Before I left he handed me something red and smooth. I took my journal and smiled.
“Good luck,” he said.
I followed Justin to the exit. Adrenaline pumped through my body, enough to ward off the fatigue the new drug caused. Richard’s warning echoed in my head: Defiance has its limits. He was right. There is only so much fight in a single human being. A single person can quickly get beaten down. But when we combine forces, we build a wall of hope. And you can’t put a limit on hope.
We headed down the dark tunnel and this time I didn’t cower. I felt reborn. I led the group, with Justin’s hand wrapped tightly around mine. When we reached the night air, a warm breeze whipped around us. Clare leaned forward to grab me in a hug but then caught herself and held back. She told me she’d see me soon.
“You’re free,” she reminded me with a smile.
I told her it was going to take a while to sink in. “I’m still just a fugitive.”
“Justin will take care of you,” she said. Then she stopped and considered her words. “Actually, I take that back. You can take care of yourself.”
I smiled and turned to Pat. “It’s good to have you back,” he said. “Try to behave this time.”
“Thanks for being here for me,” I said. I knew Pat gave everyone a hard time only because he genuinely cared about me.
“I did it for you,” he said before he turned away.
Molly nodded in our direction and wished us luck. They all headed down the street, and I watched their silhouettes fade into the darkness. Tonight, all I wanted was to forget. Just for one night.
I turned to find Justin watching me. He blew out a long, slow breath, like something heavy was being pushed out of his lungs.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’ve just been waiting a long time for this moment. I want to enjoy it for a second.”
He stared at me and I felt shy from the attention. I didn’t know what the night had in store. Justin and I always knew our meetings were short. We always knew how the night was going to end. Now, possibility surrounded us and I’d forgotten what to do with that kind of freedom. I was so used to my story being dictated to me, it was overwhelming to write it for myself again.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked, and waited like he was expecting a long list. But I could think of only one thing.
“I just want to be with you,” I said honestly. For a second I was afraid he’d tell me no, that he had too much planning to do in the next week. I didn’t want to be a burden. I knew, now more than ever, that his time was valuable. But I selfishly wanted him all to myself. No phones. No wires. No distractions. Just us.
“I think I can handle that” was all he said.
I followed him down the block to a motorcycle parked on the side of the road and he held out a silver helmet.
“Are you up for this?” he dared me. I took the smooth helmet in my hands and studied the bike.
“Did your dad build this thing?” I nodded to the motorcycle.
“Unfortunately, no,” he said. “This one doesn’t fly.”
“Or even hover?” I asked. He laughed and swung his leg over the leather seat.
“If I get enough air off a jump, I guess you could call it hovering,” he said.
Before I could argue, he grabbed my hand and pulled me down on the seat and promised to drive slow.
“Isn’t it every girl’s fantasy to ride on a motorcycle?” he asked.
I slid the helmet over my head. “Yeah, especially while wearing green hospital scrubs and grandma sandals,” I noted. “That defines sexy.” Just like that, I was back. Without trying, I was me again. Justin always had that effect on me. He helped reveal parts of myself that most other people tried to bury. There’s a security in people knowing you because sometimes you forget and you need to be reminded of who you are.
He started the engine with a kick of his foot.
I asked if we were going to Pat and Noah’s apartment.
He shook his head and glanced at me over his shoulder. His lips turned up at the corners and his dimples were deep. My heart almost stopped. It was the first time I’d seen a genuine smile on his face in months. I realized he hadn’t worn a true smile since I’d been in the DC. I’d forgotten how beautiful it looked on him. I’d forgotten I was one of the few people who brought it out, as if he saved his smiles for me. He slid his helmet over his head.
“Don’t you want to see where I live?” he asked.
PART 3
Middle Ground
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We drove up a winding road that crawled above the city like a vine wrapping its way up a trellis. Homes were concealed down long driveways and hidden from the street behind plastic shrubs and trees. We came to a stop next to a two-story white house built on the edge of the hill. Wide windows stretched across the entire second floor, and the first floor was nearly camouflaged behind miniature palm trees and bushes. The air was warm and smelled like salt from the ocean mixed with the blacktop on the streets. I’d spent so many months at the DC, I forgot that winter was over and it was already spring.
“You’re renting a whole house?” I asked Justin. I doubted he needed the space. I took my helmet off and handed it to him.
“Just the second floor,” he said. I asked him if he had been renting it the whole time I was in the DC, and he nodded.
“Why?” I asked. He stared at me like it was a ridiculous question.
“So I could be closer to you.” He shoved his helmet in the seat compartment and pulled my journal out and handed it to me.
We went through a metal gate that buzzed open when he touched the handle. We walked along a stone path to a side entrance and up a flight of stairs. Two lamps snapped on when he opened the door, illuminating a large open room with high ceilings. The hardwood floors shone, and the walls were painted a warm yellow. There wasn’t a single wall screen, which didn’t surprise me. There wasn’t much of anything.
I followed him down the hall and he pointed out a small kitchen, barely large enough for both of us to fit in at the same time. So few people cooked these days, kitchens were designed smaller and smaller. Some homes didn’t even have them—they used cooking closets, which were adequate. People saved the space in their houses for their living rooms, their family rooms, their entertainment centers.
We walked past the kitchen and he pointed out the bathroom. I looked inside and there were just basic essentials: a few towels stacked on the white counter, a single toothbrush, soap, a bottle of lotion. I was fascinated with what he owned, even though they were such basic things. I stared down at the blue toothbrush; I touched the white hand towels and the tube of toothpaste. I marveled at his things because they were tiny pieces of him, just the smallest hints of who he was. There was a chipped blue soap dish holding a white bar of soap. I wanted to know where he bought it, how the chip happened.
Looking around, I couldn’t believe he’d been here almost six months. It looked like he’d just arrived.
We walked back to the living room. I noted the minimal furniture. All he had was a couch and a mattress in the corner with sheets and pillows thrown on top of it. He wasn’t the neatest person in the world, but he wasn’t a slob either. It looked more like he was always leaving.
The couch was against the wall of windows, and it was covered with duffle bags and jackets. He told me he would have cleaned up if he knew he was having company tonight, and he started to toss the bags onto the floor next to a black suitcase in the corner.
There wasn’t a single picture or poster hung on the wall. Nothing to hint at who he was, other than mysterious, and I already knew that about him. All he had for entertainment was a stack of books lying next to the bed. I bent over to read a few of the spines. A collection of Rumi was there, one of my favorite poets. I recognized Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“What would you call your decorating style?” I asked. “Boring-bachelor? Or messy-loner?”
He look
ed over at me. “More like distracted-about-my-detainee-girlfriend,” he said. “I’m not here very often. It’s not like I’m hosting dinner parties.”
“You’re definitely not a homebody,” I agreed. Even though his clothes were here, there was a vacant energy to the place. But I remembered him telling me once he didn’t own anything more than what he could carry on his back. I also noticed that the few things he did own were nice. The leather jacket he wore fit his arms and shoulders so well it looked tailored. It was probably custom-made. His jeans and shirts and shoes were expensive sports-company brands. I noticed his lotion in the bathroom had a French label. He had access to every gadget technology had invented, but he didn’t care to use any of them.
“I crash here twice a week.”
“After you meet with me,” I figured.
He nodded and kicked off his tennis shoes. “That’s right. Anyway, it’s a start. It’s the only place I’ve ever had to myself.”
I sat down on the tattered gray couch. It was soft and broken-in. The apartment was a palace compared to the dungeon I’d just escaped from. I looked up at Justin. “It must be scary, the idea of settling in one place.”
He took off his coat and tossed it on top of a pile of jeans. “Actually, it’s kind of nice.” He pulled back the curtains that blocked the wall of windows. “I rented it for this,” he said. He turned off the lights and climbed onto the couch next to me. We looked out at a jagged skyline below us. In one direction we could see downtown, toward South Central, and all the skyscrapers looked tiny, like I could hold them in my hand and touch their yellow windows with my fingertips. We watched trains move like glowing snakes through the city streets, and ZipShuttles dart between them like fireflies. A million lights twinkled. It was a man-made constellation. We could see all the way to the ocean in the distance. We watched the water glimmer by the light of the wave generators.
“I could see you from here,” he said. He pushed his finger against the pane and pointed in the distance, toward the ocean, and I followed his eyes. I couldn’t make out the detention center. I didn’t even want to imagine it. I wanted to block that life from my mind.
“I liked the idea I could always keep an eye out for you,” he said. “It made me feel a little bit better.” Our eyes met and his were lighter than I ever remembered seeing them. There was relief on his face, but also exhaustion, like the last six months had been a kind of torture for him too. I’d never thought about my situation from Justin’s perspective. If I knew he was trapped, that I couldn’t be there for him or understand what he was going through, I’d go insane. I’d riot and storm through the doors. I’d tear the place down. I’d only want to save him. Looking at Justin, I understood how much support he gave me. Even though it tortured him, he let me make my own decisions and was there to back me up.
He lifted his hand and ran his fingers through my hair. My heartbeat immediately picked up. His hand was slow and his body was close, but not too close. He was tentative with each movement, like I was a wild animal whose trust he was trying to gain.
Everything moved in slow motion. He leaned his forehead against mine and we sat like that, just leaning in and breathing. My fingers traced the part of his chest where the scars were. I was trying to get to know him again. I was trying to know myself. I still felt disgusted with my scrawny arms and waist and ribs that stuck out nearly as far as my chest. I hated being skin and bones. I felt like I was too pointy to touch, all angles and edges.
But Justin’s hands never left my skin. They traced my nose and my lips and eyebrows until my lids felt heavy and closed. He pulled me on his lap and I fell asleep that way, curled up in his arms.
***
The next morning, I woke up new. I woke up in white cotton sheets that smelled like Justin, warm and soapy and clean. I woke up to the sun filtering through the window. I hadn’t let him close the curtains last night; I wanted to see the rays paint the walls gold. I stared at the brightness all around me and felt it inside of me, warm and tapping my bones.
I rolled over and stretched my arms and legs, and the warm sheets felt like silk. I reached my hand out and touched the sunlight and it made the tips of my fingers glow. I eyed Justin’s phone lying on the floor next to the mattress and picked it up with curiosity. I hadn’t used a phone in six months.
Justin stirred next to me; he was lying on his stomach, and his dark hair spread over the pillow.
I turned his phone on and informed him he had fifty-seven messages and twenty-eight missed calls. His hair fell over his eyes, and he had to brush it away to look at me.
“Have you ever considered getting a secretary?” I asked.
“You know I’m terrible at checking in,” he said, his voice slow and lazy. It was a side of him I’d never seen before.
“True,” I said. “She’d fire you.”
He grabbed the phone out of my hand and threw it on the couch. “You need to let me savor this,” he said.
He rolled toward me and leaned up on one elbow and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and stared at me. I knew how battered I looked after six months at the DC. I could probably model for a brochure on malnutrition, bad hair, sleep deprivation, or all of the above. But Justin looked at me like he was enamored, which made no sense at all. Meanwhile, I felt like I’d woken up next to some Hollywood supermodel.
He kept watching me and his brown eyes were golden in the sun. I finally nudged him out of his daze. He was freaking me out.
“You should return those calls,” I said, trying to take the focus off me.
“I’ll get to it,” he said. His eyes didn’t budge.
I covered my face with the sheet and mumbled he couldn’t look at me until after I showered.
Justin rolled out of bed, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers. I couldn’t help but stare at him as he walked over to the corner of the room and dug through a pile of clothes until he came up with a pair of jeans. He told me where the towels were and said we could get coffee down the street and rattled on about the breakfast specials, like talking in our underwear was our typical morning routine. I stood up and the floor was warm on my bare toes and I stretched my feet to soak up the heat. I was used to the ice-cold floors in the center. I was used to curling in on myself. Anything that touched my skin was a threat.
He pointed out a duffle bag on the floor with a few changes of clothes inside.
“Not that you don’t look hot in my T-shirt,” he remarked of my nightgown. I looked down at my skinny bare legs and felt myself blush. I picked at the hem of the shirt and nodded at his mound of clothes on the floor.
“So this is your idea of moving in?” I asked, to change the subject. “It looks more like you’re leaving.”
He nodded and pulled a gray hoodie over his head. “My life’s one long trip.”
I looked around the room at the simplicity. I had a feeling my own life would mirror this existence for a while.
“What’s your advice?” I asked. “How do you live your life without settling?”
“Own as little as you can. Travel light.” He smiled at me. “I’m not going to completely drop anchor anytime soon,” he said. “You’ve got to know that by now.”
I felt a twinge of disappointment at his words. He would never give up. He would never back down. He was right; his life was always on the road. And he didn’t say anything about a traveling companion.
“We need to get out of here,” Justin announced, and turned my shoulders toward the bathroom. “And you need to eat something.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Eden,” he said. “I think you could use a little one-on-one time with reality.”
***
I showered and took my time shaving and washing every crevice of my body, as if the last six months of memories could be rinsed off if I scrubbed hard enough. The steaming mist of water was a luxury; so was a washcloth, and so were shampoo and conditioner that didn’t smell like kitchen-cleaning products. They gave us dull p
lastic razors at the DC so we wouldn’t hurt ourselves, so my legs were red and always prickly with short stubble. My skin was dry, chapped, and flaking from the hard water. I helped myself to Justin’s lotion and it smelled like aloe and rosemary.
It was my first time back in jeans in six months, and I slipped them on slowly. I finally wore a T-shirt that was soft and fitting, not a scrub top that hung on me like a bed sheet. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, at my long hair that needed a cut, at my wispy frame, and at my face that was still too thin. But my cheeks had a hint of pinkness from the heat of the shower, and my eyes were glowing. For the first morning I could remember I was excited to start the day. Usually I dreaded time; now I craved it and clung to it and wanted it to slow down. The day was something to celebrate, not just something to get through. So much of my life up to then had been something to endure, not experience.
I met Justin in the living room and we walked outside into crisp morning air. The sky was light blue, still sleepy, with the sun low in the sky. We walked down the street to a café called Firefly, a few blocks from his apartment.
I noticed people were out. I noticed because I jumped whenever someone passed us. Two women jogged by with their dogs, and when they said hello I was so startled I tripped over the curb. Justin grabbed my hand and held it to keep me steady. A young mother passed us with a stroller. A pack of guys rode by on skateboards, and the whirring sound of their wheels made me panic and I let go of Justin’s hand so I could latch on to his entire arm.
“Do you want to turn around?” he asked me, his face worried. “Maybe you’re not ready for this.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not scared, just jumpy. I’m not used to so much—life.”
“Sensory overload?”
“Yeah, but in a good way,” I assured him.
Justin talked to keep me distracted. He told me this was the only neighborhood in L.A. that was unplugged. People referred to it as Freak Street. The road was lined with boutiques and cafés and tattoo parlors, art galleries and old cinemas. He told me they even had an antique bookstore.