Chapter 31

The funny thingabout moments where your world comes crashing down around you…

Is that you have no idea that that's what's happening.

Denial has a funny way of shielding us when the first strike hits…

Making the fallout all the more slow. Painful.

Making you resent your brain for trying to cushion something that can't be cushioned.

Muscle memory.

I heard it referred that way once—grief. How in a sense, it's just our brains pulsing with memories and chemical connections, connections we call love…for something—someone who's no longer there.

And never will be again.

But it takes time…

To form new connections. To get our brains to rewire, essentially.

Hence, the denial.

One day, I'll look back on this moment—these first twenty-four hours, this first week, this first month….

And I'll think:

Fuck, man. You had no idea.

I wakeup from a heavy sleep to birds chirping.

Groaning, I roll over, burying my face in my pillow.

Exhaustion tugs at me, pulling me back under just as the chirping finally stops.

Only to begin again a moment later.

Frowning, I lift my head, squinting into the thinning darkness of my bedroom. Awareness pokes into the fog of sleep still trying to pull me down, and I realize it's not birds chirping. But my phone ringing.

Grumbling under my breath, I knuckle the grit from my eyes and push up on my forearm, resting all my weight as I use my other one to blindly feel around the bed.

The phone stops ringing…

And immediately starts up again.

It's then that I realize my heart is racing, and I'm breathing faster. My body reacting to some…unseen threat, before I even knew I had something to worry about.

I sit up fully and look around the bed, blinking rapidly to get my eyes to adjust.

Finally, I see it—right at the very corner of the mattress.

There's a soft snore coming from the floor, and I glance down just as I grab my phone, remembering Waylon crashed here. He's dead to the world. After how much he drank last night, he's got to have a wicked hangover coming his way.

But when I see the name flashing on the screen, all thoughts of Waylon and his impending reckoning are forgotten, as everything just grinds to a halt.

It's probably only seconds that I hold the phone in my hand, staring at it like it's a bomb about to go off. But in that blip of time, an eternity passes, where my brain just sort of…fires off in all directions.

My heart pounds, thrashing in my chest.

Jeremy never calls me.

He hates talking on the phone.

My jaw quivers, and I look down at the heap on the floor. "Waylon," I murmur, though I'm not sure why.

Obviously, he doesn't hear me.

The phone stops ringing, and I pray it doesn't start again.

Maybe I'm still sleeping.

Dreaming.

This isn't real.

The phone starts ringing again, and a burning sensation fills my throat and ears.

"Waylon," I say more harshly this time. Louder.

Still nothing.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Praying…to who, I don't know? Why? No clue. I just…

He never calls me.

He never. Fucking. Calls me.

"It's not real," I murmur. "You're asleep. You have to face whatever this is, and then you'll wake up. That's how it goes."

Inhaling deeply, I hit answer, and bring the phone up to my ear. "Hello."

I'm met with a bone-chilling silence, the likes of which I've never heard before.

My teeth chatter. "JJ?"

Maybe it's a butt dial… maybe he's lying on his phone. Sleep-calling.

Logically, I know how unlikely that is, but I can't help but scramble for some sort of lifeline. Something that justifies this early morning call from the last person I'd ever expect to call me period.

The silence turns into a hitched inhale and I frown. "Jeremy? Are you there? Are you okay?"

One heartbeat. Two…

"Mason…"

Chills skate over my skin.

I've heard him say my name like, what, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of times over the years.

But never, have I heard him say my name like that.

Like it's an…echo. Like years rather than physical distance separates us, and I'm only hearing now, far, far too late.

"They're dead, kid. The stars. Those twinklin' lights? That's from billions and billions of years ago. They're so bright, because what you're seeing is them exploding. Dying. We're so far away, it's only reachin' us now."

"Mason."

This time, he says it more strongly, shattering the memory of my dad's words tumbling around my head, and I wonder if I just…imagined it, the first time Jeremy said my name.

"What is it?" I murmur.

And he's speaking, saying things that…that don't make sense.

I hear the words, but it's as if he's speaking a different language.

Dreaming. I have to be dreaming.

His words start running faster together, his breaths hitching. Somewhere in the back of my mind, an urge rises up to calm him—comfort him—like a long forgotten instinct. A reflex.

Wherever it comes from though…

It's too far away to reach right now.

Miles and miles away…

And for a moment, I'm no longer here, but thrown back to last spring. Junior year was wrapping up, with finals on the horizon. I'd gone over to the Montgomerys after Mom got home from her shift at the hospital…

"‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,'" I hear Izzy murmuring, her voice coming through Jeremy's cracked door. "‘But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.'"

I nudge the door open to find Izzy sprawled out on her stomach on Jeremy's bed, a book spread out in her hands, feet kicked up behind her. Next to her, her brother lays on his back, a paperback split face-down across his chest as he stares up at the star and planet stickers plastered across his ceiling.

Izzy lifts her head, grinning when she sees me. "Hey."

Jeremy rolls his head back, peering at me from upside down.

"Did I miss the memo for the poetry reading tonight?" I say, closing the door behind me.

Izzy wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. "Funny."

Joining them, I take a seat on the edge of the mattress, as Izzy explains about the assignment she has to do for English—she has to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the class, and write a five page essay analyzing it down to the bones.

I mess up her wild hair, sending brown tendrils flying. "Well, that's what you get for insisting on taking honors this year."

She sticks her tongue out at me at the same time Jeremy chuckles, and says, "That's what I said."

I meet his gaze and smile.

"You know it's the only way they'll let me into AP next year." She huffs. "‘Poetry is music written for the human voice.'" She nods succinctly, as if affirming the words for herself.

I arch her a knowing brow. "Who said that one?"

She opens her mouth, but Jeremy beats her to it. "Maya Angelou." He flips the page in what I now notice is a weathered copy of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, attention pointedly drawn to the text filling the pages. It's his favorite book—really the only novel I've ever seen him read. He became obsessed after we watched the movie years ago.

Been a while since I last saw him reading it.

Izzy shrugs, and clarifies. "Maybe I don't want piano to be all that I am."

I make a face at that. "Since when?"

She mock-gasps and shoves me, and I use the opportunity to tug her into my arms, before tackling her onto the bed. Jeremy makes an exasperated noise, and tosses his book to the side. Surprisingly, though, he doesn't get up. Just meets my gaze across the rumpled bedding, where I grin breathlessly from atop Izzy.

His expression is as dry and reticent as ever as he shakes his head at our antics. "Can you, like, not do this on my bed?"

"What?" I say innocently. "You mean this?"

And then I proceed to dig my fingers into Izzy's sides, tickling her. Her hyena laugh filling the room?—

A rustle soundsfrom down the line, snapping me back to the present, just before a new voice fills my ear, loud and clear.

"Mason?"

Ray, I think numbly.

He mutters a curse, then says, "We don't know anything yet. We're looking for her."

Frowning, I stare ahead. "She's…alive?"

He sucks in a breath.

"Yes. Yes," he says fiercely. "She's gonna turn up. She might've went to the beach. Fell asleep. Or…"

He keeps talking, but a buzzing in my ear rises up, drowning him out.

I thought…

I thought…

"We'll find her. This is all a big misunderstanding."

I feel myself nod.

On the floor, Waylon rolls onto his back, stretches his arms behind him, and cracks a hazel eye up at me. "The fuck, dude? Go back to bed."

"Everything will be okay," Ray tells me.

My lip ticks up, my vision blurring. "Yeah…"

In my mind, images flash.

A small hand splayed against a rain-speckled window.

Red headlights disappearing into a gray oblivion.

Hazel eyes surrounded in bruises.

And, lastly, it's an image of Jeremy, bent over in boxer briefs….

And I want to fucking throw up.

Hope has me clinging to Ray's assurances before he hangs up.

Denial has me getting out of bed and walking past a confused, fully-awake-now Waylon, and into the hall.

Realization has me slamming the bathroom door behind me, and crashing to my knees.

I stare at the tiled floor…

And I barter with every deity or demon who might be listening, that Ray's words of assurance aren't a lie.

Yet somehow already knowing…

Nothing will ever be the same.