“I had a nightmare last night. In it, I never met Nash. I died in a parasailing accident, and a blue man in a pink suit took me to a white room and showed me Nash Prescott—defending me against Able, feeding me all my life, sending me notes, being the Ben to my Durga, giving me his new first kiss, all the filthy things juxtaposed beside the clean, the baltering, the late nights as ‘roommates’, making love in the rain, the way he loves the same people I love and sees me better than anyone else.”
Ceiling: Stop talking to me, woman.
“I watched it all, thinking it was the most epic love story I’d ever seen. Then, Blue Man shut it off, and I nearly killed him for it. He gave me two options for the afterlife. Door One saves me the heartbreak, but I live a life without ever meeting Nash. Door Two takes me back to day one, where I meet Nash Prescott, eventually fall in love, and experience a pain like I’ve never experienced. Do you want to know which I chose?”
Ceiling: I’m fluent in silence. Please, learn the language, too.
“I chose Door Two. Blue Man patted my shoulder and told me I made the right choice. Apparently, Door One is the bad place and Door Two is the good place. Am I being ridiculous, Ceiling?”
Ceiling: Considering you're talking to an inanimate object and imagining its replies, we’ve sailed past ridiculous and entered involuntary psychiatric hold territory.
“It’s just… everyone in my life lies to me, and I promised I'd never put myself in this situation again. Not if I can help it. Dad—I mean Gideon—lied to me most of my life.”
Ceiling: You mean the man who raised you as his own?
I ignored the buzzkill above me. “Virginia lied to me all my life. Same for Balthazar, but who the hell cares about him?”
Ceiling: Wow. The mom you hate and a guy you considered to be nothing more than a creep until last night lied to you. You seem so torn up about it. Here’s a tissue.
“Fuck you, Ceiling. Such a damn buzzkill.” I made snow angels in the blanket, imagining the comforters in Nash’s penthouse. The quilt ripped when my fingers caught in a hole. “Hank lied to me about his illness. So did Betty and Nash.”
Ceiling: It's almost as if they care enough about you to save you from the pain of watching him die.
“It would be painful, yes, but what’s worse is not being given the option to love him like every moment could be his last. There’s so much I would have done differently.”
Ceiling: If this moment was Nash's or your last moment, would you be here, annoying the hell out of me?
“Did you say something? I couldn’t hear you. Ran out of Q-Tips this morning.” I patted the hole in the quilt as if my touch would heal it. “Do you know what hiraeth is?”
Ceiling: No, but I'm sure you’ll tell me. I'd rather you didn't.
“Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.”
Ceiling: This conversation deserves a name. Then, it’d be the most pathetic entry in the dictionary.
“And on the long list of lies, I can’t even wrap my head around the whole thing about the Winthrop Scandal. I mean, if you think about it, the only person in my life who hasn’t blatantly lied to me is Reed.”
Ceiling: The kid you once thought you were in love with? Hypocritical, since you never told him… and Nash never told you something. I'm sensing a theme. Why do humans leave so much to be desired?
I ignored the last half of Ceiling’s insults. “Stupid that I once considered Reed a recipient of my love. He didn’t compare to Nash. With Nash… It’s a vicious love, the kind that beats me down and robs me of all my possessions until I feel bloodied, worn, and bruised, stolen of everything that makes me… me.”
Ceiling: Sounds healthy. Who needs carrots when you have Nash Prescott?
“I wonder if this is how any of my father’s victims felt. Except… If Nash is to be believed, they’re not my father’s victims.”
Ceiling: You should probably talk to Gideon… and not me.
“You’re right. Tomorrow.” I wrapped myself in the quilt like a burrito. One of those sad and skinny ones from Chipotle, that happens when the customer doesn’t know how to order. “Hey, Ceiling? Avoiding Nash sucks.”
Ceiling: Awwwwww, did the bad boy break your heart?
“Don’t be silly. He didn’t break my heart. He cracked it open.”
Knock!
Knock!
I swung the closet door open, bedhead for days. My heartbeats tripped over themselves, racing at the sight of Nash. He wore a navy three-piece suit, tailored to hug every delicious inch of him.
My hair stuck up in several places. The clinomania shirt I wore boasted drool stains on the shoulder. I’d stayed up all night, talking to Ceiling, and the night before that—the night of Virginia’s dinner—I hadn’t slept at all.
Delirium had set in twelve or so hours ago.
I didn’t know how to act around Nash, so I went with pretending his lies hadn’t gutted me. “How did you know I’m here?”
After we’d returned from the dinner, I’d begged Delilah to grab my boxes and high-tailed to a random floor.
He went along with my ruse, “Full disclosure?”
No. Lie to me again.
“Obviously.”
Nash eyed my shirt, my hair, the quilt behind me, everything. “I checked every room from the ground up. You had to pick the twenty-fourth floor?”
“Had I known, I would have picked the fifty-third.”
I examined him, head to toe, telling myself I did it to confirm the truth and not because I already missed him less than forty hours into our fight. Beneath the Kiton suit, his chest rose and fell a little faster. A thin sheen of sweat misted his forehead. His cheeks flushed the softest shade of pink from the exertion.
Jesus.
He really had inspected every floor. Even he looked like he couldn't believe it. Furrowed brows and jaw a bit slack. His fingers combed through his hair. Once.
I clutched onto the door frame, trying and failing to delete the question from my brain. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Run your hands through your hair. Three times if you hate where you are. Two times if you think someone or something is idiotic. One time if…” I tipped a shoulder up, playing it off as if it meant nothing. “… you’re around me.”
I sucked at this fight thing.
Ceiling: Perhaps you shouldn’t do it. It’ll sure as shit make my life easier.
Me: For the record, I am not crazy. As we speak, he is literally holding a secret back from me. A lie of omission is still a lie! Why doesn't anyone get that?