Tryp stumbled beside Elfie, wishing that he were far drunker than he was. The nightmares were just on the other side of that thin membrane of willpower, fighting to get through, and as soon as he unclenched his mind to go to sleep, they would pour into him.
Elfie led him through the hotel hallways, holding him up. Her tiny body under his arm warmed his side.
Her real name couldn’t be Elfie, he hoped. “What’s your name?” It came out more slurred than he had thought it would.
“I’m Elfie,” she said. “I’m your pyrotechnics engineer. Come on, let’s pour you into bed. You’re drunk.”
“I know you’re Elfie. Your real name.”
She held him up for several more steps, and they passed two hotel doors. “Elsa,” she finally said. “Elsa Hernandez, but everyone calls me Elfie.”
“Do you want them to call you Elfie?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes I forget to answer to Elsa.”
“Okay, Elfie.” He tried not to lean on her fragile shoulders too much, but floor waved under his feet and the walls blinked into existence in front of him and then vanished.
A bed rose to meet his face, and he went limp on the sheets. “Elfie, stay with me.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Tryp.” Her voice was light and sweet amid the roaring in his head and the high whine in his ears. His ears rang every night after the concert for hours.
As he closed his eyes, the hotel walls turned red, and he pried them open again, unwilling to go there yet. He needed more whiskey. “Don’t leave. I’ll die in my sleep and no one will know.”
“You’ll be okay, Tryp. You’re just wasted.”
“It’s not that. Please don’t leave.” When she had stayed last night and he had awakened to her in the room, touching his shoulder, still here, he had exhaled for the first time in years. So many years.
“Please stay,” he muttered. The pillow, half-over his mouth, smothered him, and his own fetid whiskey breath billowed back into his face. “Just for a while.”
“Just for a while,” he heard her say. The bed bent away from him, and his eyes flickered open. She was sitting on the side of the bed, her head cocked to the side, watching him.
Her eyes were so blue, that light blue that the older men liked, and her long, blond hair would have driven them wild. She would have been auctioned off or given as prize years ago, because she was all of nineteen now.
Damn, he needed more whiskey.
Tryp reached for her, but sleep was coming for him. He barely moved his hand, the motion of a dying man crawling and stretching for something futile.
Warmth covered his hand.
With a deep breath, he pushed open his eyes again. Elfie’s hand was over his, holding his fingers.
As he lost his battle with the liquor, the warmth of her hand snapped through his brain, bringing back memories.
Blood.
He heard her screaming and sobbing, and Tryp sprinted though the dark hallways of the house, running down the corridor that led to the bedroom where he knew they would be. Even though Tryp was fourteen, he was already muscled and strong enough to hit that bedroom door with his shoulder and shatter the frame around the lock.
Scarlet stained the white bed.
Sariah huddled on the floor, holding her bleeding mouth and his step-father holding a belt in his fist. His sagging face twisted with rage.
Tryp swam back to consciousness on a filthy couch, smells of shit and rotten food hanging in his nose. He staggered to the bathroom to hurl the acid that was eating his stomach, but Sheridette lay splayed on the floor, a needle still piercing her arm. Crimson splashed her arm, her naked stomach, and the walls.
Another one. There was always another one.
He knew there had to have been blood, but he never saw it.
Tryp pressed his whole body against the flimsy door to the bathroom on the tour bus, begging Lynda to open the door, to let him in, to tell him that it wasn’t true, to stop the bleeding somehow, to tell him that his first child wasn’t dying in there.
Jonas had peeled him off the door and shoved him into Xan’s arms while he fought to get back to her, but Lynda finally opened the door for Jonas. He crouched and spoke softly while Tryp tried to throw Xan off and get free, but Xan had wrapped his arms around Tryp’s arms and chest so he couldn’t move or fight. Xan murmured something in Tryp’s ear that sounded like another language but he was still roaring his own pain.
In the bed, Tryp was just as paralyzed, a mammoth weight pressing him into the mattress and pillow.
On the bus, Jonas had stood as the door slid closed. “We need to take her to an ER, but I’m sorry, Tryp. These things happen. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
His legs hadn’t supported him, and he collapsed. Xan fell with him and rocked him, still murmuring.
Light.
Red light, because the sunlight shined through the blood in his eyelids, and Tryp tried to open his eyes. Gunk matted his eyelashes, the residue of blood and whiskey and nightmares.
“Tryfon, are you okay?” Elfie asked, rocking his shoulder. Sunlight glowed on her pale blond hair that was already scraped back into a knot on the back of her head, and she was wearing black cargo pants and a black tank top.
Tryp gathered his arms, pushing himself to sit up in the white sheets. Vomit coated his tongue, and broken glass filled his head. His feet felt oddly comfortable, and he stretched his toes in his socks. His boots had been placed on the floor over by the chair.
He asked her, “You stayed with me?”
“Um, yeah,” she said, her blue eyes filled with concern. “Are you all right?”
Cornflower blue. That was what his step-father had always called that shade of blue when he saw a young woman with those eyes. Cornflower blue. Just a tinge of gray in summer sky blue.
He stumbled to the bathroom to throw it all up.