She doesn’t say anything else as she follows me through the door that’s marked as an exit. She instantly stiffens as she steps into the dust and the darkness and the debris on the floor. The walls are caving in and there’s spray paint on the wall and I get her reluctance, but at the same time I know she’ll appreciate why I brought her here.
“Just follow me.” I slip my fingers through hers, surrendering to the pull. “I promise when we get to the top, it’ll be worth it.”
Her eyes widen as she angles her chin back and looks up at the hole in the ceiling that stretches through five floors. “Is it safe to get to the top?”
“Of course,” I say, but I’m not really sure. “Just follow where I walk.”
She nods and then moves to the side when I do, tracking my footsteps, clutching my hand, her skin damp. It briefly registers through her nervous touch that she’s trusting me to keep her safe and so when I reach the place where Tristan and I climbed up through the holes in the walls to get to the top, I instead go to the right to the stairway, because it’s safer.
“So this place used to be an old hotel?” she asks as she takes calculated steps, making sure to stay close to the wall.
I put my hand on the wall as the stairs creak below our feet. “I think so. At least that’s what the sign said outside. I’m guessing, though, that it was probably a casino, too, since most of the hotels here are.”
She glances at an open room that still has orange shag carpet and brightly painted yellow walls with a rainbow pattern down them. “Yeah, they even have slot machines in the gas stations. It’s weird and noisy. Plus, everyone’s always smoking,” she says, and when I pause, she quickly adds, “It doesn’t bother me, but my friend Lea can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.”
I start walking again. It’s amazing how a single sentence can remind me just how far apart we are, even if part of me doesn’t want us to be that way. “Is Lea the girl who was with you the first day you showed up at my place?”
She nods with her head tipped down, hair veiling her face, her attention focused on the floor as she chews her lip, and all I can think is how perfect she is and how much I want to draw her. As soon as the thought surfaces, it makes me feel like I’m cheating on Lexi, thinking about doing that with someone else, and I seriously almost turn around and bail out, wishing I could go back to my room and do more lines.
“I met her at the beginning of the school year,” Nova continues as she sidesteps a large chunk of Sheetrock. “She came up to me and introduced herself when I went to this center for people who’ve lost a loved one to suicide.”
I look over my shoulder at her. “She’s lost someone, too?”
“Her dad,” Nova explains as she holds on to my hand and the fingers of her other hand wrap around my arm. “Even though it’s not quite the same as what I went through, we really connected, sort of like I did with you for a while there.”
I stop walking, moving, breathing. Time stops. She ends up nearly running into me, stumbling over her feet, but catches herself by jabbing her fingertips deeper into my arm and putting her hand on the wall beside us.
She grips my arm as she stares up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean you connected with me?” I ask, my voice coming out a little sharper than I planned.
“Last summer,” she says timidly. “That time we spent together—I thought we sort of connected. Not like in a hey-we’re-best-friends way, but…” She releases my arm to drag her fingers through her hair. She must have gotten dust on her hand from touching the wall because the movement leaves a streak of it in her hair. “But I could talk to you about stuff that I wasn’t able to talk to anyone else about. Stuff about my dad and Landon.”
I reach up and brush my hand across her hair, trying to get the dust off her head, and I hate how excited my heart gets when her breathing speeds up, all from me touching her. “Nova, I’m pretty sure that was the weed that let you talk openly like that, not me.”
She shakes her head, her tongue slipping out of her mouth to wet her dry lips, and all I want to do is back her into the wall, pick her up, and devour her. But the wall would probably crumble under the slightest pressure and I’m not sure we’d survive the fall.
“I don’t think that’s what it was,” she says. “And I’m going to prove it to you.”
My face contorts with confusion. “How?”
She motions me forward. “Just get us to somewhere where the floor doesn’t feel like it’s going to give out and I’ll tell you.”
I’m not sure what she’s up to, but I’m curious, so I start up the stairs again, holding her hand, guiding her around the holes in the floor, trying to focus on the bigger picture of all this, but I can only see three steps ahead.
When we reach the top of the stairway, I open the door and sunlight spills over us like warm water. Stepping to the side, I hold the door ajar and let Nova through.
She steps out into the sunlight, glancing around at the massive signs on the rooftop. Ones that I’m guessing used to belong to casinos that are closed down now. Some are made up of light bulbs and others are just painted. Some are cracked, others are warped, and they all sort of create this maze.
“Wow…” She pauses as she takes in everything. “There are no words. This is amazing.” She glances at me, her big eyes making me feel like I’m falling into her. Part of me wishes that were really happening, but I think I’m tripping out.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree, nodding, then point to a stack of bricks near a large VIVA LAS VEGAS sign. “Can you go get one of those bricks? Because if the door shuts, we’re locked up here.”
She pulls a wary face, but then zigzags around the signs, ducking and maneuvering around them as she crosses the length of the roof and picks up a brick. I try not to smile at how much she struggles to carry it, either because it’s too heavy for her or because she doesn’t want to get dirty. She sets it down in front of the door and I gently let the door go, holding on to it until I know the brick is going to hold. Then I hop over a smaller sign that’s fallen over in the way and head over to the ledge of the roof and climb up onto. I sit down, hanging my legs over the side. Nova doesn’t follow me right away, so I pat the spot next to me and tell her to come over without looking at her, wondering just how much she trusts me. I secretly wish she’d just run away, but at the same time I want to hear what she has to say—why she thinks we connected last summer.