“Why would you be in a college town—Oh. You want to teach?”
“I don’t have official offers right now, of course, but my advisor at Smith College is already begging me to stay. And I advised on this grant about Feminism and Families in the Trojan War at Berkley, and I would love to work with them.”
“Oh, Avery. Do you think Gabriel wouldn’t follow you there?”
“He would.”
“Then what’s the problem.”
“That’s just it. He would follow me someplace that isn’t good for him, that wouldn’t make him happy. And how do I know that? Because he isn’t happy now, and he isn’t telling me. What kind of future is that? Him getting quieter and quieter while I traipse around academia, doing whatever I want?”
“Honestly I love that you can call writing ten thousand pages on mythological ovaries traipsing, but I think you really need to talk to Gabriel. What if it’s actually his greatest dream to live in a snooty college town, wearing a black turtleneck and sipping espresso with his pinky finger up?” At her dubious look, I say, “Okay, probably not. But I still think you should talk to him.”
“I’ll think about it,” she says, but that probably means she’s going to stare at him and sigh over him and then sacrifice what she loves so she can be with him. It’s almost enough to make me mad, but the truth is, I don’t know the answer. What if two people love each other but they want different things? What if love is nothing but an endless wheel of compromise?
What if they mix and mix and mix until both of them are shadows of their former selves?
I grab the chart at the foot of the hospital bed and flip to an empty page, scribbling down some notes. “Can you go home and get this stuff from the house? I need a change of clothes.”
There’s more than clothes on the list. A portable speaker. The latest copy of Mom’s meditation magazine. All of it might actually get used in the next few hours, but that isn’t the only reason I’m sending her. I need the steady beep-beep-beep as much as I despise it. I’m going insane in this room, a fast and efficient one-way trip to despair, and I don’t need company for the ride. At least not in the form of a sweet, steady friend.
I wait until she’s gone before I pull out my cell phone.
Christopher does not answer his phone.
“It’s me,” I say to a thousand volts of mindless electricity. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here. How does it feel like my heart is being burned right here in my chest, on fire, but I’m not doing anything but sitting here? I need you to… God, Christopher. I just need you. Where are you? Why won’t you come?”
There’s a commotion in the hallway, and I close my eyes to shut it out. It doesn’t go away, though; it gets louder. Voices filter through the fog in my head like rays of too-bright sun.
“The ER is downstairs!”
“She’s not here to see a doctor,” says a haggard voice in a smooth accent I recognize. “She’s here to visit someone. Room three hundred forty-two.”
That’s where I’m sitting, except why would Hugo have come with Bea? Oh God. I rush into the hallway in time to see my good friend retch into a waste bin. “I’m fine,” she mumbles, clearly miserable. And very pregnant. “Ignore me. I’m fine.”
“Oh my God.” I lean down to stroke her red hair. “I hate you right now. I can’t believe you left the hotel for this. You shouldn’t have, but I love you.”
She laughs weakly. “I thought I could make it.”
Beatrix Cartwright has been severely agoraphobic since the death of her parents over a decade ago, not even leaving the penthouse hotel where she practically raised herself ever since. She’s been making strides lately—short visits to the Den, to the museum, to a park. Those required a great deal of planning, not a phone call in the middle of the night.
Her usually pale skin has turned a deathly white with a faint greenish tinge. Her eyes are wide in her face when she looks up at me. I suspect her current state has way more to do with being out of her home so unexpectedly, but it can’t be good for her. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
I think she’s apologizing for my mother’s condition, but I’m not ready to deal with that, so I pretend it’s still about throwing up. “Nonsense. Hugo is the one who should be sorry. I can’t believe he let you leave in this condition.”
Hugo Bellmont is perpetually cool and effortlessly suave pretty much every time I’ve met him, but he looks frayed at the edges for maybe the first time ever. His hair is all out of place, his shirt wrinkled. Lines of stress bracket his mouth. “She insisted,” he says, and in the hoarseness of his voice I hear every argument he must have made to her.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say, and as I say it, I realize it’s true. Part of me wants to shove my head into the ground, but that’s the cowardly part. The stronger side of me wants my friends to help me through this. “Come inside the room. If you throw up again I’ll hold your hair back.”
I help her inside, where she looks at my mother’s still form on the hospital bed with such a severe expression that I wonder if she’s going to throw up again. She must be remembering her own mother. The plane crash. “My God,” I whisper. “Was your last memory at the hospital?”
“Close,” Hugo says, his expression grim.
“I’m completely fine,” Bea says, her voice weak and very much not fine. It’s only a testament to her loyalty as a friend that she’s holding it together, but I feel the fine tremors shake her where I’m helping her stand.
“Sit down at least.” The gray cloth chair has questionable stains and is probably permanently molded into the shape of my ass, but at least she stops swaying when she’s there.
Hugo kneels down beside her, a look of worry on his handsome, angular face. There’s nothing of the seducer in him now. He looks elemental, all the walls he’s built up torn down to reveal a love so raw it hurts to look at it. “Rest, ma belle. We’re here now, so you can rest for a moment.”
“You must be dehydrated.” The last inch of coffee in my Styrofoam turned cold and lumpy a while ago. “Sutton went down to the gift shop in search of food a few minutes ago. I’m sure he’ll come back with a water bottle or something, or we can send him out again.”
Sutton will know how to fix this. That’s what he’s done for me the past few hours, for the whole time I’ve known him—found the sharp points in my world and smoothed them down. There’s a sense that I’m coasting along in this calm new landscape, closing my eyes as the wind hits my face, blind to the dangers around me.
It’s a relief after facing off with a man who turned every edge into a blade.
Bea faced a severe anxiety attack in order to be by my side, and even though I would have told her not to come, I’m touched. In contrast Christopher Bardot cannot even be moved to answer his phone. Sorry about missing the Death Plan, he could have sent in a text message, like a sad RSVP to a party he wouldn’t be attending.
Instead there’s only a ringing silence.
Hugo looks pained. “That’s the reason she insisted on coming here.”