Selfie (45 page)

He half laughed, but mostly cried. “
Now
you fucking say it.
Now
?”

“Sorry, Noah,” I mumbled. I turned from the rock and took a step toward him. “I won’t go if you’re going to come with me. I love you, and I need you to live.”

“You think?” he hiccupped, drawing near me. “Because I need you to live too. I need you to live, Connor. So come on.” He was even with me, and he held out his hand.

I suddenly wanted to take it more than anything in the world. More than going to the island, more than seeing Vinnie, I wanted to feel the touch of that dark-skinned, pink-palmed hand on mine.

I reached out for him. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Yeah. I think we both need to go to the house. No more island. I need to go ho—”

He half smiled, took one more step toward me . . .

And slipped hard, cracking his arm on my friend the rock. I watched him push up off the bottom and gasp, too cold to move well, and then he must have hit a hole, like I had, because he disappeared.

“
Noah
!”

I could see him flailing under the water, the dark bottom making the cold clear salt water almost opaque. Oh God, he couldn’t get his feet under him! He needed me.

The heat of panic fueled me, and I dove cleanly toward that flailing body, the water closing over my head.

The cold was absolute. It stopped my breath, stopped my heart, stopped my mind. My skin screamed within the frigid embrace, and for a moment, I was encased in a layer of ice.

And time itself froze down to me, reaching for Noah, the two of us isolated in a crystalline bubble of a single heartbeat.

And I was on the island.

“Connor?” Vinnie said, smiling. “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

I peered around and smiled back. Our stuff was there. The accrued detritus of ten years of our life was arranged neatly in a room that looked a lot like his living room in Malibu.

“Vinnie, I missed you so badly.”

His smile flickered. “I miss you too, Con.” He bit his lip. “I mean, you can stay if you
want
, I guess.”

Oh, I loved that smile. The fullness of his lips, the shyness that peeked out from under his brows. I yearned to run my fingers through his sleek, coarse dark hair, because it would be so different from Noah’s—

Noah.

“I’ve got to go, Vin,” I said, but there was urgency under the regret. “Noah needs me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. Bring him by when it’s time, but if you gotta go, you gotta go.”

I reached out halfway to him, tears burning in my eyes. “Vinnie . . .”

“I love you, Connor. I’m sorry I left so early, but it wasn’t because of you. Life just happens—and so does death. You know?”

I nodded, and smiled through the salt curtain in front of my eyes. “I love you back, Vinnie. But I love him too. That’s okay, right?”

“Yeah. Go get him, ’kay? He needs you.”

“’Kay.”

Vinnie drew closer to me, and for a moment—just a moment—I could
smell
him, and the bergamot and lime smell that had always been Vinnie. I could feel the heat from his body and hear the rustle of his clothes. His lips brushed mine, just a touch, a good-bye, and then—

My arms closed around Noah under his arms, and I kicked to the surface, the two of us pulling in a screaming breath as our heads cleared the water.

I’d worked summers as a lifeguard when I was a kid, and it came back to me, how to haul someone to shore.

Noah was gasping, disoriented from the pain, and as we made our excruciating, stumbling way over the rocks on the shore, I got a look at his arm.

“Jesus, baby—I think it’s broken!”

He grimaced mournfully at the area right under his wrist that was swelling with an unnatural lump.

“I wish it was broken
off
,” he snapped. “Fucking
Jesus
it hurts.”

I couldn’t even say “I’m sorry” because I felt so much
more
than sorry.

“Here.” I reached up to my neat little bundle and grabbed my T-shirt out, using it like a towel over his chest and his arms. He was shivering, the insides of his lips and his cuticles blue, and I needed to warm him up. I made him hold his arm out, and I wrapped the T-shirt around the swelling part—not too tightly—and fumbled badly because my fingers were too stiff to tie a knot.

The silence between us was almost as painful as the heat returning to my frigid limbs.

“Here,” I said again, the heat of shame working on my body temperature as I wrapped my sweatshirt over his shoulders. “Here—let’s get you inside and into some clothes. Is your dad still here?”

“Yeah—he’s probably in the kitchen thinking we’re out for a little walk,” he chattered sourly.

“Well, you can tell him I was out for a little psychotic break,” I replied, the shame so thick I was surprised I wasn’t sweating. “And that he can steal his baby boy back if he’s afraid of me. I wouldn’t blame him.”

“No.” He reached out with his good arm to pull me close to him. “No.”

For a moment we clung to each other, shivering, skin to skin, so cold from the water that the drizzle felt like room temperature.

“I wouldn’t blame him,” I said into his cold chest. “I mean, who signs on for this much crazy—”

“Connor,” he said against my temple, “you saved my life.”

“After I tried to kill you by taking you to visit my dead boyfriend.” Oh God. That didn’t sound any saner when I said it out loud. “If you decided now was the time to bail, I wouldn’t blame you—”

His semihysterical laughter in my wet hair didn’t reassure me. “Oh fuck no!
Fuck
no, I’m not leaving. Jesus, Connor, you just said you loved me.”

I laughed feebly against his chest. “I do. I love you so much, Noah. I want to
live
for you. I want us to
live
.”

His arm tightened, and my arms around his waist tightened, and for a moment, just a moment, it really was that simple.

It’s never that simple.

Noah’s father took one look at us and went running for blankets and clothes, and then the car so Noah could get his wrist checked out.

Once again we were clinging together in the back of the car, but as soon as we got to the hospital, that changed.

“You tripped and broke your wrist on a rock?” the doctor said after probing Noah’s arm gingerly. He was going for X-rays in a few moments, but right now it was most decidedly broken.

Aces.

“Yeah,” Noah said, and both of us were still shivering. I’m not sure what my hair looked like, but his was riotous around his head.

“Where were you walking?” the doctor asked, looking from me to Noah and back again, and abruptly I was reminded of Noah, trying to get me to admit I was gay so he could just talk to me honestly.

“We were in the water,” I said with a sigh. “I . . . I was having a really bad moment grieving for my old boyfriend, and Noah came into the water to try to pull me out of it and . . . he fell.”

The doctor and Samuel Dakers both looked at me in surprise.

“Noah?” Samuel said, sounding a little angry. “That’s not what you told—”

“He was protecting me,” I said, a part of me jealous of how suddenly “dad” Noah’s father got when he was at risk. “I mean . . . I’m okay
now
, but I was
not
okay for a while—”

“We have a doctor I’d like you to talk to,” said the guy probing Noah’s wrist.

“Of course you do,” I sighed.

Noah shook his head. “We so could have avoided this,” he muttered.

“I don’t want you to worry,” I said frankly. “I don’t want you to worry about it ever happening again.”

Two hours later, Noah got out of the plaster and bandage room, and he and his father came to bail me out of the psych ward.

I was just finishing up with the nice, harried, too-young-to-be-that-bald man they’d thrown at me when Noah had made a big deal about not wanting to leave me overnight.

“So,” the guy said, squinting at me like he knew me from somewhere, “you . . . you
didn’t
want to kill yourself?” he asked, for like the fifteenth time.

“No, sir,” I told him truthfully. “Remember: I saved my clothes for when I was planning to come back.”

“But the water is
freezing
!” the guy exploded. “What made you think you were going to come back?”

“Noah was here,” I said with a smile.

“Your . . . friend?”

“Boyfriend.”

Suddenly the guy sat up. “Oh my God, you’re Connor Montgomery!”

I nodded and smiled, and inwardly groaned. There was a knock on the conference room door, and I stood up and let Noah in while the poor man tried to reconcile everything he knew. Essentially, I sprang myself with some signed paperwork and some autographs for his kids, and Noah and I walked away.

“God,” Noah muttered as we walked across the hospital parking lot, “talk about losing my faith in the medical system. They let you
go
?”

“I told him the truth.” Thank God it
was
the truth. “I told him I had something to live for.” It had gotten dark since we’d both gone in the water, and my stomach gave a gurgle as we were walking. “Are you hungry?”

Noah squinted at me. “Are you
insane
?”

“You just heard the nice man say I’m not,” I shot back, wounded. “But you got pain pills, right? You need to eat something with those.”

Noah groaned. “I’ll have crackers when we get home. God, Connor, I love you, I fucking
love
you to death, but you are going to make me batshit crazy before I’m thirty.”

I grimaced and stepped back so Samuel could open the car door for his son. Samuel regarded me quietly and stopped me for a moment as I walked around to my door.

“You
are
going to be okay, aren’t you?”

Oh God. So worried.

“I will be,” I said, feeling quiet and tired—but not overwhelmed. Not anymore. “If you want to stay on the couch tonight, that’s fine, but don’t worry. I’ll take good care of him, I promise.”

Samuel smiled faintly and ruffled my hair like I was his boy too. “I’ll take you up on that, son—but not because I don’t trust you. Just because I want you both to be okay.”

Oh. Oh wow.

“That’s really nice,” I said, and then yawned. “Do you think there’s any fast-food places open? I mean, is there a McDonald’s or something? Carl’s Jr.? KFC? Seriously—Taco Bell? Fast food, I’m all over it, my treat.”

Samuel walked around and got into the front seat while I slid in next to Noah.

Noah, cast and all, did his thing where he wedged himself in the corner and opened his good arm. “C’mere, baby,” he yawned. “Lay on me while my dad plays chauffeur.”

“Yeah, sure.” Because who could resist resting his head on Noah’s chest? Not even the hospital smell could overcome the musky, dark-rum scent that Noah’s body put out just as a matter of course. Oh, yeah. I was careful of his hurt arm, but I went right in for the snuggle.

Noah’s good hand came up, pulling through my tangled hair and smoothing out the strands. “Are you really going to be okay?” he asked as his dad started the car.

“Yeah.” I let out a breath and relaxed more fully. “I am. I know you’re worried—”

“You . . . you almost—”

His voice hitched, and I rolled so I could face him and put two fingers over his full lips. “I was planning to come back,” I said, a faint smile at the absurdity. “See . . . I didn’t want to
stay
on the island, I just wanted to
go
to the island.”

“You didn’t want to stay with Vinnie?” he asked, hurt and confused at once.

“No,” I said, all truth. “I just . . . You need to know where someone is before you can say good-bye, Noah. I just needed to say good-bye.”

“Did you?” And the hope in his voice was a needy, fragile thing.

“Yeah. I said good-bye because I had to haul
your
sorry ass out of the water. There I was, in the middle of a good-bye kiss from Vinnie, and I chose you.”

“Really?” He sounded about five years old, and I watched, feeling like the oldest for the first time
ever
, as he wiped his eyes on his shoulder. God, it must have been hard on him, watching me drift further and further away, thinking it was because I loved and would always love my dead boyfriend more.