I’d forgotten not to spirit to Ren. He might’ve gotten lucky tonight, and I’d be in for a sight I’d never forget. Instead, I flinched in surprise to find him sitting on his kitchen floor, his face hidden in his folded arms.
I dropped to my knees. “Ren?”
He lifted his head. He’d tried his best to take off his skull makeup, though gray smudges still smeared deeper shadows than usual around his eyes, which were hazy, a touch drunk. Even so, he looked unsurprised by my arrival, like he’d felt me coming.
My hands were reaching with a mind of their own for his face. Then I remembered myself, pulling back. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said with a giggle, as if he were lying, playing innocent. Then he closed his eyes, leaning his head back with a sound that pitched too low for a laugh, his mouth curled the wrong direction. “Nothing at all.”
I ought to have felt disappointed. My chest eased, unburdened.
I wanted to trace his jawline, have a sip of whatever he’d been having. But if he couldn’t hold it, then I wouldn’t, either. I got up and grabbed him some water.
“Did you strike out?” I asked, sinking beside him again. “It’s happened to the best of us. And, you know, me.”
He shook his head, or tried at least, like moving too much made him dizzy. “I didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“We could’ve, but—I just—”
I couldn’t tell if he was too drunk to articulate, or overwhelmed by something else.
“Why not?” I asked.
After downing the whole cup, he sounded more focused, trying to sharpen the tipsy haze on his tongue. “I just had this moment, washing off the paint in her bathroom sink, then looking up in the mirror, and realizing—”
He bit off whatever he’d been about to say.
“What?”
I shouldn’t have asked, because he straightened up, looking at me with sudden resolve. It made me shiver, like the chill before a storm. I dug my nails into my palm, in lieu of anything else to hold, clutch for life.
“Don’t be mad,” he said. “But I did fall for you, after all.”
I let my head fall back, wishing I could bang it good and hard against the cabinets. My voice trembled. “I told you not to get sappy.”
He moved to kneel over me. “Look, I don’t care if we can’t get physical. Tell me you don’t still feel something whenever we touch.”
“It’s not that,” I said, hugging my legs.
“Then what is it? Why can’t we give this a try?”
I covered my face. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Mal—”
“I’ve thought a lot about us, all right?” I got on my knees, so I could meet his eyes. His mouth kept rising and falling between a smile and a frown as I went on. “I can’t even sleep, but I’m constantly dreaming about you. Not just about getting into your pants, either. I’m fucking haunted by the possibility that if we’d met in life, we could’ve gotten somewhere. Maybe not white picket fence stuff, but like… sharing a place, for real, with lights and plants and real furniture. Being the kind of people who throw dinner parties for their friends and family. I’m not painting a very good picture, but it doesn’t matter, anyway.” I sank back down on the floor. “We’re too late.”
He stared at me, blinking like he didn’t know where to start. At last, he said, “We did meet.”
I shrugged helplessly at him. “What in the hell…?”
“You used to have blue hair, right?”
I’d never told him that. “Why do you ask?”
“I didn’t get a good look at your face, at the time, but I remember your hair. The same as all your pictures when I looked you up. I’m sure it was you.”
Now I knew where he’d seen me, why he’d hesitated to bring it up. That must’ve been how he’d managed to get through to me, back when I went geist. Why he’d looked younger in my mind, strapped to a bed at first, before aging up into his usual self. It had started as a memory. It choked me with a wave of nausea, sick with sympathy and surprise.
“You were on the ward with me?”
We’d each had our own breakdowns keeping us from getting a good, lucid look at each other.
“I think you can figure how I ended up in there,” he said.
“Same.”
“But you didn’t get committed with me to psych, unless you went someplace else?”
“I played dumb, talked them into thinking it was an accident, like I didn’t know my alcohol limit. So I detoxed, went to a couple meetings, never mentioned all the symptoms that might’ve gotten me a more accurate diagnosis.”
His mouth fell in disbelief. “You got off lucky.”
“I don’t know about that.”
It hadn’t exactly been the best time and place. In fact, it might’ve been the actual worst time and place. But we’d both been alive.
My voice rasped low, barely above a whisper, like I could tiptoe around it, say it without saying it. “What if I’d transferred with you, gotten some help?”
His jaw went tight. “As if.”
“I know they didn’t help you—”
“They don’t help anyone, locking them up like animals.”
“That’s not what I mean—”
“Mal, I’m sorry, but if you knew the things they do to you in there—they did to me—”
All the locks and chains in his place began to rattle. We looked around, but there were no geists.
It was too late to hit the brakes on this conversation. I watched as the crash turned into a pile-up.
I growled. “Fine! Not transferred, not committed. But if—if I did get help somehow… what if I could’ve gotten better?”
He bit his lip, shaking his head, eyes glistening.
“I might still be here with you, but… not like this.”
I showed him my palms, like they were see-through, or decomposing. He reached for them.
“You are still here,” he said.
I could hardly take the tenderness in his gaze, let alone his hands, if he tried and failed to touch me. I shied away. My throat closed, as if to keep me from saying it. “It’s all my fault.” I tasted salt, wiped at my face. Through the tears, I looked up, and flashed my coin-trick smile. “I lied.”
Not just to him, or to Cris. Mostly to myself. Every time I came close to letting the truth break the surface of my mind, the lights would flicker, or the walls would crack, or the radio would blare. So I buried it, again and again.
Now the kitchen light flashed, the faucet poured open, the stove glowed red.
“I did kind of kill myself.”
Up on the roof ’s ledge, looking down at the void below, I’d danced. Just a joking little two-step, playing ding-dong ditch at death’s door. When I slipped, it might as well have been a jump.
Ren didn’t flinch at all. Not even when the lightbulb popped and the cabinet doors splintered open and the coffee pot burst into pieces. He kept his eyes on me, like if he looked away, I’d disappear.
“You’re here,” he said. “It’s not the best time, but we met, we’re here.”
His hands through mine weren’t tangible, but they filled me with warmth. Or they would have, if I weren’t so cold, like lighting a match in the rain. What he felt for me couldn’t hold a candle to my darkness.
Then I couldn’t feel anything at all, aside from the chafing on my wrists and ankles.
Those might’ve been my tears on his cheeks. “Please don’t go.”
If I didn’t, I’d go geist. I could barely talk for the tube crawling down my throat.