After Her (27 page)

Vivian stands in the audience chatting up some women with a frown on her face that doesn’t seem genuine to me. None of this affects her as it would a normal human being. She’s too cold to feel anything.

Upon seeing her, I break away from Adrian and march down the center of the room toward her. People move quickly to get out of my way. I shove those that don’t move and elbow others standing in my path. 

“Cassandra!” Adrian calls, probably already aware of what I'm about to do, but is helpless to obstruct my mission. I no longer hear him. His voice is an afterthought. I hustle over to Vivian, huffing.

“Vivian!” I say while charging toward her. “
What
did you do?!”

She turns and I don’t stop to consider my actions until afterwards. I reach out, my fist clenched, punching her. Vivian jolts back, colliding into the man behind her who catches her in time to break her fall. Adrian is behind me, grasping my arms to restrain them, to prevent me from hitting her again.

“Get off me!” I order. His grip tightens, jerking me back as he wedges himself between Vivian and me. Carrick steps out from the crowd, but doesn’t rush to Vivian’s aid. Guess he can’t risk incriminating himself with so many witnesses around.

“That’s enough Cassandra!” Adrian says.

“It’s not enough,” I say. “It’s
not
! This was her! She did this.”

Everyone turns to face Vivian, their gossiping voices drowning out the sound of my sobs as Vivian recovers from her assault. Adrian rushes to help her up, cupping her face to examine her wound. A stream of blood trickles from her nose, which he wipes away with the sleeve of his shirt.

I glare at them both, seething over the fact that he’s rushing to Vivian’s defense. Less than ten minutes ago, he’d been at my side, wearing shiny armor in my defense. I shouldn’t feel scorned and yet I do. I suppress these this reaction, wishing I could decipher it, but feeling too out of control to deal with it properly.

“It’s okay everyone,” Vivian announces to her cohorts. “Cassandra has just received some very disparaging news. She’s only lashing out, looking for someone to blame for Sasha Hawthorne’s untimely death.”

“
You
did it, didn’t you?” I say. “You expect me to believe that it’s just a coincidence that all of your threats finally came to fruition?”

“Be careful what you say, Cassandra,” she replies halfheartedly. “There are some things you can’t take back.”

“Fuck you,” I say. “You’re an evil, pathetic woman. Cancer isn’t what’s going to kill you. You’re already dead inside.”

An array of gasps and horrified expressions weave through the crowd. I can’t imagine what they must be thinking, but I don’t care. We face off and I wait, wondering how she’ll respond. Vivian doesn’t say a word. I accept this bittersweet victory and storm away, shouldering back through the crowd, toward the exit.

29

Neither of us speak for the duration of the drive.

I don’t even look at him, choosing only to observe the passing scenery. Wolfgang plays some moody piano ballad on the radio, reminding me of the obvious. I quickly turn the dial to off, wanting only silence right now.

“Does the music bother you?” Adrian asks.

“Sasha wanted to play a Wolfgang piece for the University Summer Concerti,” I say.

He says nothing to counter my response, seeing no reason to argue with my reasoning. The usual silence ensues, bringing an axiomatic curtain down between us. Several miles from the banquet hall, I manage to relax, breathing through my nostrils to ease the apprehension in my chest.

I turn away to shed a mask of tears, recoiling the moment Adrian’s hand touches mine. The cool of his skin makes waves in my flesh, sending my stomach into a tumultuous tailspin. I close my eyes momentarily and see Sasha in the garden, staggering around in a daze, clumps of her hair soaked with blood. It’s enough to eject me back to reality, enough to shake me away from his hand.

“I'm sorry,” he says to mollify me. “I forgot about your number one rule. No more prohibited touching. 

I sense humor in that statement and I want to laugh, but the circumstances restrict it. What kind of person would I be to laugh at anything right now? Sasha won’t laugh again. She’ll never get to stay up late and binge on ice cream or marathon watch old reruns of
Gossip Girl
.

She’s no longer around to scold me for my shortcomings or make vulgar jokes about my love life. She will never hog the bathroom in the mornings anymore and leave me no hot water in the shower. She won’t be at the apartment when I return home.

“What if I am giving you permission now?” I say.

Adrian briefly looks away from the road to look at me.

“What do you mean?”

“What if I said that you could touch me now?” I ask. “Would you take advantage of it?”

“Only if you let me,” he replies. “And if you’re really sure that you can handle it.”

I almost laugh at his patronizing tone then at myself for tolerating it.

“I already forced myself on you, Adrian. Wouldn’t it be hypocritical for me to forbid you from touching me?” I reply.

“What are you permitting me to do?” he asks in a wary tone, undoubtedly questioning my abrupt interest in intimacy. I’d question it too if I didn’t already know the reasoning behind it. I have seen myself through many episodes of shock and felt grief so strong that I swear I’d die from the pain of it.

Whatever the pain, I always felt better in my mother’s arms. That woman held every promise in those arms. She shielded my warmth from the world and protected me from the worst of it anytime I needed to feel safe. That’s my default routine when coping with death.

I usually need to be held by someone—anyone—to soothe the ache of grief. This isn’t some meticulous decision. I didn’t deliberately seek
him
out in particular for some random rendezvous. Adrian isn’t the sanctuary I want. He’s just the closest warm body and the only thing I have to substitute for Sasha.

“You can…hold my hand,” I reply. “I advise you to take full advantage of this opportunity
before
I change my mind.”

He glances at me intently, waiting for something, wanting to find some reason to reject my request.

“Please?” I plead. “I just lost my best friend. The least you can do is have pity on me.”

He sighs and swallows hard as if every word he’d wanted to say has now fled his thoughts.

“If it’s simply a coping method, then I’ll happily humor you,” he says before taking my hand and holding it firm atop his lap. All of the warmth I lacked before returns through his palm. I grasp it tighter, wishing I could weld his grip around mine.

From here, we drive in silence, fingers entwined until arrival at my apartment sometime after midnight. The lot is full with the usual student cars including Sasha’s mini coop sitting next to my Honda. Adrian pulls into the parking space beside mine and removes his hand from mine so abruptly that I resist releasing him.

“Let’s get you inside,” he says. “You need to sleep.”

“I don’t know if I can go in there,” I say. “Or stay in that apartment without her.”

“Cassandra, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you’ll have to begin resuming your life at some point,” he says. “You can’t linger on what happened to Sasha and forget about taking care of yourself. I’d like to help, if you’ll let me.”

“For what in return?” I ask. “Are you asking to stay the night? Finish what I started at the fountain when I kissed you? Because I was high and stupid. I didn’t mean to come on to you like that. I couldn’t—”

“I don’t want anything in return,” he interjects. “This is a freebie. No strings attached.

I won’t try anything inappropriate…no matter how much I’d like to. You have my word. If you need me to stay then I’ll make the sofa my bed.”

“Why?” I ask, staring at him incredulously.

“Why what?”

“Why are you being so nice?”

He chuckles at my question, possibly a little offended by my disbelief.

“Vivian and I have caused enough chaos in your life. I'm trying to repair some of the damage,” he says. “I can’t bring Sasha back. I'm sorry for that, but I know what it’s like to go a little crazy with grief.”

I vaguely remember his admission about his mother and cringe at the memory of those words.

“How’d you mother die?” I ask.

“My parents never really loved each other,” he says. “They were good at appearing happy. The perfect trophy husband and wife—kind of like Vivian and me. The only problem was that my father couldn’t get through a day without his booze. My mother became a casualty because of it. He would often beat her until into unconsciousness then drink himself to sleep. One night, he got a little too drunk and wrapped his belt around her neck. I remember the sounds she made, the gurgling gasp. She was choking on her own blood. Then I heard the bone snap and I knew for certain that he had killed her.”

“How do you know all of this?” I say.

He chuckles, offhandedly, as if this misplaced amusement is unintentional, more or less a defense mechanism to mask some other reaction. Perhaps he’d like to cry, but I can’t imagine Adrian Lynch shedding a tear. Maybe he’s already shed those tears and now all that remains is this hardened shell of a man, no longer the sad little boy crying and reaching for his mother in the middle of the night.

“I was there and my father made me corroborate his story of her suicide to the police.

I was only seven years old. I knew then that I could never bring myself to hurt any woman the way my father did my mother. He never even served a day of jail. My mother’s remains were cremated and there wasn’t a funeral. From that day forth, my father never spoke of her again. Neither had I…until now.”

His hand rests on my cheek, thumb stroking the curve, following it to my hairline. I pressed my skin into his palm, once more craving his familiar warmth. Being this close to another person has never hurt this much. Sasha’s death has seared a festering hole in the center of my chest, making any kind of intimacy feel painful.

I feel a vulnerable ghost return. This apparition lingers in the air between us, bringing me back to the moment we shared at the fountain. I could kiss him again. Last time was just a drunken mistake. Now that I'm officially sober, there’d be no way to blame drugs or alcohol on my behavior. It’d be all me.

I bite my lip, wanting to restrain the urge to do something inappropriate. I look him in the eye. I have either two choices: to resist or yield. By the time I decide, my attention shifts elsewhere. I glimpse a flicker of light in the rearview before noticing an unfamiliar car pulling into the lot from behind us.

“Who is that?” Adrian asks after pulling away from me. I give the car a brief glance before assuming the worst.

“It’s a black Sedan.”

“Is that something significant?” he replies.

I nod and in a sudden panic, I'm reaching for the car door, trying to escape the car.

“Cassandra, what’s wrong?”

“You should go home,” I say. “Vivian might be calling soon.”

I flee from the car, scuttling up the apartment stairs toward the third floor. Headlights from the Sedan shine a glow into my direction, blinding me as I haste to recover my apartment keys from within my purse.

Before I can fish them out, Adrian’s behind me, grabbing them for me. I hadn’t seen him ascend the stairs, but somehow, he’s beside me twisting the key into my apartment door and hasting to shuffle me inside. Once inside, he locks the deadbolt behind us then stops to peer out the peephole to assess the scene. I collapse onto the sofa, willing my heart to relax.

“Whoever it was is still out there,” says Adrian. “You know them, don’t you?”

“I don’t know if it’s the same guy, but I know that Vivian sent him,” I say. “She has had someone watching my apartment. I don’t know for how long and I wasn’t even aware of it until yesterday. This entire time she’s been monitoring me. The photographer who followed me home and left the note on my car, I think she hired him. She just won’t admit it.”

He sighs and fishes a cell phone from his pocket. I watch as he dials and proceeds to carry on a conversation.

“Nathan, this is Adrian,” he says. “I need you to tell me who Vivian has on duty tonight.”

He nods to the correspondence though I can’t hear a word the other end is saying. I only have his non-verbal cues to go on.

“Yes well, they’re on
my
payroll,” he says. “If I want to know who Vivian is hiring with my money you will tell me or you can expect to be unemployed tomorrow morning.”

There’s another pause and I need to busy myself. I saunter through the apartment, removing my jewelry and shoes after heading into my bedroom. While undressing in front of the dresser mirror, I notice the reflection of my laptop and spot the flashing white light on its motherboard.

I can’t recall whether I’d shut it off before leaving the apartment. I rub my finger across the mouse pad, waking it from its slumber. After the
Windows
splash page and the welcome chiming sound, a second ding alerts me to a new email in my inbox.

It takes no time to log in, type in my password and arrive to my account where a new message waits in my inbox. The email subject line reads:
Naughty Girl.
My heart palpitates, jumpstarting a sensation of expeditious panic.

After clicking on the link, I wait until the page loads, suddenly now aware of how cold my blood feels. Gradually, the webpage emerges, revealing a large digital image of Adrian and me, sitting at the fountain in the banquet hall garden. Below the picture reads:

I tried to warn you.

Too bad poor Sasha had to accept your punishment instead.

I release a scream—a gurgling, blubber of a scream that blisters in my throat. It creeps up my esophagus, making me sound like a kicked puppy. Adrian arrives in the doorway with his phone still pressed to his ear, staring in at me.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I turn the laptop toward him so he can see for himself.

“He was watching us,” I say. “He was at the banquet hall tonight.”