8. Olive

8

OLIVE

I t’s one in the morning when I knock on Alik’s door, but he answers fully dressed, his hair in place, his eyes relaxed without a trace of sleep in them.

I fidget with my hands while inching closer to him to speak, even though no one is around to hear me. It doesn’t feel that way. In the hours since Alik left me, I felt as though I was being watched, followed by a person just out of reach. As though I’d be yanked into a dark corner any minute, silenced forever.

“It’s done,” I say, searching his face for interest. I see nothing. His expression is neutral, like he’s never even met me, let alone plotted with me on something so major.

“Good.” He dips his chin and goes to close the door, but I slam my hand on the wood to stop it.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my heart skipping with panic. “Aren’t you going to ask what happened? Or if I’m okay?”

His gaze flicks up and down my body. “You look fine.”

I look fine?

I’m not fine .

My nerves feel like they're overheating. My eyes strain to see everything around me, and I’m constantly petrified that something or someone is at my back.

I need someone to tell me nothing is there, that I’m imagining all of this. I need him .

“Right, but?—”

“It’s late,” he cuts me off like my problems are an annoyance for him. “You should try to get some rest. I have some work to get back to.” He crooks a thumb over his shoulder, but I don’t take my eyes off his face.

When he goes to shut his door again, I let my hand slide off it and close my eyes. “Alik, I’m scared.”

My voice is as small as my pride, but it’s loud enough that he hears it. The door doesn’t shut, and I open my eyes to see him looking over me like he’s conflicted. His pursed lips make him almost appear pained.

After several seconds, he steps to the side to let me in, and a sharp sigh rushes from me as I shuffle into his apartment. As soon as the door shuts, a blanket of safety wraps around me. It reminds me of when I was a child, making sure my closet door was shut to keep the monsters out. Maybe this isn’t true safety, but it feels a hell of a lot better than being by myself.

“Thank you.”

Instead of responding, he walks to his computer in the living room and turns off all three monitors, set up like he’s a high-tech hacker or something. I wander closer, my arms crossing over my chest as I take in the space I’ve imagined hundreds of times.

“Your apartment has a different layout than mine,” I pretend to observe. I looked at the plans weeks ago, so I already knew how his apartment was set up. His kitchen in front of the door, his living room to the side that leads to his bedroom. His bedroom furniture is all black in my imagination, but so was his couch, and this one is a plush green. I kind of like that I was wrong. That he’s still a mystery.

I run my finger over the edge of one of the monitors while imagining what it’s for. Hacking right? Who else has a setup like this?

“Please don’t touch that.”

I jump at his voice and bring my hand away. I grip my wrist in case it decides to grow a mind of its own. “I’m sorry.”

Several awkward seconds pass until I start to worry he’ll kick me out. The lining of my throat thickens, and my feet shuffle, but he speaks before I can figure out the words that will allow me to stay.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Yes, please,” I squeak, keeping my eyes down. I follow him to the kitchen and stand awkwardly while he fills two glasses with water.

The kitchen table catches my eye, but it only has one chair, so I don’t know if I should sit.

One chair.

How confident must a person be in their loneliness to have only one chair?

He hands me my glass and pulls out the chair for me, the legs scraping on the tile. I sit and take a sip of the water so my mouth is busy and I don’t have to speak through my thick throat. The water barely passes.

“So…” Alik leans against his wall on the other side of the table. It feels strange for me to sit while he stands. Like it gives him more power over me, as if he needs it. “What are you so afraid of? I told you, you’re the DEA princess. No one is coming for you.”

I lift my eyes to look at him. “How can you be so certain?”

He’s quiet for a few moments while he stares at me with an intensity that holds my gaze. His red iris shows nothing of what he’s thinking, but everything he says seems to be so well crafted.

“I guess I’m not… But if you’re so worried about it, why come here? Why not go to your father?”

My eyes draw to my glass as I run my finger around the rim.

“No one would touch the Special Agent in Charge. Of that I am certain. If anyone can protect you, it’s your father.”

“He can’t know what I did.”

“Why not?”

I shake my head instead of answering.

“If you put it on record like I told you to, he’ll know what you did by morning.”

My finger slows its pace tracing the rim, though Alik’s words don’t surprise me. Of course, I already knew that, I just… I don’t know. I’m trying to avoid the inevitable.

Imagining the shame that will sag my dad’s chronically tired face sends a knife to my gut. It butchers me worse than anything the Irish could ever do. Maybe he could protect me from them, but when he finds out my medication isn’t working, when the next incident occurs that he has to cover up… He’ll wish he’d let them kill me. Relieved him of his burden.

“Then maybe it’s best if the Irish just killed me.”

“What?” Alik asks, sounding genuinely confused.

“I’m not welcome there,” I snap like this is something he somehow should’ve known. “I’d rather die than see the shameful look my mom has for me. But I get it. You don’t want me here either, so I’ll go.” I stand but don’t make it a foot toward the door before Alik takes both my shoulders to stop me.

When he turns me around, I stare up at his serious expression.

“Who says I don’t want you here?”

I blink at him but don’t respond. He confuses me. He was so conflicted over letting me in, I could see it all over him, but now, as I’m locked in his arms, he looks like he has no intention of letting me leave.

And I don’t want him to.

He nods to the table. “Sit.”

When his strong hands leave me, he walks to his computer with a smooth gait that reminds me of a predator. He grabs the computer chair then drags it over while I sit down in the wooden chair.

I sip at my water while my nervous energy sparks in the room. Alik doesn’t mention it as he sits down and leans back, his eyes pinned to me.

A minute ticks by.

Then another.

My water is half empty by the time he speaks.

“Did you mean it when you say you’d rather die than face your mother?”

Face her?

No.

Force myself onto her?

Yes.

I press my sweaty palms onto my jeans and chew on my cheek.

“I guess if you’re here instead of there, it must be true.”

I don’t respond. How is it possible for this man to make me feel so unsettled while at the same time, with him feels like the safest place to be?

“You’re a peculiar girl.”

Yeah… He’s weird too.

Really weird.

It’s part of why I’m drawn to him.

“We all have things that make us unique,” I say, tucking my hands beneath my thighs.

“Some more than others.”

Running my tongue over the back of my teeth, I look up at him. “So what’s unique about you?”

White teeth gleam when he smiles, and he leans back in his chair while he pretends to consider it. Alik’s most unique trait couldn’t be more obvious, but he doesn’t seem interested in pointing out his eye. Even though I’m dying to know about it.

“I can whistle very loudly.”

A short laugh bursts out of me. “Is that all there is to you?”

He shrugs.

“Alik,” I say through a humored smile. When I let it fall, he does the same, sensing my serious question coming. “What happened to your eye?”

Seconds pass while he leans back, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. He stares at me so long that I start to squirm and regret asking the question. I knew it was a bad idea. I don’t know why I feel like it’s so important.

“You want to know something about me?” he asks, his voice low and menacing.

It seems like maybe I should say no. Shake my head and apologize. But I can’t help myself when I nod.

“In eight years, not a single person has asked me about my eye. Until now.”

My eyes lower. “Alik, I?—”

“You’re not afraid of me,” he says, nearly whispering. “Not for your life, at least. If you see me coming, you’ll run and hide in your apartment like a scared little mouse, but then you’ll ask me point blank to my face about a disfigurement not even my superiors have the spine to talk about in front of me.” He shakes his head. “You are so goddamn strange.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not insulting you.”

When I look up, Alik doesn’t look angry like I expect. Or cold. He looks at me with fiery interest blazing in his eyes.

He takes a drink of his water then clears his throat as he sets the glass down.

“Eight years ago, a few friends and I did a job that went sour.” He leans back and rests his hands on the arms of the chair while staring at me like he’s paying as much attention to me as I am to him, even though he’s the one telling the story.

“We were captured by some people who put us in different rooms and tortured us.” He shrugs with no emotion crossing his face. “I don’t know what exactly they used on me. I just remember the device made a shrill sound that I heard in my ears for the next three months, and the pain was bad enough that I begged them to pluck my eye out instead.”

I pull my hands from underneath me as a shiver runs over my spine. He doesn’t look shaken or traumatized. He doesn’t look like he wants or needs a hug.

But he’s damaged. So much more than in any of the imagined backstories I made for him.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

His face doesn’t change, but I know he heard me.

“But y-you escaped?”

“Something like that.”

“What do you mean?”

He lets several seconds pass like he’s choosing his words carefully. “The friend who found us the job was an important person to a lot of people. They came for him.”

“But not you?” I ask, leaning his way.

His lips lift at the corners as he looks at me with amusement, like I’m missing something. “I’m not that important.”

Ouch .

His life is so extreme, but still, I can’t help but relate to it. I know what it’s like to be the unimportant one. To be rescued and unwanted all at once.

“Sounds like you have even shittier taste in friends than I do.” I chuckle, trying to come off as lighthearted.

“You have no idea.”

No idea .

He has no idea.

The more he talks about important people and jobs and being in a network… It sounds familiar. He’s in a brotherhood just like Creeper is, just like Damian was. Not one affiliated with the Irish, but something else. To me, they’re all the same.

Except, I envied the bond Creeper and Damian formed within their family. Alik doesn’t seem bonded to anyone.

“Are your friends the reason you started doing drugs?” Alik asks. Unlike the topic of his eye, people aren’t afraid to ask me this question. And I always give the same response.

When I was sixteen, I got into a relationship that put me in with a bad crowd. I went from weed to pills and struggled with that addiction until I was twenty-two when I met Damian. He introduced me to heroin, and I was full blown into my addiction the two years we were together. His tragic death is what it took for me to get clean, and I’ve never felt better than I have in the past year.

None of that is factually inaccurate. But it’s bullshit.

“No,” I say, peering out his kitchen window, the same one I’ve watched him through dozens of times. If I were in the laundromat, I’d be able to see him standing. I’m too low. “I started smoking weed because the medication I was on gave me body aches and nausea, and a guy I was seeing told me smoking might help. It did. And then…”

And then…

So many and thens…

“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “It’s hard to explain. Life just felt really … loud. And when I tried Oxy, it felt like the world quieted for the first time in my life.”

Cravings, deep inside, begin to gnaw at my brain, but what I once thought was a craving for heroin I now recognize as a craving for peace. I found it for a few minutes while high.

When I was high, things slipped from my mind. I forgot things I’d done. People I’d hurt. I forgot who I was .

Now I’ll never forget.

“The truth is, it was never about the drugs. It was about hiding from myself.”

Silence overtakes us for several seconds.

“Why does it sound like you’re telling me a secret?” Alik asks, his voice soft.

I pick at my jeans. “Because I am.”

More silence.

After what must be minutes, Alik lifts his water and throws it back before standing. “It’s late, and no one is coming for you tonight. In the morning, if you still feel unsafe, you should pack a bag and figure something out… But for now, try to get some sleep.”

I nod and slowly stand. “Right.” I smile to try to play it off, but fear returns at the idea of leaving this room. Of closing my eyes. “Thank you for talking to me.”

“Of course.”

He walks me to his door, but before I step through, I turn to him with my chest tightening. I prepare myself to speak so I don’t sound so serious, but I don’t know how I can hide my nervousness from my tone.

“Listen, if I show up here in the middle of the night and I’m not acting myself, don’t open the door.”

He raises a brow. “What?”

I open my mouth but pause as my face tingles. Sweat starts to break out on the back of my neck. “I—I sleepwalk sometimes. It’s super weird. Just… If I’m acting strange, don’t answer.”

He tilts his head while his lips twitch. “You’re always acting strange. How will I be able to tell?”

“You’ll be able to tell,” I say, hearing the seriousness in my tone. He must hear it too because his eyes constrict slightly, and he nods.

“Okay. I’ll be sure to lock my door, then.”

I open my mouth but then just nod and duck beneath his arm into the hall.

“Goodnight, Olive,” he says to my back, making me look at him over my shoulder.

He gives me a sad smile that I don’t quite understand and shuts his door when my mouth opens to reply.

I sigh and stare at his door. “Goodnight, Alik.”