Brightly (Flicker #2) (66 page)

Alice hadn’t said that she would miss them. She didn’t have to. Lee knew how much she admired Conall and how close she’d grown to Tipper. She’d never said a bad word about either of them, and never expressed anything but enthusiasm for her work at Sandpiper. As strange as it was for Lee to pace through the dim, silent workshop behind the store, it had to be a hundred times stranger for Alice to find herself suddenly living here alone.

Alice slept in a room adjoined to the workshop, where she had a bed, a small dresser, some shelves and a little window that looked out onto the street. It was a tiny space, really, but it didn’t feel that way. The room was bright and comfortable, with a string of crystals hung in the window that scattered rainbows across the bed and onto the cream-colored walls.

Photos were stuck to the wall beneath the window, along with the sketches Lee had given Alice. It was hard not to notice how the images of Filo were placed prominently. Lee wondered if Alice had done that on purpose or unconsciously.

The bed was as long as the room was wide. Tucked lengthwise under the window, only one side wasn’t nestled against a wall. Lee and Alice sat on opposite ends, their backs to the walls.

“You could just go see him, you know,” Alice said, as she made the final crease in a complicated-looking butterfly folded from thin scarlet paper. “Then you wouldn’t have to ask me about him all the time.”

Lee frowned. “I seem to recall telling you the same thing on Siren. You know, when you were hiding from him for days.”

“Take your own advice, then. Talk to him or stop sulking about it. And don’t give me that sad face,” Alice added seriously, tossing the paper butterfly into the air. It fluttered toward Lee. “I’m trying to practice tough love here.”

So was I,
Lee thought dully, lifting her hand for the butterfly to perch.
And look how that turned out.
She barely felt the butterfly’s weight as it touched down on the back of her hand, soft as a kiss. The sunlight shone through its delicate wings, making the paper flare crimson. “I can’t just go see him.”

“Why not?” Alice asked. “You’re going out of your head, but it’s an easy fix.”

For a long moment, Lee was silent, unsure of how to respond. It wasn’t that simple. She couldn’t just drop by for a minute to see how he was doing and leave it at that. If Lee saw him, her resolve would melt. She’d end up confessing all her regrets, probably while sobbing.

Still, if she went to Nasser and told him how she felt, he might be willing to give them another try. He really might. That was the scary part. It was so tempting.

Lee wanted to be with him so badly that it was almost a taste in her mouth, but even if they got back together, it wouldn’t be long before they landed back in the same situation. She’d been frustrated that he wasn’t communicating his needs to her—but after four days of obsessive rumination, she’d realized that he had been telling her what he needed all along. It just wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear.

He needed to figure things out for himself, and she still wasn’t quite ready to accept that. She wanted to assuage her own fears by being with him and looking after him, but she’d come to understand that it wasn’t always about what she wanted. Sometimes, it was about what other people needed.

Lee wasn’t ready to see him yet. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. But she didn’t know how to explain that to Alice without running the risk of crying.

In the end, all she said was, “I don’t think you understand how breakups work.”

Alice lifted her chin. “I beg to differ,” she said primly. “Anyone who spends as much time with Jason as I do is bound to end up with a working knowledge of breakups. He’s got a whole system. It’s very complex.”

Managing a thin smile, Lee blew on the paper butterfly, sending it drifting back to Alice. She slumped back against the wall. “Will you please just tell me how he was when you saw him last night? I’ll stop asking after this. I promise.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alice sighed, as the butterfly alighted on her narrow shoulder. “He seemed all right. I mean, he seemed pretty much the same as he has been, if you can call that all right. I’m pretty sure you didn’t snap him in half, at least, so you can stop feeling guilty.”

“I don’t feel guilty,” Lee said, though the possibility that she hadn’t made things even worse sent a little rush of relief through her. She wanted him to be all right. If nothing else, she was fairly sure he couldn’t be faring worse than she was. For the last four days, she’d been a sighing, sniffling mess that Filo found deeply alarming. “I just…”

“You got used to watching him practically all the time, so being away from him makes you anxious,” Alice finished.

“I was anxious even when I was in the same room with him,” Lee muttered, feeling her insides twist at the admission. Lately, her visits with Nasser had left her feeling drained and frustrated. When he pushed her away, it always stung—but sometimes, anger flashed through her, too, followed by stabs of guilt. As stressful as this was for her, she knew it was infinitely harder for him. Lee told herself that she had no right to complain. She hadn’t lost anything.

Except for him.

A look of sympathetic concern crossed Alice’s face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s probably good that you two are taking a break.”

Lee dropped her gaze to the sketchbook that lay open in her lap. The most recent pages were crowded with drawings of flowers. Pale pink sweetbriar blossoms. Deep red love-lies-bleeding. Black mulberry. Sketching flowers seemed a better way to channel her feelings than bursts of weeping, which had plagued her for the first two days.

“I know,” Lee said quietly, and she did. She knew it in her bones. “And you’re right. You usually are.”

“What are you looking at?” Jason asked sharply, setting his shoulders and turning to face the man standing beside him.

The moment the words left his brother’s mouth, Nasser got a sinking feeling. He risked a glance at the guy Jason had addressed. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with a scruffy reddish beard. A young woman with short black hair had her arm looped through his.

Don’t do this,
Nasser pleaded silently. He couldn’t possibly be this unlucky.
Not now. Not the first time we go out.

When he’d told Jason that he wanted to get out of the apartment for a little while, Jason had looked briefly uncertain, like he wanted to ask Nasser if he was really sure. Then he hurried to get his shoes before Nasser had a chance to change his mind. Though the thought of going out still made Nasser feel almost sick with nerves, he’d decided that he needed to get it over with.

They ended up at a small restaurant a few blocks away from their apartment, a place they’d visited a handful of times when they were out of food and didn’t feel like walking farther to buy groceries or to eat somewhere else. It seemed like as good a place as any for a first outing.

For the last five minutes, they’d waited to be seated. The guy waiting beside them glanced over periodically, his gaze lingering a little too long, clearly trying to get a better look at Nasser’s leg. He seemed to be under the impression that he was being subtle, and Nasser wasn’t about to shatter the illusion. It was easier to pretend he couldn’t feel the eyes on him.

Jason, however, seemed to be able to tolerate it for only so long.

The guy acted like he hadn’t heard Jason speak, though he looked away quickly, abashed. Nasser hoped that would be the end of it.

“I’m serious,” Jason went on, sounding annoyed. “Can I help you with something?”

“What’s your problem, man?” The guy’s brow was furrowed when he turned to Jason. His girlfriend looked over, too, a frown starting to pull at her mouth.

“What’s
my
problem?” Jason asked.

Nasser nudged Jason with his elbow, willing his brother to pick up on his discomfort. In a low voice, he said, “Jason, don’t.”

Jason opened his mouth again, but Nasser was rescued when a waiter came by to collect the bearded guy and his girlfriend, showing them to a table. The moment they were gone, Jason seemed to deflate a bit. Nasser let out a slow breath.

Soon after, when the two of them had also been seated and the waitress had gone, Nasser dropped his voice and said, “You can’t do that every time someone looks. People are going to stare. People are probably going to ask about it now and then.”

“People are rude as hell,” Jason grumbled. He glared across the restaurant, where the bearded guy and his girlfriend had been seated.

Nasser sighed. “I’m serious, Jason. Look at me.”

Frowning, Jason pulled his gaze from the other table. “I wasn’t going to do anything,” he said, a little petulantly. “I was just pissed off.”

“I know. But you have to let that stuff go. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is to me,” Jason contended.

“Well, you have to deal with it,” Nasser said firmly. “I don’t need you starting fights with strangers everywhere we go.”

Jason huffed. “So if some asshole is staring at you like you’re an animal in the zoo, I’m just supposed to let them?”

“Yes! Please,” Nasser added, quieter. “This is how it’s going to be now. You have to get used to it. We
both
have to get used to it.”

That seemed to strike a nerve. Jason shifted, looking rueful. “Fine,” he muttered. “Sorry.”

After that, Nasser couldn’t relax. He knew he had no reason to be this wound up, but his body didn’t seem to care. His heartbeat kept picking up, thumping uncomfortably, and leaving the apartment in the first place seemed like a worse idea all the time. By the time their food arrived, all he wanted was to leave, but he forced himself to go through the motions, as calmly as possible. He couldn’t let Jason see how anxious he was. He’d promised he would do better.

Forty-five minutes later, they were on their way home. The forearm crutches Jason had brought home the other day made getting around considerably easier; Nasser didn’t feel quite so clumsy when he was using them. He could walk faster and more smoothly. Even the stairs in their building were less daunting.

With the new crutches, Nasser had felt slightly less conspicuous on the sidewalk. The looks he’d caught from passersby, however—ranging from brief double-takes to a few blatant stares—reminded him of exactly what he looked like. Logically, he understood that the eye was naturally drawn to anything unusual, and that the people on the street probably didn’t mean anything by it. Still, each time a stranger’s gaze slipped down to his leg, Nasser’s skin burned.

Before, when people shot him funny looks or otherwise pointedly avoided looking at him, Nasser knew it was his magic that repelled them. It still did, when others were close enough to pick up on his energy, but now something else marked him as an abnormality even from a distance. He felt like every stranger was reducing him, at a glance, to the piece of him that was missing. He seemed to have shrunk to the space where his leg used to be.

I’ll get used to it,
Nasser told himself.
I’ll get used to it.

By the time they returned to the apartment, Nasser was exhausted, only partly from the exertion of walking and climbing the stairs. All he wanted was to lie down in a dark room and try not to think about Lee, which was increasingly difficult to do. Silently, he tried to gauge how early he could justify going to bed without making Jason worry about his state of mind.

As he sat down on the couch, Jason said, “I think that went well.”

“It could’ve been worse, I’ll give it that.”

“I’m going to minimize my confrontations with rude strangers in the future, if that helps.”

Nasser made himself smile. “Well, it’d be a nice gesture.”

Jason paused, looking concerned. “Was it really that bad?”

“No,” Nasser said reflexively. “No, it was fine.”

“You say that about everything,” Jason pointed out. “And I’m pretty sure not everything is fine.”

All Nasser could bring himself to offer was a shrug. He’d thought he would feel better after he finally ventured out of the apartment, like he’d accomplished something, made some small amount of progress. But somehow, the only thing he felt was a deep weariness. It hadn’t been a bad night, not exactly. It had just been the first night of the rest of his life.

Nasser could manage on crutches. He knew that much. Though he wouldn’t be able to work like he used to, or get around as easily as he had before, he would have basic mobility. He could get by like this. A lot of people probably did, and were probably perfectly happy.

But he wanted to do more than get by. He wanted to be more than this.

“Are you okay?” Jason asked cautiously.

It was a moment before Nasser answered. “I don’t think so,” he said at last, slowly and experimentally. It felt strange to actually voice that feeling. “This isn’t working, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “You tell me.”

“You used to be full of opinions.”

“I have my preferences. You know that. But I’m not going to fight you on this anymore. It’s exhausting, you know.” Jason smiled thinly, before his expression turned serious. “Whatever happens needs to be what you want.”

Lee’s words floated back to him:
If this is what you really want, why are you so unhappy?