I shift the car into drive. “I know you do.”
We exchange this intense look that makes it hard to breathe. But then he clears his throat a few times and sits up straight as I start to back the car up. “What are you doing?”
Getting you away from your crappy apartment. “I just need a soda. I’m freaking thirsty.”
“There’s a gas station just down the road where you can get one,” he says, pointing over his shoulder at the road. “It only takes like a minute to drive there and a few minutes on foot.”
“I’ll just drive there.” I crank the wheel to turn the car around. “And then we can keep talking.”
“But doesn’t our conversation keep going in circles…you trying to help me when you can’t? It’s kind of a lost cause,” he says as he guides his seat belt over his shoulder and clicks it into the buckle.
I flip on the headlights as I pull out onto the road. “No time with you is a lost cause. It’s actually very valuable.”
I hear his breath hitch in his throat and when he grips the door handle, I worry he’s going to try to jump out, but he startles me when he says, “Nova, you’re freaking killing me tonight.” His voice is just a whisper, choked up, full of the agony he keeps bottled up. “You got to stop saying that shit to me.”
My heart races inside my chest. “Why?”
He lowers his head and rubs his hand roughly across his face. “Because it means too much to me and stuff shouldn’t mean things to me…it messes with my head.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I got a whole lot of more meaningful stuff waiting for you,” I tell him, unsure where the hell this conversation is going to go.
He stares down at his lap. “I can’t take it anymore. Please just talk about something else besides me.” He glances up at me and the lights on the side of the street are reflected in his eyes, highlighting his agony. “Tell me something about you,” he begs, slumping against the seat with his head turned toward me. “Please. I want to hear something about you.”
I turn my head and our gazes collide. I want to cry because he looks in misery and like he’s silently begging me to put him out of it. God, what I’d give to know the right thing to say, something that could take away his pain. The problem is I know from experience there’s no right thing to say that can take away the pain. There’s nothing that can save him from it. He just has to learn to live with it and not give it so much power over him.
“Like what?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice balanced.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “You said on the roof that I was easy to talk to last summer and I said it was because you were high, so prove me wrong right now. Talk to me about something—something about you.”
I consider what he said as I tap the brakes, stopping at a red light. Something about me. Maybe something that will help him see that people can be helped. “I watched Landon’s…my old boyfriend’s video, the one he made minutes before he killed himself.” I don’t look at him when I say it because I can’t, but his elongated silence says that I’ve stunned him. The light turns green and I drive down the road, heading toward the gas station on the right side.
Finally he says, “When?”
“I already told you he made it right before he died,” I say as I pull into the gas station. “I actually had the video file forever, but I was too scared to watch it. I had it there on my computer and then my phone all last summer, but wouldn’t…couldn’t watch it.”
“No, I mean when did you watch it?” he asks as I park the car in front of the gas station doors and beneath the florescent glow of the signs.
I turn off the engine. “It was the day I took off from the concert,” I tell him, our gazes locked. “The morning after you left me at the pond.”
“And did it make you feel better?” he questions. “Knowing what he thought before he…” His voice cracks and he clears it, putting his hands at his sides.
“Yes and no,” I answer honestly, and when he looks at me funny, I explain. “Yes, because it helped me see what I’d really become—what I was turning into. Even though it was right in front of my eyes, I couldn’t see it and his words reminded me of what I used to be and what I wanted to be again.”
He absorbs my words like they’re oxygen, breathing in and out. “And why do you regret it?”
I shrug, but everything inside me winds tight as I stare out the windshield at the store lights, letting them burn against my eyes so I won’t cry. “Because I still ended up confused over why he did it…he never did give a real explanation, and honestly, I’m not even sure one exists. Plus, it hurt to watch him like that, you know.” I look over at him and even though it’s hard I hold his gaze. “Watching him hurt like that and knowing that soon his pain was going to end—that he was going to die soon and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. That I missed my chance…I never want to miss my chance again.”
“I’m not going to die, Nova,” he says. “If that’s what you’re getting at.”
“You don’t know that,” I say, looking back at him, seeing spots from staring at the lights. “What you’re doing…it could kill you.”
“Well, it’s not going to,” he insists. “Trust me, I’ve been trying to die for a very long time and I can’t make it happen, no matter how hard I try.”
The hope inside me poofs out and before I can even get myself together, tears flood my eyes. Quinton’s honey-brown eyes become Landon’s and abruptly it feels like I’m sitting in the car with him and we’re just talking, but I can feel that he’s sad and I’m just watching him getting sadder and sadder and not doing a goddamned thing about it—watching him die.
“Why would you ever say something like that?” I say as hot tears drip from my eyes. I want to hit him but at the same time I want to hug him. I’m conflicted, so instead I just sit there and cry and he just sits there and watches me like he doesn’t care. But then the tears start streaming down my cheeks and splattering on the console and when he sees them falling it’s like he suddenly realizes I’m crying and that he played a part in it.
He leans over quickly and wraps his arm around me and pulls me against him, crushing our bodies together. “God, Nova, I’m so sorry. Fuck. I’m such an ass**le…I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time…don’t even listen to me.”