Among the Dead and Dreaming. Samuel Ligon
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Название: Among the Dead and Dreaming
Автор: Samuel Ligon
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9781935248798
isbn:
“When can we go?” Alina whispers.
“Soon,” I tell her, petting her hair. She drops her head to my shoulder.
Cynthia’s sister is pretty and flushed, and she keeps touching Mark, holding his hand, while the rich people say whatever they say to him and he looks at me. I wonder what he wants from me, what he has that the rich people want to touch. He obviously knows what I know, that there was something between Kyle and Cynthia, the way she touched Kyle the night the four of us ate together downtown, her hand on his arm, his shoulder, looking for a reaction from me every time she touched him. And her eyes in his paintings, too. I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything invested that could be taken away, part of why I should have just let him go, so they could have had each other. But I also wanted to love him like I hadn’t loved Bobby in Portland. I’ve been too careful too long, holding myself too tight. Mark was going to let it eat him alive, the way he looked at their hands on the table that night at the restaurant, the way he questioned me just an hour ago on the lawn. I didn’t care where they’d been or where they were going the night they died. Kyle and I loved each other—but I didn’t own him and he didn’t own me. We didn’t owe each other anything, except kindness and respect. But that thought makes everything so much worse, rubbing it in my face again, how I held him back and kept him from the real love he could have had with Cynthia. I put my hand to my face, shading my eyes, and let myself feel it all in this room full of rich people, trying not to shake Alina’s head on my shoulder and failing.
She runs her hand up and down my back, sniffling, “Can’t we just go?” and I pull myself together and say, “In a minute,” because I haven’t spent enough time with Kyle’s father. I don’t want to close any doors.
I watch the rich people come and go, Mark looking at me like, Get me out of here, and for just a second, I see myself in that look, a sort of recognition washing over me, and I wonder if maybe, with all the rich people around him, if maybe—because it’s only fifty thousand, impossible for me and nothing to them, Burke out there waiting to be paid, what I have to take care of before I can feel or do anything else, but as I look at Mark still looking at me, as helpless as I am, I dismiss the possibility of asking for anything, promising Alina and myself in my head, almost like a prayer, that we’ll be okay, we’ll be okay, we’ll be okay, that we’ll survive this bullshit with Burke unscathed, intact, that we’ll come out of it stronger and better than ever. And then I’ll let myself feel the loss of Kyle and forgive myself, maybe, hopefully. But Mark won’t stop looking at me. And I can’t tell if I recognize something in him or if I’m just seeing money.
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