the wall and crouched down, looking through them.

  “Did you ever have an anchor here? Friends?”

  “They come and go, depending on what they want and what I have. Unless you count drug dealers, but those relationships are pretty much one-sided.”

  He dried his hands and walked over to the painting on the mantle. “This needs something,” he said, staring at it.

  I knew it did. I walked over to the large square painting. It was the “6” swirl, starting just left of the center and swirling out. The swirl stopped mid-spin, indicating it wasn't done.

  “It's unfinished,” I said, running my fingers along the straight, flat frame. “I'm thinking of keeping it unfinished.” I wondered if he recognized it from watching me working on it, here and there, for the last two and a half years.

  Six turned to look at me, his green eyes bright in my apartment. The sound of honking outside and the loud music from my new neighbors below me were suddenly so noisy. “Unfinished?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I think there's something kind of...” I shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious. I didn't ever explain my art to Six. He just got it. “I think…” I was already feeling stupid for what I was about to say. “That there's something tragically poetic about unfinished art.”

  “Do you like tragedy?” His voice was softer, but he kept inches between us.

  “I think tragedy likes me.” I watched the way his eyebrows drew together in thought.

  “I think you like tragedy, Mira. In fact, I think you're enamored by it.”

  I started to deny it, but I couldn't. He wasn't wrong. But in some ways, he was. “I'm not in love with tragedy.”

  “How do you know?”

  My heart picked up. I didn’t know what kind of magic he possessed that he could get me to talk like this. To let my guard down just a little. “Because,” I said, refusing the voice that urged me to touch him, “I’m in love with you.” I swallowed the word. It was still uncomfortable to say, like I didn’t have a right to own it, to hold it in my mouth. “And I don’t feel like that, about tragedy.”

  He stared at me long enough to make me look away. I was hardly ever the first person to look away. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  My arms moved of their own volition, as if aching to go to him, but I pulled them back to myself. “Yeah. So.”

  “You know what I think would be good for you?”

  I lifted my head. “Oh, I’d love to hear what you think would be good for me.” It was said almost snidely, and I immediately bit down on my tongue. Six didn’t deserve the tone. “Really,” I said, more earnest this time.

  He leaned against the wall that held up half my kitchen. “I heard about this place, not really a secret, but not publicized.”

  “If this is a head doctor—” I began.

  “No. Nothing at all like that.” He actually chuckled. “It’s, I guess, a kind of art club.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “An art club. Where we sit in a circle and sing stupid songs and talk about being controlled by so many outside forces that we’re not even responsible for our own emotions.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d have such strong feelings, or objections.”

  “I’m not objecting.” But I was. I was inherently mistrusting of clubs of any kind. Groups made me feel insecure, intimidated. It was easier to be alone, easier to be me, easier not to see that I was such a different breed of animal from so many others.

  “Well, anyway. It’s only open at night, and newcomers get to stop in on Thursdays.” He flipped his wrist and glanced at his watch. “Which happens to be today.” He came toward the table and leaned over it. “Want to go?”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Will you go?”

  I sighed. “I guess.”

  Six stopped his car but didn’t cut the engine. The road was dark, lit up by only a few sparse streetlights. There was virtually no traffic this time of night on the road, not with it being a breakfast and antique shop kind of area. All the shops had closed long before dinner, leaving the street void of car and foot traffic. But still, there were cars parked. So many in fact, that Six had to parallel in a precariously narrow spot.

  “This is it?” I leaned forward but saw few lights on any of the buildings.

  “It’s here, yes.” He pointed across the street. “The house with the blue door there, the one on the end.” There was a line of what were clearly Victorian homes all in a row, all with various colored doors befitting their even more colorful painted Victorian exteriors. But there was one, hard to see that it was definitively blue, but compared to the lighter shades in the shadowed night, it was the only one that fit.

  “But there are no lights on.”

  “There won’t be, not that you can immediately see. You have to go through the side gate there.” He tilted my head with the mere touch of his finger to direct my gaze to the stone and metal fence along the side of the home.

  “It’s in the backyard?”

  “No, that’s just how you access it.”

  I didn’t unbuckle my seatbelt. “I don’t get it.”

  “Go through the gate, follow the noise.”

  “Are you pulling my leg? Am I gonna walk through that gate and get ambushed by a bunch of doctors in lab coats and have medication poured down my throat, or some shit?”

  Six wasn’t amused by my conversation. “Do you not trust me?”

  I had to think about it. It’d been a little more than two years since I’d met him, and he hadn’t done a single thing to make me question his trustworthiness.

  “Because if you don’t…”

  “I do,” I quickly said, and then did something I often thought about doing but never did: I touched his hand in reassurance. It was a decidedly Six kind of move, touching to give comfort. I was still working on it, not sure that I was even able to give that kind of assurance, but Six seemed momentarily satisfied. “Okay, I’m ready.” I unbuckled.

  “Then go,” he said, unlocking the doors.

  I paused. “You’re not coming with?”

  “No.” When I tilted my head in question, Six continued. “You don’t need me to go with you for this.”

  “What if I hate it? What if I want to leave?” Thoughts of feeling suffocated worried me, of being looked at or talked at in ways that I wasn’t ready to process.

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Really?” I trusted him, but that didn’t mean I didn’t question that trust from time to time.

  “Really. It’s only open for a couple more hours.”

  “So you’re just gonna sit here for a few hours?”

  “Just go, Mira. I said I’d be here. I’ll be here.”

  I sighed but opened the door and climbed out into the night. My foot landed in a puddle, but I was wearing my taller boots, so I just shook the water away and gave Six
one last glance before closing the door.

  I looked both ways before crossing the street. It was unnecessary to do so; there was zero traffic. But it was the smallest way I could stall going into this environment.

  Six had said to follow the noise, but until I was on the sidewalk in front of the house with the blue door, I couldn’t hear any noise. But then it was there, loud, but muffled so that I couldn’t tell what kind of music it actually was. The ground seemed to vibrate with the bass of it, and my toes curled inside my boots.

  The house with the blue door was immediately next to another Victorian style home. The one I was in front of boasted a hair salon, and the one beside was a coffee shop. As I looked farther up the street, I saw various signs: a counseling practice, a dental practice, a pastry shop, an antique store, and an accountant. All the lights for the main floors were dark, and some of them had lights on the second floor, which made me think some of those homes served dual purpose: commercial on the first floor and residential on the second and third.

  But the salon I stood in front of was pitch black.

  I looked back at Six. The car was still in its parking spot, but because it was nestled under the old oak tree he’d parked under, I couldn’t make out Six from inside the vehicle. I imagined him impatiently waving me to keep going, so I did, stepping to the side of the house that was free and not bordered by another house. I went through the gate and walked into a cloud of cigarette smoke. That, at least, felt familiar.

  There was a group of four people standing near a door that was propped open with a brick. They were engaged in conversation about something with actors—it could’ve been a play or a movie for all I knew, but when I closed the gate and it made a loud clanging sound, they all turned and looked at me.

  “Hey,” said one guy with a mop of shaggy blonde hair. He wore a gray, nondescript coat that was at least two sizes too big, judging by the skinny legs that held him up. He looked like a real-life version of Shaggy, Scooby Doo’s sidekick.

  “Hi.” I hated this already. I hung near the gate, wishing like hell I’d told Six to keep driving.