“Save me?” I stared at him blankly. “What did you think I came out here to do?”
He shifted, looking suddenly unsure. “You’re—you’re standing half naked in the snow.”
We blinked at each other before I wrenched my arm free. “I came out here to be alone, asshole, not to kill myself. It’s literally my birthday, and I can literally cry if I literally want to.” I huffed a stray piece of hair out of my eyes. “I can’t cry in the house because everyone would hear, so I came out here to do it.”
“Oh,” he said, blushing. “Well … go ahead, then.”
“I’m not going to cry now.”
“Right.” He had the decency to look embarrassed. He turned and walked off a few steps, then pivoted and turned back to me. “Except, why is your shirt off?”
I rolled my eyes. “I was hot. Sue me.”
He frowned at me, eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that’s not it. You were lying in the snow. Your fingers are blue. That’s not normal.”
I deflected with a question of my own. “What the hell are you even doing out here?”
He ignored me and scooped up my sweater. “Put your shirt back on.”
I smiled at him. “Never seen a half-naked girl before?”
He held the sweater out to me. “I don’t care about your modesty, I care that it’s twenty-seven degrees outside. Put the damn sweater on.”
I glared at him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“God, you are trying to kill yourself!”
“What moron tries to freeze themself to death?” I asked, truly incredulous, although my teeth were chattering so it made the question seem less than serious.
“Morons who are in denial about the fact that they’re trying to kill themselves and choose a method that could look like an accident.”
I stared at him. I shivered. He threw his arms wide, blue sweater already accumulating snow, and said, “Hit me.”
“What?”
“I said ‘hit me.’”
I blinked at him. “Why on earth would I hit you?”
He took six rapid steps until he was way up in my personal space. “If you don’t hit me, I am going to throw you over my shoulder, carry you back to your aunt and uncle’s, dump you in the shower, and tell them that you’re suicidal and need help.”
I glared at him, then hobbled for freedom.
“Stop, Caitlin,” Adrian called after me calmly. I figure I got about five feet before he was just, all of a sudden, right where I had planned on putting my next step.
He stared down at me sternly. “I’m not kidding.”
“Stay away from me,” I managed to say between gritted teeth. The adrenaline was wearing thin and the cold was beginning to break through my mental fog.
“Why?” he demanded, backing me up against the boulder. “If you’re going to let the snow send you into a hypothermic coma, does it matter if I’m here or not? You think your mom fought all those months in the hospital just so you could give up after she was gone? You think she’d be proud if she could see you right now?”
Something inside me snapped and I slapped him. And then I slapped him again. He didn’t even flinch.
We stood there for a long time.
I deflated slowly. “I shouldn’t have slapped you. You’re an ass, but I shouldn’t have slapped you.”
“Why are you out here, really?” he asked finally.
I shrugged miserably. “She looks like my mom. Every time Joe does something nice it reminds me of my dad. I hate it.”
My voice seemed to get stuck somewhere between my lungs and my heart.
“How did it happen? With your dad?”
I flinched involuntarily. I hadn’t told anyone this story, except the police and my mom, and the words seemed even now like they were coming from someone else’s mouth. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him any of this, but the words tumbled out.
“We were out on his boat,” I said, wiping at my face. “It had always been fine, nothing bad had ever happened—and then one time, a perfectly ordinary day, he started talking, but he wasn’t making any sense. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. And then he fell into the water, and he knew how to swim, but he wasn’t swimming. The water wasn’t even that deep, he could have stood up, but he didn’t. After a while, I knew he was dead, but I didn’t want to touch him—if I touched him, it would be real. A fisherman found us the next morning and called the police. Just your run-of-the-mill brain aneurysm. There was nothing I could have done, I was five years old, but I still feel like if I had just jumped in, if I had dragged him to shore, maybe he would’ve made it. But I was too scared to touch him. So it was my fault.”
My eyes felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. “My mom shut down after that. She was just finally starting to seem okay again when she was diagnosed with bone cancer.” I shrugged. “Now she’s dead, too.”