by Adi Alsaid
“Thanks, Leila,” she said. “For convincing me to call her. For seeing through my bullshit when even I couldn’t.”
Leila smiled warmly. “Don’t mention it,” she said, and she plopped herself down on one of the chairs. “You go ahead. I’ll hang back here.”
Bree lingered for a second, then nodded and turned down the hallway. At room 218, Bree skipped the dramatics of taking a deep breath and knocked loudly on the door. If her sister wasn’t going to forgive her, she wanted to get it over with.
Alexis answered the door wearing the same pajamas and hoodie that she’d shown up in at the jail. In the harsh glow of the hallway, her face looked much older than it had a couple of hours ago. Her eyebrows were slightly raised, as if she expected to be amused. Get on with it, her red eyes were saying.
“I never should have left,” Bree said. “It was selfish and thoughtless—you’re right. I made both our lives harder than they already were.”
Bree became aware of how quiet the hallway was. Alexis was leaning against the doorway, her hands tucked into the front pocket of her hoodie. She looked completely unmoved by Bree’s words. But Bree couldn’t stop.
“I’m sorry I never asked about how you were doing. I assumed I understood what was going through your head, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry I kissed Matt. That was such a shitty thing to do. I’m sorry I put you through everything I did. I’m sorry I put us through that. Life was hard enough without me acting like an idiot.” She wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “If it helps at all, I love you. I know we didn’t always get along, but these nine months away from you, I’ve felt you missing from my life. And I want you back in it. I’d understand if you don’t want to see me again, but I had to apologize.”
Alexis’s face remained unchanged. Bree turned to leave. At least she’d tried.
Before she could take a step, though, she felt Alexis grab hold of her arm and pull her into a hug. It was a tight hug, so warm and recognizable. She could smell the strawberry shampoo on Alexis’s hair, the same brand they’d both been using for years. Bree pressed her cheek to her sister’s, felt their combined tears scurry down her neck. They’d hugged like this so many times throughout their parents’ sicknesses.
“I’m sorry,” Bree said again, resting her head on Alexis’s shoulder.
“I was so worried about you. My little sister, out in the world, all alone.” She pressed them closer together. “It’s okay. I forgive you. Just never put me through anything like that again.” She sniffled and then gave a laugh. “Of course I want to see you again, you goof.”
Bree laughed too, felt her nose get all snotty with tears. She unabashedly wiped her nose on Alexis’s sweatshirt. The sisters pulled apart and stood in the hallway at Alexis’s door, basking in the moment of happiness.
* * *
It was hard for Bree to leave Alexis’s side, even if it was just for a few minutes. She gave her another hug before she left the room and joined Leila in front of the elevators.
“How’d it go?” Leila asked.
Bree beamed a smile in response.
“Good,” Leila said, returning the smile. Then she stood up from the chair and called the elevator. “Walk me to my car?”
“Of course,” Bree said, still smiling.
They crossed the hotel lobby, nodding at Marjorie as they passed her desk. Bree even raised her hand in a shy, thankful wave, but Marjorie didn’t look up to acknowledge it.
Bree pushed open the door that led to the parking lot, the early morning air greeting them. The first inklings of sunrise colored the horizon. Bree had learned how to leave with ease, but good-byes were another thing altogether, this one in particular.
Leila was walking slowly, too, elongating the trip to the car.
“Alexis wants me to go back home with her.”
“That’s great,” Leila said, her smile wide and sincere. She gave Bree’s forearm a supportive squeeze. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“To be honest, I hadn’t even considered what would come after I said I was sorry. She asked me if I wanted to go back home.”
“Are you gonna go?”
“I told her I want to go back with her but on my own terms. A road trip from here to Reno, no itinerary, no plans, no rush to get back. Just me and her on a shared adventure.”
“Make sure you get a car with air-conditioning.”
Bree laughed until they reached Leila’s car. More than anything, Bree would miss how easily laughter came in Leila’s company. She ran a finger along the hood of the car, leaving a trail in the thin layer of dust.
“People can say whatever they want about you, Leila, but life is not boring when you’re around.”
“And it’s not very legal when you’re around.”
“I do what I can.” Bree shrugged. “You sure you don’t want to come in and sleep for a few hours? We can all leave in the morning.”
Leila seemed to consider this for a second, toying with the car keys in her hand. “No,” she said. “I think I’m gonna get back on the road. The Lights are calling.”
Bree nodded, surprised to feel herself fighting off tears. She pulled Leila in for a hug. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again somewhere.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Leila said, hugging back tightly before letting go.
Leila unlocked her doors and handed Bree her duffel bag. Bree slung the strap over her shoulder and looked into the car. “What the hell are you going to do with that cardboard display?”
Leila laughed as if she’d forgotten it was there. She shrugged. “Use it for carpool lanes, the occasional snuggle on cold and lonely nights.”
Bree laughed, then gave Leila another quick hug. “Take care, Leila.”
“You, too,” she said, climbing into her car. She started the engine and rolled down her window. “If you ever need someone to help you break out of prison with footwear, you know who to call.”
Then she backed out of the parking spot, shifted into drive, and left with a wave. Bree returned the wave, although she was pretty certain Leila could no longer see her. Then she grabbed her duffel bag and walked back to the hotel to rejoin her sister, already imagining all the places they’d see together.
1
“ELLIOT,” MARIBEL SAID, reaching out to lightly touch his forearm. Light forearm touches were exactly how all the great love stories began. He knew he’d remember this moment forever and that, sometime in the future, he’d be able to recount the details for her: how beautiful she’d looked, how she’d reached out to touch him with the arm that wore the corsage he’d made for her, the one that matched the orchid on his lapel. He’d be able to recite word for word her response to his long-awaited admission of love.
He prepared himself to remember, resisting—hopefully, for the last time—his urge to kiss her.
“I really value your friendship. I do. And I don’t want to lose what we have.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “So let’s not complicate things, okay? Let’s keep things the way they are.”
This is the wrong movie, Elliot thought to himself immediately. Those weren’t her lines. This was prom, and her nearly lifelong best friend had just confessed his love in a big speech. They had a whole summer of romance ahead of them. After the light forearm touch, she was supposed to kiss him. She was supposed to say, “I know.” And, “Me, too.”
It was not in the script—in any version of the script Elliot had envisioned for tonight—for her to give him one of those smiles that he’d fallen in love with in the first place, and then walk away. But that’s exactly what she did.
* * *
Everything about the world felt heavy to Elliot. His feet carrying him down the sidewalk, the bottle in his hand, the bourbon on his tongue. The tuxedo weighed down on him as if it wasn’t just cloth but a tangible reminder that this night was supposed to be about him ge
tting a weight off his chest, not this brutal opposite.
After procuring a bottle of bourbon and taking a few swigs, Elliot had left the hotel ballroom in Minneapolis and started to walk the eighteen miles back home to Burnsville. After walking about a mile and a half through downtown, avoiding the knowing looks of adults who were clearly more accustomed to walking under the influence, he stopped to recover by leaning against a building. He closed his eyes for a moment, but he could still see the look on Maribel’s face: unmoved. A wave of nausea came over him, so he opened his eyes again and took a deep breath. If life were anything like the movies, it’d be raining. But the Minneapolis night was perfect, a few stars even showing through the spaces between buildings. Laughter rang through the night from the crowds of people spilling out of every bar on First Avenue. It felt as if the city itself was laughing at him or, worse, indifferent to his heartbreak. They never say yes when you want them to, the music coming from bars was saying. Why do you think we’re all in here drinking?
Something was tickling his chin, and he grabbed for it, finding the orchid boutonniere that he’d worn to match Maribel’s corsage. He yanked the flower from his tuxedo and, before he knew what he was doing, chucked it into oncoming traffic. It flew ungracefully through the air, its white outer petals flapping like broken wings. Managing to avoid the grill of a passing pickup truck, it landed on the asphalt unharmed. Elliot kept his eye on the flower, its bright purple inner petals flecked with crimson, like a bruise. It wasn’t long before a car’s tire squished the orchid into the road. In the camera in his mind, Elliot zoomed in on the smashed flower and held the shot for a beat, letting the sound of passing cars bleed together with the opening notes of a song. The petals had been torn apart, the flower’s bulb mashed into the unforgiving ground. He thought to himself that he knew exactly what that felt like.
Forgetting his nausea, Elliot uncapped the bottle of bourbon and took another swig, spilling some on the lapel of his tux. Then, abandoning his resolution to walk home, he came up with another plan. He could imagine some deleted scene where Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything... laid himself down in the middle of the road, letting the rain wash over him. If only it were raining.
He put the cap back on the bottle and stepped away from the building he’d been leaning on, lurching toward the street. He compared this march across the sidewalk to the approach he’d made at the prom, and he quickly decided that this was the easier one. Its conclusion was more predictable, and there was less suffering involved.
At the edge of the curb, he didn’t even hesitate. He stepped into the street without as much as a drunken stumble. Then he took an extra step so that he was right in the middle of the lane.
Elliot could tell nothing about the oncoming car from its headlights, only that it was headed his way. He waited for a montage of his life to flash before his eyes, but all he got was Maribel and how she’d looked when she strode into the hotel ballroom. She’d worn a purple dress that matched exactly the hue of the orchid’s inner petals. Her hair was up, pinned in such a way that allowed only a couple of wavy blond tresses to slip down like sunlight through leaves.
Maybe it was that the tuxedo was black, or that everything about Elliot was a little dark: his hair, his vaguely Middle Eastern-hued skin, his brown eyes. Or maybe Elliot was just too skinny to be noticed. The driver seemed unaware that he was standing there and continued toward him at top speed. Out of instinct, or perhaps just a drunken failure of conviction, Elliot jumped back toward the curb. His movement must have registered with the driver, and the brakes screeched out loudly.
As the car skidded past Elliot, a slew of honking horns rang out in its wake, so loud that he almost didn’t hear the sound of breaking glass. His heart was pounding, but Elliot wondered only briefly at his own well-being. He looked on, dumbfounded, as the car came to a stop.
It took Elliot a second to realize that the crash had come from the car’s side-view mirror clipping the bottle of bourbon he had been holding in his hand, and that he hadn’t, after all, escaped unscathed. As soon as he looked down, he felt the warmth of blood flowing through his fingers, even before he felt the sting of the alcohol seeping into the wound. He held his hand up to his face. In the weak light of the streetlamps, it was hard to tell where the blood was coming from, only that there was a lot of it. His hand was shaking, bringing into view little shards of glass that took turns catching the light, making them twinkle like stars in a child’s drawing.
He looked away from his hand toward the car that had managed to mostly avoid him. All he could focus on were the bright red brake lights. Then the door opened, and the driver rushed out, one hand covering her mouth in disbelief while the other held up her strapless sundress as she ran toward Elliot. “Holy shit! Are you okay?”
Elliot just nodded, looking down at himself as if to point out that he was mostly whole.
“I almost killed you,” the girl stammered, her hand still covering her mouth. “I am so sorry.”
Cars passing by honked their horns at the two of them standing in the street, blocking their path. “I’m bleeding a little,” he said.
“Oh, my God,” the girl cried out. She grabbed Elliot’s forearm and inspected his hand. “I didn’t even see you.”
She ran back to her car and returned with a handful of napkins imprinted with various fast-food logos. She put the stack of napkins in his uninjured hand and started to dab at the bloodied one. As if from a distance, Elliot watched her go about the task with inherent care, like she was an archaeologist exhuming an artifact. “I can’t believe I almost ran you over,” the girl said, her voice quivering. She didn’t ask him what he was doing in the middle of the road.
Elliot couldn’t tell if he was light-headed from the booze or the loss of blood. “I think I’m okay,” he said. In the passing headlights of another car, he saw the girl’s face, her brow furrowed in consternation.
“You’re not okay. An idiot just hit you with her car.” She tossed a bloody napkin aside and pressed a fresh one to his palm. “There’s a lot of blood here.”
“Some of it might be bourbon,” he said. “It probably looks worse than it is.”
The girl looked up at Elliot with worry, then went back to carefully sopping up the blood with the napkins. They were cheap and rough, and if not for her delicate touch and the booze, Elliot would probably have been in a lot more pain. “You need to go to a hospital.”
He felt the blood slip beneath his sleeve, and as his shirt sopped it up, a sticky warmth spread all the way to his elbow. The wound started to appear through the blood, a deep gash diagonally across his palm and a few small streaks on his fingers. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll just clean it up when I get home, and it’ll be fine.”
A few more cars honked at them. Someone rolled down a window in passing and shouted at them to get out of the road.
“That’s sensible advice,” the girl shouted back at them. “Very helpful—thank you!”
Elliot laughed, then stopped when he felt a burp coming on.
“Jerks,” the girl said. “But they’re right. Let me take you to a hospital. They’ll know much better what to do with your hand.”
He had a quick vision of Maribel visiting him at the hospital, worry all over her face, asking him why he’d been standing in the middle of the road.
“It’ll stop bleeding in a bit,” he said. He pushed the remaining stack of napkins into the bleeding palm. “I’ll just apply some pressure and...”
He grimaced at the flood of pain pulsing from his hand.
“This is my fault,” the girl said. “Let me at least take you home.”
“No, that’s okay,” Elliot said. But the girl was already leading him toward the car. He focused on trying to walk in a straight line. His feet dragged across the pavement, crunching over the bottle’s shards of glass. They reached the car, and the girl helped Elliot ease into the passenger seat.
“Just keep pressure on your hand,” she said.
“I’ll try not to bleed all over everything,” he said. Then he looked around, as if to determine what to avoid bleeding on the most. “I’m sorry. I think I already did.”
The girl laughed. “No, that’s just the upholstery.”
“Oh.” He gazed up at her, noticing only that her hair was shorter than Maribel’s. It took him a moment to remember where she’d come from. “I’m Elliot.”
The girl smiled. “Nice to meet you, Elliot. I’m Leila.” Elliot nodded and put his head back against the headrest to close his eyes. He heard his door shut, and a few seconds later Leila joined him inside the car. “You can’t fall asleep quite yet,” Leila said. “Where am I taking you?”
“Burnsville,” he said. His head was spinning now, the pain in his hand throbbing. This was definitely not how the night was supposed to go. He breathed slowly, trying to quell his insides.
A few more cars honked behind them. “Okay, okay,” Leila called out through her open window. “I’m going.”
She shifted into drive, and Elliot immediately felt the strains of motion. He turned his head to the window, feeling for fresh air. His window was only cracked, so he fumbled around with his good hand until he realized that the window didn’t have a button but one of those cranks. After some struggling, he lowered it all the way. Bloodied napkins flapped in the wind.
“Elliot? Stay with me, okay?”
“Mmm,” he moaned in response. He needed the weightlessness of sleep. He needed to forget about Maribel and prom, needed his body to forget about the bourbon.
Something in his stomach twitched. He tried to signal Leila to pull over, but before he could, the vomit was coming out in a puddle at his feet, debris-like chunks on his lap. A streak went from the dashboard, across the air-conditioning vents, over most of the door panel, and finally over the edge of the lowered window, dripping a trail onto the asphalt.
