“You’re up,” he says. He takes the corner of the towel around his neck and dries his face. It’s flushed with heat.
“I’m up,” I say. Panic courses through me. But somehow I manage to twist my face into something resembling a smile.
“Well, you look like you’re feeling a little better this morning,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe a tiny bit.”
My mind races. Max. The guy I called from Attic, the guy whose phone number was written on the drawing, is the same guy who just called me on Sean’s phone. But how did he get Sean’s number? It was his number I called. I reach out, grab my jeans off the floor, fish the cardboard credit card out of my back pocket. The number on the drawing is the number Sean called on Saturday a few hours after we left my house!
What the hell does all this mean? It means Sean is hiding some things and probably lying about some things. Does this mean…Sean could have lied about Nina being dead?
With that simple thought, I can feel something happening inside me. Hope is bubbling up. The guy on the phone said he knows Nina. Not knew her. Knows her. Like she is around to know. I feel my mouth curling into a smile and quickly stop it.
Sean walks over and stands in front of me, his chest dotted with beads of water.
“What are you looking at that for?” Sean asks. He’s staring down at the cardboard credit card clutched in my hand.
“I don’t know,” I say. I look up.
“I think it’s time to let this go now, Ellie,” he says. Sean snatches the card from my hand. The little sketch Nina drew of me is staring back at me. I look scared.
Sean walks toward the bathroom.
“Wait!” I say.
“I’m doing you a favor,” he calls out
“WAIT!”
He closes the door behind him, a second later I hear the toilet flush.
Sean comes back into the bedroom. “After Jason died there were certain things I held on to, things that reminded me of him, and I couldn’t move on until I let them go.” He smiles at me, reaches out to stroke my face. “I think it will help you not to have that around,” he says. Then he takes the towel from around his neck and starts rubbing his damp head. I stare at him. Who is this person I have spent the last five days with? Who I have shared a bed with? I suddenly feel like I’ve never seen him before in my life.
His left arm is up behind his head, the skin between his elbow and his armpit covered in those thin white scars. I remember tracing them with my fingers three nights ago when we got drunk in the hotel room. I remember thinking they were somehow beautiful in their chaos. But as I stare at them now, they start to look different. They are not chaos at all, there’s an order to them, a pattern in the jumble.
Letters. They are letters. Carved in and then covered over with hatch marks, as though he was trying to hide them. But when you know what to look for, they come through. Four letters. Carved into his skin.
N I N A.
I can’t breathe.
I want to be imagining this. But now that I’ve seen it, it’s impossible to un-see it. Her name, there it is. It was there all along.
My brain is spiraling out of control. I feel my lips parting. I can’t breathe. Sean is staring at my face. I look down.
“I think I’m going to take a shower,” I manage to say.
“Okay,” Sean smiles sweetly. He reaches out to put his arms around me. His skin is warm but touching him gives me chills. Over his shoulder, I see the blankets up at the top of the closet. I remember my dream last night, which maybe wasn’t a dream at all…
“Could you go and get us some food?” I say. “I mean, while I’m in the shower.”
Sean smiles again. “You’re hungry?”
“I’m suddenly starving.”
“What do you want? Name anything and I’ll go and get it.”
“A salad,” I say. “A really giant salad, with a lot of things in it.”
“For breakfast?”
I nod.
“Okay, whatever you want,” he says quickly. “I’ll have it for you when you get out.” He sounds so pleased then, pleased that I’m asking him for something, pleased that it’s something he’s able to do for me.
I nod, and force another smile. I manage to keep my knees from buckling until the bathroom door is closed safely behind me. I turn the water on and wait, my ear pressed against the door until I hear the outside door slam shut. And only then do I let myself scream.
Thirty-seven
There is no time to think.
I drag the heavy desk chair over to the closet, climb up, and stick my hands between the scratchy beige blankets on the top shelf. Only a few inches in, my hands hit leather. So I wasn’t dreaming after all. I reach in further, it’s a handle. I grab it and pull out Sean’s leather messenger bag. It feels warm, alive, like whatever’s in here has a pulse of its own.
I jump off the chair and crouch down on the floor.