Everly After (28 page)

I swallow down the cold weight of shame, let it sink into my stomach, and then look levelly at my parents. “I’m okay, you know.”

“Not right now.” My father steps away from the bed, leaving me with my mother.

“You’re selfish, is what you are. And reckless. We’ve had enough.”

It’s nothing new, but it stings all the same. I squeeze my hands and breathe, my heart beeping over the monitor in the background. “I mean, I’m okay now. You never asked when you came in. I’m going to be okay.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a disaster, Everly. You’re lucky you didn’t end up dead. That boy found you.”

I close my eyes and literally bite my tongue.
That boy
is more a man than my father, who can’t look me in the eyes.
I’m alive
, I want to scream.
I’m the one who’s alive now.

“What matters,” I say, my voice somehow calm, “is that I’m going to be okay. I’m going to stay here. I’ll be fine.”

“The press… Bill.” She waves for my father to join us again. “The press is too much. You’ll ruin us.”

Ruin
is such a funny word, four letters that signify complete destruction. Such a small word for such a big idea. I have nearly ruined myself, in more ways than they’d ever know, but I’m not going to ruin anything by staying in Nice. On my own. I need to do this on my own.

“I’m tired.” It’s nicer than what I want to say. “Can you go? I’m tired, and I want to rest.”

“No,” my father barks. “I’m through with your antics.”

“I’m not going.” Somehow, I’ve pulled up strength through my toes. Conviction rings clear. “I’m not going to blame this on anyone but myself. Losing Hudson…” I stop there. Losing Hudson was never a shock. If it hadn’t happened this year, it would’ve happened the next. And if I’d followed, if I hadn’t met Beckett, my parents would likely be burying me.

The truth is, I’m not sure I’m going to be okay. I’m not sure about anything. What I do know is that I’m going to lie until they leave, until they walk out that door and I’m left on my own. They’re not concerned about me, only about who would find out about me. They’re never going to help me when they keep wishing that Nathan had lived and I’d been the one who drowned.

I expect a fight, but they go quietly. No goodbyes or well wishes—nothing. The nurses come in and out throughout the rest of the day and bring me Jell-O, but I don’t feel much like eating the blobby green mess. I curl up on my side and try to stay warm under the thin covers, push past the discomfort of the needle, listen to the hushed beeps of my heart over the monitors, remember the questions the doctor asked.

I try to ignore the fact that Beckett isn’t here, too, but that isn’t as easy to stomach.

Beckett

I nod off, the cigarette still burning in my hand. I bob awake, rubbing at my eyes until the lights of Nice come into focus. The traffic on the motorway below is a mad rush, the air sticky-warm.

It might be nice if I wasn’t sitting on concrete, my ass numb, utterly exhausted. Everly’s locked away under observation, and they won’t allow me to see her. I haven’t slept, but I haven’t left, either. I’m waiting because that’s all I ever fucking do when it concerns Everly Monteith.

I reach into a small paper bag, uncap a small bottle of whiskey, and add it to my paper cup. I drop it back into the bag and fight past the shitty taste of alcohol and old hospital coffee. It’s similar, I imagine, to swallowing a bag of nails.

“
Excusez-moi de vous déranger.”

I suck in the bitter sting of cigarette smoke and squint, studying the woman who’s crashed my waiting spot. “It’s fine,” I answer in English, too tired to care.

“Oh, you’re British.”

I straighten my legs out in front of me. “English,” I mumble. I might be a bit drunk.

“Can I?” She motions next to me.

I don’t need a fucking companion right now. What I need is for a nurse to let me in to see Everly. Part of me hopes she hasn’t woken up. I don’t want her to think I’ve left. I promised I wouldn’t. I mean, I’ve thought about it plenty. Almost every long, impossible minute I’ve been stuck at this bloody hospital, actually, but she doesn’t need to know. The point is I’m here. I’ve stayed, so…

“Can I bum a cigarette, I mean?” She pantomimes it like I’m daft.

I stare at her because she’s American. It makes me forget for a minute what Everly sounds like, how perfect her voice is, the soft way she speaks. And for that, I instantly regret even speaking to this stranger. For robbing me of Everly before I’ve actually lost her.

I toss the half-empty pack of cigarettes and the cheap Bic lighter in her direction. Both go flying past her. She laughs, waving her hand at my foregone conclusion.

“Thanks.” She warily approaches to hand me both items back, but I keep clutching my coffee, ignoring her. She sets them down next to me.

In the dark, it’s hard to make out much of her—only that she has dark eyebrows that slash over dark eyes. She sinks down beside me, her back against the wall, and picks at the silver bracelets on her wrist for a while. The cigarette burns in her hand, untouched, forgotten.

“I hate hospitals,” she whispers.

“Most people do.”

“I guess.” Her voice is sad. “It’s only that you go to them searching for a good answer or hope or something. I think I’ve always left feeling worse.”

I think of Everly alone in that room and the questions she has to face now. The answers we need. I swallow another sip of bitter coffee and realize that a lot of the answers are mine.

I love a girl too big for this world—a girl who’s reckless, a human cannon of danger. I’ve fallen for her mysterious smile and the light in her eyes when she stumbles out of another daydream. I love a girl who’s broken, and I’m no better.

Whoever heard of a story where two broken people can make each other whole again?

Maybe I say this last bit out loud because the woman next to me cracks with an audible sob. If I was decent, I would do something, try to comfort her, but I let her cry because I can’t.

It’s been forty-nine hours since I held Everly on that beach, forty-nine hours since I watched the ambulance leave me behind, forty-nine hours of my head trying to catch up to my heart. I’m not sure it has because I don’t know what to do besides sit here and get drunk and try to stay awake while I wait for another big answer.

“I followed you,” she says, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

I look at her quickly, then uncross and cross my ankles to do anything except ask why. I don’t want to know.

I thought I’d be safe here on the roof. There was too much noise in the waiting room, but there’s too much noise here, too. I think I could be in a padded cell, and the noise would still overtake me. My fucking mind won’t shut up.

I stare at the cigarette in my hand and crush it out next to me. I hate this—everything about everything. Why the fuck am I on a roof, smoking, drunk, and alone?

I tried to call Ollie earlier, but he never picked up. I don’t have anyone else to call, really. No one to fall back on. I built my summer around a dream, but now I’ve opened my eyes and it’s gone.

I was an idiot to ever believe I wasn’t alone. I’m always going to be that sad boy, standing by while everyone close goes away.

“Are you going to ignore me?”

I snap my neck up, turning to face the woman. “Yes.”

“I know how it is, you know,” she says. “I understand. I’ve known her a long time.”

I think my stomach comes up into my mouth, or maybe I’m going to puke because I’ve had too much to drink.

“The nurse told me you found Everly.”

Fuck. Found Everly? She’s in a bed downstairs, but I’d swear on my life that she’s still missing. I told her I wouldn’t let her go, and I have. I messed up.

“Thank you for caring about her,” she adds softly.

I throw my cup of coffee against the retaining wall and stand, raking my hands into my hair. I’m starting to understand Everly’s desire to jump off roofs now.

“Listen,” I snap, “I came up here to be by myself. Can—”

“She hates me,” the girl says. “I’m sure she never told you who I am. I’m Hudson’s sister, Julia. Am…was…is… I’m not sure how to say that now.”

I jam my hands into the pocket of my dress trousers, but I don’t cave. It’d be better if she went back to the waiting room and left me alone. I don’t care who she is.

“She tried to kill herself last spring. I found her. I know how it feels,” Julia repeats. “How helpless you feel afterward.”

I think the roof caves in under my feet. I know for a fact I stop breathing because there’s a knot inside my chest that’s so tight I think I’m going to die.

Julia doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what it feels like to hold the person you finally fucking realize you love and have them all but die in your arms. And it’s my fault. I let it happen. I let Everly slip away when I told her I wouldn’t.

I clear my throat. “I’m sorry. About your brother.”

She nods, and I see her wiping tears away again. “I work in London. At the Cultural Affairs Office for the American embassy. I flew in yesterday when I heard what happened.”

I don’t care about this. I don’t care about Julia’s life story. In fact, I don’t care about who she is to Everly. What I care about is holding myself together a little longer so no one finds me somewhere soon.

I rush back over to the brown bag and bend down, grabbing the bottle of whiskey. I take another sip, gripping the bottle like it’s a lifeline. My eyes are blurry, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m overtired or I’m crying again because I’m an idiot.

It takes a few tries before the words come out, my curiosity too strong to ignore. “What happened last spring?” I hand Julia the bottle, but she shakes it off.

“I don’t drink.” Her voice is insistent for someone sitting folded into themselves.

I pace the roof, the gravel underfoot crunching beneath my dress shoes. I’ve sweated through my white shirt. I pull at it, trying to get some space around my body before it glues itself to me and I’m stuck.

I couldn’t read Everly, but at least I can read Julia. I know she’ll want to know the details about Hudson. “I don’t have any answers for you.” I sense the way she stiffens.

“It would be nice to know. It’s killing me that he was alone and he never… That Hudson thought it was his only way out.”

“People do things for their own reasons.”

Her head pops up. “But you know what happened to Everly?”

She sounds hopeful, and it makes me sick again. There’s nothing hopeful about finding someone almost dead on a beach, choking on her own vomit. I swallow back the bitter taste that rises in my throat. Maybe I’ve had enough whiskey.

“No. I know nothing about her.” I chuck the whiskey bottle off the roof, the answering shatter ringing out seconds later as it strikes the sidewalk down below.

“Do you want to? Do you mean something to her, Beckett?”

Christ, this girl is a fucking nightmare.

I ball up the paper bag and start for the door. I should try the nurse again. Maybe they’ve switched shifts and I can convince them that I need to see Everly, that I need to be there for her when she wakes up.

“I think you mean something to her,” Julia yells after me. “I know you do.”

I whirl around, my temper flaring. I’m snapping—I feel it. I guess that nervous breakdown is finally happening. My skin crawls, and the panicked whisper in my head is now a scream that won’t shut up. My pulse is racing, and I’m not sure if I want to jump or hide. Jump, I think.

“You don’t know me.”

“I talked to her a few weeks back. I called her because Hudson told me she was with a new guy. He was worried,” she says. I scoff, tightening my hands into fists. “She hates me, but she told me about you. I’ve never heard her say she loved anyone in her life.”

I stumble over my feet. I can’t get away quick enough as I throw myself around the corner and fall, my palms scraped raw as I puke. My throat burns when I stop, my shoulders rising up and down as I try for air. The roof is spinning beneath me.

I flinch as Julia puts her hand on my shoulder.

“She was sleeping with her professor. He got her pregnant and tried forcing her to have an abortion last spring. He started dating me when things ended, but I didn’t know about their relationship. We had a big fight about it. She thought I was seeing him to spite her. I found her in her apartment the next day with her wrists slit. She lost the baby.”

Stop
, I want to yell. I want out of my skin, out of my mind. I guess this is what crazy feel likes.

I’m broken. She broke me.

An ugly laugh rips from me, shooting ice straight to my gut. I was so fucking consumed with taking in her details in London that I missed the important ones. I saw the scars from her accident but missed the ones where she meant to take her life. Maybe I didn’t want to see them. Maybe I didn’t want to face that truth when there were so many lies between us.

“People can say what they want about Everly and Hudson,” Julia says from behind me. “Good or bad, they only ever wanted love, and I wasn’t enough.”

I wipe my palms against my trousers as I stand, listening to the gravel grind as Julia opens the door to go back down to the hospital.

“If you love Everly, don’t give up on her, Beckett.”

When I was blindfolded and kidnapped in Afghanistan, the man who held me at gunpoint used to count down before he squeezed the trigger to taunt me. I was stronger than that. I never flinched, not even when the shot hit the ceiling and plaster rained down on me.

I hear his girlish laugh while he did this. I hear his countdown start inside my head. I flinch now because he broke me and I thought I was getting better, but Everly broke me, too. She broke me in a different place altogether. I’m not sure if it’s worse to be broken in the head or the heart. The madness feels the same. It’s still the same raw hurt, the unbundled nerves, the intense panic.

Ten, nine, eight…

I look over Nice, at the lights, at the palms rocking in the warm breeze.

Seven, six, five…

I race down the steps two at a time, flying past her floor until I’m outside the main entrance.