17. Joel

CHAPTER 17

JOEL

" J oel, wait up!" Anna yells but I can barely hear her over the pounding rush in my ears.

This is a nightmare. I should have known this would happen. I was so damn stupid for thinking I could get away with being outside when the vultures of the press are still on the hunt for me. I read the news this morning. I'm still featuring heavily and they're wondering where I've gone because I haven't been seen for a few days. They're just waiting to pounce on me again and tear me to shreds.

And now I'm going to get Anna caught in the crossfire. She doesn't deserve that. I don't want her to be Lockhart's Mystery Woman, for hack journalists to dig into her past and uncover all the stuff she won't tell me just to splash it all over the internet.

She's right. I am an idiot. And now my ego is going to have ruined both our lives. She'll never forgive me if she gets turned into a scandal.

I'll never forgive myself if I break her heart.

I have no idea where I'm going, but my feet keep hitting the concrete hard and fast, taking me as far away as possible from cameras and reporters. God, even normal people have cameras these days in their phones. What if they've been filming too? What if we're being blasted all across everyone's timelines now? What if they're about to start chasing us down for sport?

She's still yelling, tugging on my hand to try and slow me down. It's only then that I realize she's still holding my hand. Something I would have longed for under normal circumstances but right now she feels like one of those huge metal balls they chain prisoners to in films. Isn't what they say about marriage? Ball and chain.

I never understood why you'd marry someone if you felt they dragged you down that much.

I haven't got the time or brainpower for philosophy right now, though. All I know is that I have to get somewhere out of sight, hidden, alone. I wrench my hand free from her grip and hear a noise of surprise. I hope it didn't hurt her feelings. She must know this isn't about her, right?

She's still calling after me, close behind, so I guess she must forgive me. I'm a radar, scanning the crowd for danger as I weave through it. People keep coming at us, brightly colored obstacles bathed in the neon and fluorescent lights of shops, in the faint streetlights above us. Cars crawl past on the road, cab drivers yelling for fares, impatient men yelling at the traffic, cyclists taking their lives into their hands as they brave the road.

I need to stop running. My chest and lungs and stomach feel like they're about to implode and I don't see the point of throwing up if I'm not at least sixteen times over the legal drink and drive limit.

I know this city. I've hidden from cops before in this city. I know where I can go.

I take a sharp right, nearly bowling over an old couple who have armfuls of shopping. I yell an apology at them as I zoom by. The hat and scarf are suffocating now, my head dripping in sweat, so I pull the hat off and throw it to the ground, followed quickly by the scarf. I'll buy Ben new ones if he cares.

There's a series of winding backstreets round here, little alleys that are full of feral cats and dumpsters, all connected to each other through narrow gaps in the buildings. I've hidden here before in various drunken stupors. I think I slept in a dumpster one time. That memory's kind of fuzzy and distant.

Finally, finally, I hit a street with no people and I let myself screech to a halt, my feet and legs burning with the strain of the workout. Anna might think I have personal trainers and nutritionists, but my workouts are random and without direction or discipline. Just like everything else in my life. I look good, but it's not because I try for it.

And that's means I'm unfit as hell.

I land heavily against a wall behind a pile of trash, steaming and stinking in the cold. I'm gasping for breath, trying to claw air back into my lungs which are also on fire. Everything in my whole body is burning up in pain and panic. I unzip the coat and try and let the cold inside in case that helps.

"Joel, for God's sake, stop! What's wrong with you?"

Anna really chased me all this way? She's panting for breath too but she looks like less of a wreck than I do. Maybe she works out for real. I can imagine that. I can see her in her home gym, following her own personal routine, carefully paying attention to her body and how to tune it to perfection.

That's how I know this has driven me loopy because I promised myself I wouldn't think about her body. I wouldn't imagine her in less than she's wearing. I won't.

"I'm sorry," I gasp, wiping sweat out of my eyes. They sting like crazy. "I'm sorry, I just. Cameras. Reporters. Didn't want to be seen."

"It wasn't reporters, Joel!" she yells, angrier than I've ever seen her. Or maybe it's concern? I can't think straight. My head's such a mess so I hold it in my hands because that's the only thing I can think to do.

"The cameras! Didn't you hear them? They were coming for us."

"You fucking idiot." She marches right up to me and says sharply, "It. Wasn't. Reporters."

"They want me," I moan. "They want us. They'll get you too."

Anna sighs hard, still out of breath from our run. Then she gets really close to me and I think for a second that she's about to slap me. But her voice is gentler now, more worried. "Listen to me, okay? It wasn't reporters. We were on Jubilee Boulevard, there's like seven fancy hotels down there with those big balconies, yeah? People get married there all the time. It was a wedding photoshoot. That's what the cameras were."

Her words both make sense and swim right through me like an unintelligible fog. She doesn't know what they're like. She doesn't need to get caught up in gossip columns and intrusive exposés. I don't want them to ruin her life like they ruin mine.

She stares hard at me, seeing that she isn't getting through. She places her hand on my shoulder and that's like fire too, except good fire, a kind of warm blaze that feels like sitting on a beach on a summer evening, like roasted marshmallows and camp songs. "Joel, are you okay?"

All I can do is shake my head and breathe ragged gasps. I hate that she's seeing me like this. It's pathetic. That's all she's seen of me, a pathetic, stupid, selfish loser who takes every damn thing for granted and believed the best in me when no one else has and is going to go and leave just like everyone else. She's going to leave me even though she's the best thing that's happened to me in years. Her friendship has fixed something in me, made me feel like I'm more than just my father's disappointment.

Now she's seeing me as I truly am again — that scared idiot who falls on the floor and screams when someone challenges him for assuming he has a right to be there. What right do I even have to call myself her friend? What chance is there that she's going to want anything to do with me at all once she leaves? What hope is there for me?

And then she does the thing I'm least expecting.

She rolls her eyes at me — which is pretty standard by now — then squares herself up like she's going to hit me. I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing for the impact, but instead she grabs my coat and drags me towards her until her lips crash into mine and she's kissing me.

She's kissing me.

She's kissing me?

I snap back to reality to make sure this isn't imaginary because it's definitely the kind of figment my imagination would cook up just to taunt me. But no, it isn't. It's incredibly real. Anna Romero is kissing me.

So I do the only thing that makes sense as soon as the shock wears off and I can move my limbs again. I wrap my arms around her back, hug her tight to me and kiss her back. She tastes of chocolate and smells like sweat and it's the sweetest combination I've ever experienced. It's raw. Unfiltered. There's no pretending.

It's just her lips on mine and my tongue in her mouth and our hands in each other's hair and my heart exploding in my chest and I think I might be moaning an embarrassing amount because of how much I like the way we're kissing, like we're fifteen and we've just learned what making out is.

I don't ever, ever want this moment to end. I'm glad I'm stone cold sober because it means I won't forget. Even if this is it, I won't forget it.

I don't want it to end but it has to because we both need air to live.

She pulls away from me, her lips shining and her eyes wide, breathing hard. She's so gorgeous and I want to kiss her again. I want to kiss her forever.

But we don't.

We don't say a word, frozen by what just happened, what it might mean.

Eventually, we both pull ourselves together, and walk in silent agreement to the nearest subway station where we sit on the train and leave a deliberate pocket of air between our legs and hands, staring forward, listening to the screeching of metal wheels on the tracks, to the people nearby chattering words I can't understand, to the crackling automated announcement counting down the stops to the one we need.

I've never taken a ride that felt so long.

When we get home, she unlocks the door and doesn't look at me or hesitate as she rushes towards her room and slams the door behind her, leaving me standing in the middle of the floor, alone.