38. Byrd

38

Byrd

Monday

M y ass is still sore.

I let James think I'm walking gingerly because I spent the night hugging the porcelain throne and that it's the hangover and not the heartbreak keeping me buried in his guest bed all day. I'm not sure he's fooled.

He leaves me with some high-end Whole Foods electrolyte bullshit and a bottle of Advil and heads to work with an unsympathetic chuckle. I ignore the offerings and retreat into the oblivion of sleep.

I wake up midafternoon, cotton-mouthed and sticky with sweat and half-remembered dreams—Echo at my back like a righteous god, driving me to the brink of madness with his tongue and fingers and elegant, ruthless cock. The pain has faded to a vaporous ache, and I slip a hand between my legs to coax it back to urgent life. If I let my body forget him, I'll have nothing left.

Wednesday

"Go home, Byrd. Get your shit together. Self-pity never looked good on you."

"I still have nine seasons of Supernatural to finish."

James glances at the TV and shakes his head.

"I'll save you the trouble. The show peaked in season five, and Dean and Cas never fuck. Also, you have Netflix in Mendo."

"Your TV is bigger."

And a ghost haunts my once-sanctuary.

I'm not ready to face it. When the future I pushed him toward subsumes the past that drowns me—when I can close my eyes and see him walking the halls of Cici instead of sprawled wanton in my bed—then maybe I can move on with my own.

"Fine. But you gotta take a shower, man. The whole apartment is starting to smell like a midlife crisis, and we're both too young for that shit."

Friday

The heat baking off the 101 flickers over my skin, burning away the memory of blue rain, blue eyes, blue hair. I leave the window down and crank the AC and fuck the carbon footprint because I find half a pack of Spirit golds in the cupholder and smoke them all the way past the drought-bleached hills and checkerboard vineyards of Sonoma county, until my stomach curdles and my fingers stain.

When Reggie's name lights up my phone, I pull off onto a gravel road bracketed by the scorched-earth scabs of last year's wildfires and climb out into the sun to answer.

"About fucking time. I was starting to get worried about you."

"I'm alive." Sort of.

"Barely, by the sound of it. Keeping up with the twenty-one-year-old taking more out of you than you expected, old man?"

Something like that. I drop my head back onto the roof of the 4-Runner and close my eyes, letting the hot metal sear into the back of my neck .

"Never mind, don't answer that," she barrels on with a laugh. "I talked to Claire, and she said he killed the eval, so that means he's officially my student again. I don't want to think about the two of you holed up in some swanky hotel room celebrating all week."

"That's not—"

"Seriously, though. Claire said he was amazing. I'm almost sorry I gave you so much shit. You pulled it off in spite of everything."

"It was all Echo." It was always Echo .

"So how did you celebrate?"

" You're so fucking tight. I'm gonna come so hard inside you, baby."

"I took him to see Aluré." Regret is bitter on my tongue. "I punched Gabriel."

"You what ? Not that that doesn't sound like a celebration, but how?"

"He was at the show. He hurt Echo, and he told him everything, and…" It's too fucking complicated, and I'm too fucking exhausted to explain. "So I sent Echo back to LA." It sounds better that way. Like a choice instead of a tragedy. It's almost true.

She's quiet for so long that I open my eyes to make sure my phone didn't drop the call.

"Reg?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm a fucking coward. I don't deserve him anyway. He's all yours now."

"For fuck's sake. Will you just come home already?"

Why does everyone keep talking about home like I still have one?

"I could blame you, you know," I say. "You threw him at me. I could have had a nice, quiet, lonely summer. But you told me to be selfish. He told me to be selfish." I want to be selfish again. To glut myself at the banquet of tangled limbs and decadent mouths and—"I've gotta go. I'm gonna lose service." A wave of déjà vu rolls through me at the lie, setting my guts adrift. Any minute, and she's going to tease me about paperwork and tell me he's Gabriel Wash's little brother.

I disconnect while she's still talking and stumble over to heave nicotine-laced bile into the weeds.

The cabin mocks me with layers of memory like secrets tucked between the pages of my ordinary life. Pieces of him like petals that crumble at my touch.

The clothes we left in the dryer. AirPods on the nightstand and a stray sock under the bed. The rosin bag still on the mat in the living room because he could never be bothered to return it to its drawer in the sideboard. Dried shaving cream like confetti on the bathroom mirror—I can see him shouldering me out of the way in the mornings, laughter in his lapis eyes as he shakes out the razor.

The bed is full of his scent, and when I finally force myself to change the sheets out of pure hygienic necessity, I pull one of his T-shirts from the hamper to cover my pillow in the perilous hope that he'll grace my elusive dreams.

Reggie texts me daily, and only after she threatens to send Elke to make sure I'm still alive do I reluctantly reply. I've become a recluse, a shell, as if the last four months never happened, and all of my wallowing plans have covered up the interlude. Only, Lara never hurt like this—like something snatched away on the threshold of becoming real.

I spend hours on the rig under the redwoods, driving my muscles to the brink of breakdown in the pursuit of the exhaustion that lets me collapse into sleep. I stop marking the days on my calendar because the little circles look wrong without his cheeky little pornographic additions, and I can't bring myself to add my own. It's the fifth of August before I finally resurrect the strength to flip the page.

Echo was here.

Truth and mischief splashed across the photograph at the top in his prep-school penmanship.

He was here.

I had him.

He was mine .

I'm on the floor of the kitchen, cool tile under my ass and the brushed chrome of the refrigerator against my cheek. My phone is glacially heavy in my hands as my fingers fumble at the screen, opening his final text.

Echo: Do you miss me yet?

With shaking thumbs, I drag three letters from my sorry, screaming soul.

Me: Yes .