“You walked out on me,” she says through her sobbing.
“I know,” I say. “I’m so fucking sorry.” I broke her. I made her trust me that night. I made her feel good. And then I fucked with her head and walked out. “You need to stop dancing, Nadia.”
“I don’t want to,” she says. I feel the warmth of her breath through the fabric of my shirt. “I want to dance until I die.”
“It’s… it’s called the drop, remember? We explained this to you.” I dropped her. I took her into subspace that night and then I left her suspended inside it until she dropped out on her own. “I fucked up.”
She just shakes her head and tries to wriggle free.
But I’m not going to let go. Because she needs me to make things right. “Be still now, OK?”
“I can’t,” she says, her voice breaking. “I need to dance.”
“No, Nadia. You need to be taken care of, that’s all.”
“I don’t want your pity. I don’t want you at all, Elias Bricman. I hate you.”
I nod my head as I hold her close. “I deserve that hate.”
“I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t want to see you.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” I say. “Because I’m going to do the talking and we’re in the dark right now, so you don’t have to see me.”
She starts to cry.
I pet her hair and say, “It’s OK. You can cry. All this is normal. Not normal,” I say, trying to figure out a way to explain it. “It’s expected. All these feelings. This manic desire to do something. I took you to a special place Friday night.”
“You took me to hell,” she says, sniffing back her sobs.
“I took to you heaven, Nadia. And then I left you in hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t know about Logan—”
“You had that police report! You shoved it in my face!”
“I didn’t know the whole story, Nadia. I swear.”
“You told me that night when we went out to Jordan’s party—”
“Jordan’s party?”
“—that I like little boys.” She’s crying so hard now, I can barely understand her.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Nadia. I swear. I didn’t know about Scott.”
That name is the last straw for Nadia Wolfe. She collapses. Like one of those toys held together by taut string. The ones that fall to pieces when you press on the button underneath them and release the tension. A push puppet. She’s a push puppet and I hate myself for it.
I pick her up off the floor, hold her in my arms, cradling her like a baby, and carry her out to the living room.
We sit on the couch. Her still in my lap. I hold her close, her head tucked in under my chin, and play with her hair.
I don’t say anything for a long time.
I just hold her.
Chapter Thirty-Four - Nadia
For the first time in days, I relax. Bric holds me tight, his thumb swirling small circles on the hot, sweaty skin of my shoulder. But then all the heat of the dance pours out of me and I begin to shake uncontrollably. I close my eyes, willing my heartbeat to slow. It’s beating so fast, I almost think it will never go back to normal. Almost panic about it. Almost need to get up and dance again to put it out of my mind.
But Bric is there, his lips on my head, saying, “Shhh, Nadia. Be still.”
I try. But it takes me a long, long time for my heart to catch up to his command. My body stays tense with shivering for so long, it freezes me from the inside out.
But after a little while, with his warm body pressed against mine, I start to relax. The convulsing wanes. The tears stop. And I am just nothing but wiped out.
I let it all go and close my eyes.
“When I was growing up,” he says, finally finding his beginning, “I had no idea we were different.”
His sister Keren talked to me a lot while Bric was busy getting drunk last weekend. She showed me photo albums. She hardly knows him, she said. They are so far apart in age, Elias was gone before she was out of diapers.
And my response was, “I hardly know him either.” So she showed me the photo albums.
“I thought everyone had two moms,” Bric continues. “I thought everyone had four brothers and sisters. It was just us five back then. But one day, when I was like… maybe six, I guess, I got two more moms.”
I try to imagine that in my head but can’t. “I have no moms,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what it would feel like to have no moms.”
“We’re opposites,” I say, my breathing finally slow enough to allow me to talk normally.
“Black and white, Nadia Wolfe.”
“Big and small, Elias Bricman.”
“Good and bad,” he says.
“Light and dark,” I finish.
“You’re the light, Nadia.”
“No,” I say. “I’m the dark part of this relationship.”
“Then one day,” he says, picking his story back up, “I was twelve. I know that for sure. I remember this day like it just happened. I see it in vivid detail. I was in town with my brother Abrem. He’d just gotten his license. Benjamin was with us. Just us boys rambling around in an old truck. Candace and Delilah were at home. They didn’t want to come and they were helping with the babies, anyway. And these kids came up to us and started saying things that made no sense to me. I knew by then that four moms was wrong. Not wrong as in sinful, or whatever. But wrong as in… out of the ordinary. They said a lot of awful things about me and my brothers and sisters. My moms and dad. I didn’t go to school. I think that’s why I liked Smith so much when I first met him. He never went to school ever. I was homeschooled until I got a scholarship when I was fourteen and left for Denver. I never really went back after that. Just… left it all behind. Put it away. Forgot about it.”
Elias Bricman is telling me everything, I realize.
“I met Quin first though. And Quin is like… perfect, ya know?”
I don’t know Quin. But I saw him through the tea shop window when I was talking to Rochelle and Chella the other day.
“Quin comes from the perfect family. One mom. One dad. No brothers or sisters. One small house, with two small bedrooms. He had everything I ever wanted. He’s been my best friend since I was sixteen. But I have this problem, Nadia.”
I look up at him. He’s staring off into space. I can barely make out the outline of his jaw in the dim light filtering up from the city outside. “What problem?” I ask.
“I like to hurt people, I think. I must like it.” He looks down at me. “I must like it a lot. Because I do it all the time.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I feel there’s something deeper inside him, but I don’t even know him, I realize. Not at all.
“I love Quin. And Rochelle. But I hurt them on purpose. Both of them.”
“They seem OK,” I say. “And they still love you.”
“Yeah, they are. And they do. But that’s because I lied to them. They have no idea how much I was fucking with their heads. I like to do that too, you see. We’ve been playing this game forever because I need them, Nadia. They don’t need me. They don’t need anyone but each other. I need them. I was jealous. And I like to manipulate people. I like to hold power over people. I like to—”