Amalia…

I had no idea what to do with myself. I wasn’t tired anymore, I’d slept hard and dreamless for the first time in forever but I didn’t think it had too much to do with Kyle. No, it had everything to do with just being that fucking exhausted. Now, I felt restless and on edge; my body very nearly vibrating with the want to do something, anything, to fix this situation.

I stared at the silver surface of my closed laptop and felt as if it’d somehow betrayed me. I knew what I’d been asking for when I put my name on that forum but the universe had given me Kyle instead. I sighed and picked up my Tarot deck, scooting back against the headboard and shoving pillows behind my back. I shuffled the cards easily between my hands and took comfort in their worn surfaces and battered edges. The sudden silence, the absence of his presence, pressed in on me and I wrestled with the confused emotions that wrought.

I’d missed him, just been put back into his orbit, and even though I knew he’d be back, I felt his new absence keenly. We had a lot to talk about, he and I, and I had no idea where to begin. Now, more than ever, I wished I could divine the future absolute and not just the likeliest of a myriad of possibilities.

I decided to do a very basic three-card spread, each representing a cross section in time – past, present, and future. I closed my eyes and breathed deep and clear, focusing my energies on the simple task at hand, shuffling the deck between my hands until I reached an almost meditative state. When I felt calm, cool, and collected, I stopped and turned the first card, laying it in front of me.

My gaze skated over the image on its surface, a skeletal rider on a skeletal horse, bony hand outstretched, an hourglass with the sands trickling away perched in his palm. I couldn’t agree with the meaning behind it more. Death traditionally represented change and not just simple change like moving from one location to another. It meant a deep, fundamental change to one’s entire being. Something profound, life altering… looking at the card the night that changed the course of my life forever sprang immediately to mind. Like the monster under the bed, slithering out from the dark to loom menacingly above me. Although, as an adult, I knew that no amount of cowering under the blankets and wishing it away would make what’d happened disappear. It wasn’t a figment of my imagination that could just be ignored.

I reminded myself that I was alone, that there was no one here to see me, no one I needed to impress, and I let the emotions wash over me and through me. I let myself drown in the despair I felt over taking that man’s life, of altering my path and Kyle’s so completely. Even if I hadn’t had a choice, the guilt was still there. The horror at watching his eyes go wide, the dark blood spilling between his fingers as he fell, as if I’d cut him down with an ax as he’d fallen backwards, just as slowly as a felled tree. He was young. Probably no more than twenty, almost as fresh-faced as I had been at seventeen, and he hadn’t even been the one I had been aiming for.

The one I had been trying to shoot was the one holding the gun on my father. I’d shot him too, but he hadn’t died… I’d seen him again two years later when he’d caught up with me and my dad in Memphis and we’d run again. We’d had to bolt at least one more time since then and only the last ten years had our new identities stuck.

I let my mind drift, playing out vignettes from the past to present. Little bits of my life flickering past my mind’s eye as if I stood like stone in the midst of a river or stream, letting it wash over and around me. When I reached the present, I opened my eyes and when I felt still and focused again, I turned the next card…

The Tower also represented life-altering change, however, unlike Death, it was a much easier card to swallow; at least this time. The Tower represented all of the things unnecessary to you falling away. They might be things that you didn’t wish to lose, people and comforts and the like, but much like facing a car crash, or your house burning down you begin to realize that it doesn’t matter. That it was all just stuff, not who you were, not who you are at your core. The Tower represented loss and change, but when it was all said and done what crumbled away left you back at your foundation. This was important and reassuring. Yes, everything was tumultuous, yes, everything was frightening and in a freefall right now, but my foundation was solid. It was true, and I could always rebuild.

I analyzed how I was currently feeling. So far the two cards drawn rang eerily true and were, in fact, indisputable when it came to my situation and their base meanings. I rolled my lips together and took a deep breath, holding it, as I cast my mind’s eye to the future and turned the next card.

The Fool.

Interesting. Out of a deck of over seventy-eight cards I had managed, on a three-card draw, to pull, arguably, the three most powerful of the major arcana off the deck. Frustratingly, The Fool didn’t tell me much, unless it served as a warning. I tilted my head and let my eyes roam the familiar image. The young man, entranced by the butterfly, about to step off a cliff. It spoke to me, saying “Go forward with both eyes open…” and I had every intention to but I still couldn’t help but wish for something more to it. I turned over the next card as a sort of enhancement to The Fool, seeking clarification, something further to go on and felt my breath leave in a rush.

Here was a minor arcana, the Queen of Swords. I chewed my bottom lip. The suit of swords was an air symbol and typically meant power, rationality, and intellect. The Queen of Swords meant growth and clarity in an intellectual capacity. I took it to mean, in conjunction with The Fool, that there were many paths to take going into the future, and basically, not to be stupid about it. I needed to go forward with both eyes open and really think about what I was doing to avoid stepping off a cliff. The spread told me unequivocally that danger lay ahead and not to fuck up.

How quickly things can change. This time yesterday I was prepared to throw in the towel. Tired of running and tired of hiding – now here was Kyle, something totally unexpected and while I was still on the fence about some things, I still stood firm on my foundation, my truth, which was fuck whatever happens to me but I don’t have any right to drag anyone else into it or cause collateral damage. I’d already caused some of that when we were teens. Already hurt him once, had hoped and prayed he would forget about me and move on with his life (as much as that killed me to wish it.)

So now what do I do? I asked myself, scrubbing my face with my hands. I let out a giant exhale, never thinking in a million years that Kyle Cochran would still be looking for me, let alone that he would find me.

I swept the cards leaving me with more questions than answers up into my hands and re-introduced them to the deck. I suppose I couldn’t complain too mightily about what they’d told me. I mean, they certainly hadn’t been wrong, but they hadn’t exactly helped much, either. I wrapped them back up in their scrap of silk, my eyes falling to a battered old sketchbook covered in band stickers. I picked it up, older and more bruised than the rest, and let it fall open in my lap.

Most people had photo albums but I’d been too poor to have a camera. Instead, I stole art pencils from my art classrooms and drew the things that I wanted to commit to memory the most onto the pages of my birthday gift from my best friend. The book opened to the latter half of the middle, to the page I spent the most time on, the spine cracked there more than any other place from repetitive use.

There, in many varying shades of graphite, was my most beloved sketch. It was of Kyle, sitting perched on the back of a park bench in jeans and a black tee shirt, one of those black bomber jackets with the neon orange interior making him seem bigger than he actually was through the shoulders. On the opposite page, taped there, was the Polaroid I had been working from. One of our mutual friends had snapped the picture and I’d stolen it as soon as she’d set it down. She’d had a crush on Kyle hardcore and had been pissed the picture had disappeared.

I didn’t care, though. I coveted my best friend back then, but he didn’t know it and I didn’t show it. I cherished the time we spent together and to this day had sketches of those times, the good times, in just about every book scattered across the end of the bed.

I heaved a sigh and pulled my laptop into my lap and opened it up. I called down to the front desk for the Wi-Fi password and plugged it into their network. I connected but it was slow as fuck connecting to the email of my alias and alter-ego, and when it took too long for the email from my job to open up I shuffled the computer off my lap and got up, taking my restless self into the bathroom.

I stared at myself in the mirror, hair a frizzing catastrophe around my face since I’d slept on it wet. There was no fixing it, short of another shower, a blow dry, and combing and since I didn’t have anything better to do with myself, I did just that. I knew Kyle was bringing me some more clothes, but what I’d had on when he’d swooped in was clean now and would work just fine. I carefully dried and styled my hair and sighing in front of the mirror, hair smoothed and sleek, pinned down into a braid over one shoulder, went back out into the room to find a hairband or tie. I rifled one handed through the little pockets in my bag and found not only a hair tie but a small stash of my makeup.

I took my small haul back into the bathroom so that I could see what I was doing, and with time to kill, tied off the ends of my hair and set to work on my face. All I really had was some black eyeliner and some face powder but it was enough to take the shine off my oily skin and smooth out my already pretty smooth complexion. I’d lucked out with whoever my mother had been. Her genetics ruled the day when it came to me and as conceited and fucked up as it sounds? I could see why my dad got with her.

She’d left just after I was born, leaving my papa holding the proverbial bag. The diaper bag, I guess. It’d just been me and him ever since. Well, until it was me and Kyle for a good chunk of time. My dad just couldn’t help himself and tended to fuck up a lot, and when he did, I always ended up at Kyle’s place. It hurt my heart to know his parents were gone. They’d been my pseudo-parents for so long, you know?

I leaned heavily against the edge of the sink and stared wide eyed into the mirror. My eyes, rimmed in the dark kohl liner, seemingly much larger and taking up over half my face. I refused to cry, so I simply stared myself down until the choking sensation diminished and the hot prickling at the backs of my eyes receded.

I had no parents left at all, not even Mr. and Mrs. Cochran to go back to someday. I just had Kyle… but do you? I let out my breath slowly and closed my eyes, shutting out my shaken and crumbling visage.

It’s been seventeen years, Mali… Everything is bound to be different now.

I hated the voice of reason. She was such a pragmatic bitch. I sighed and sniffed, racking my neck back and forth, working my shoulders loose and letting a deep breath rush out, then taking another one. I coughed lightly and got my shit back under control. Not a single errant tear snuck free. Small victory in a long line of lost battles.

The hotel room door opened and I watched Kyle pass the bathroom door into the rest of the suite, a shopping bag in each hand. I whipped my chap stick over my lips in the mirror and capped it, gathering up my few items to take back out to my bag.

“Mali?” Kyle called out, frozen at the foot of the bed, apprehension dripping from his tone. I smiled a little to myself.

“Right behind you,” I said softly, and he jumped. I smiled a little bigger and stepped up to my bag, stashing my little bit of shit back in the pocket I found it in.

Kyle’s eyes roved over the disaster on the bed, fixing on the laptop.

“Did you get on the internet?” he asked.

“Connection here is slow as shit, wasn’t even able to really get into my email,” I said, thrusting sketchbooks into my bag carefully, stashing my tarot cards back in the pocket they’d come from and just generally shifting things around to make room for whatever was in the bags he held, hoping I could make it fit.

“Shit, I should have said something. I didn’t think about it. Keep packing up, we have to go.”

“What?” I felt that familiar tingle of fear uncurling along the length of my spine.

“I brought it because I knew they could track it. It was supposed to be bait, I didn’t think you’d try to use it. I didn’t think –“

“Jesus, Kyle! Why didn’t you say something? Am I supposed to know this shit through osmosis?” I demanded, thrusting things carefully away, my fear bringing out the saltiness in me. It always did. I got scared, I got attitude – it was just a given about me and I wouldn’t apologize for it. Kyle didn’t ask me to, and he didn’t apologize either.

He just handed me the shopping bags and said, “We’ve got time, how long ago did you use it?”

“I don’t know, maybe a half-an-hour? Forty-five minutes ago?”

“Okay, we still have time, we just have less of it than I thought. Keep packing.”

I rolled my eyes thinking; like I’d stop, and stuffed clothes from his shopping excursion into whatever corners were left open in my damn bag. I rolled up the pair of jeans he handed me and stuffed them along the top, pulling the flap on the bag over and using the trident buckles, shoving them home with a satisfying click. All was secure. I hit the button in the center of the old-fashioned seatbelt buckle that served as a quick release on the strap of my bag and wordlessly shrugged into the leather jacket Kyle held out to me.

It suited me and I liked it. Although I have to admit, the reason I liked it probably had more to do with the fact that it was Kyle’s than any sort of fashion sense. Though, it scored points in that department, too.

I stood with my back to the bed and hauled my bag by one strap up over my shoulder, the buckle digging into my hand, keeping the strap from sliding through. I groped down by my opposite side for the swinging other half of the strap, grabbed it and hauled the two ends together, clicking the buckle home, yanking on it a bit to make certain it was secure, before letting either strap go. Kyle was watching me and I arched an eyebrow at him and asked, “We going, or are you just going to stand there with your dick in your hand?”

He scowled at me but got back into motion, shoving his underwear that I’d been wearing into the top of his knapsack. He stalked around the corner into the bathroom and gave it a sweep, scooping up the toiletries and dumping them into the top of his bag before cinching it closed. I felt my mouth turn down and head nod, I could respect that. Never knew when that kind of shit would come in handy and waste not, want not.

“Cool,” he said shrugging one strap of the bag onto a shoulder broader than I could ever remember. “Let’s bounce.”

I dragged my dad’s gun off the bed and tucked it down the back of my pants under the jacket and he gave me a nod and held out his hand, gesturing for me to come up behind him. He opened the door to the room and looked up and down the hall both ways.

“Clear,” he declared in a low husky voice and we went out, one after the other, the soles of my knee-high Doc Marten’s hushed by the plush luxury hotel’s thick hall carpeting. We smoothly made our way to the elevator and he pressed the button.

“Nothing’s wrong, act natural when we hit the lobby, move for the parking garage elevators. Don’t look around, just… talk to me,” he said.

“About what?”

“Um,” he smiled faintly and said, “Remember that time we were out in that spot in the woods and you were bossing us around and…”

I felt myself blush, hard… we’d probably been about eleven and these older kids had rolled up on their bikes and one had shot me with a BB from his slingshot right in the ass. It had hurt but I’d been determined to execute building the fort we’d been attempting and had just kept prattling on. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize why everyone else was so quiet behind me. It also took another agonizing shot to the back.

“Why you have to remind me of that?” I asked, scowling. We stepped onto the elevator down to the lobby. Kyle didn’t immediately answer as I went back inside my own head to that day.

I’d cried, the BB had torn my favorite tee and had embedded itself in my back, next to my shoulder blade on the inside of it. It’d hurt so bad, and the other kids had followed the older teen’s teasing and laughter. I’d fallen into the mud by the creek with that second shot, writhing. My jeans had protected me from the first shot, which he’d hit square in the back pocket. The double layer of denim too thick to penetrate but it had still stung like a son of a bitch.

“Yeah, I never forgot it either,” Kyle said quietly and we stepped off the elevator into the lobby which wasn’t too crowded. We moved over to the elevator down to the parking garage.

“So why you have to bring it up now?” I demanded.

“I don’t know, I just thought of it for some reason…”

Kyle had stood up for me. He’d shouted at them and started throwing rocks. Had hit the kid who had hit me and the kid had gotten off his bike and come down the ravine. He’d popped Kyle a good one, knocked him on his ass in the mud beside me; gave him a bloody nose. I’d stabbed the little bastard in the leg with my pocket knife.

It’d been a big mess. Kyle and I had booked it, adrenaline pumping, through the woods that smelled of wet, green, and growing things all the way back to his house. His mom, a nurse, had me sit down at the dining table with my shirt off, a towel clutched to my chest while she spent the better part of a half an hour digging into the hole in my back with tweezers going after that damn BB. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe.

The older kid and his parents showed up at my house; we hadn’t told Kyle’s parents I’d stabbed the kid. I thought for sure my dad was going to beat the shit out of me for stabbing the little prick. I hadn’t told him at all what’d happened in the woods. The parents handed him the pocket knife he’d given me for my tenth birthday and he stared at it in his hand for a long time.

He’d surprised me. He stood up to them. Stared that kid’s parent’s right in the face and praised me for defending myself and told them to get off our front step. I’d been elated for all of five minutes. I’d finally done something right… until I hadn’t. Once they were gone he’d taken a belt to my ass for leaving the knife behind. Drilled into me that you never, ever, left anything behind.

Then he’d hugged me, soothed away my tears and took a look at my back and asked me brokenly why I hadn’t told him…

I was scared… I’d said and he’d looked startled and for a while, he quit drinking and things were better. For a while…

“Dad beat my ass after those people left,” I said finally and Kyle looked over at me sharply.

“I thought you said you hadn’t gotten in trouble for stabbing that fuckwit.”

“I didn’t,” I confessed. “I got in trouble for leaving the knife, for leaving evidence, behind…”

“Shit,” he said and I could tell he’d had no idea. His face contorting, warm brown eyes roving over my face as the doors slid open to the second elevator, spilling us out onto the level of the parking garage that held his bike.

Kyle hadn’t gotten in trouble for anything. He’d told his parents everything, including me using my knife to defend us from the older boy who must have been fifteen or sixteen. They’d left it up to me to tell my father and I told them I had. My dad had never contradicted that.

“Why did you bring that up?” I demanded once again.

“Because I wanted you to remember that you were a badass from an early age. That, and I remember – get you fixated on something and you’ve got a one-track mind. You did great. Now get on and let’s get out of here.”

I scowled deeply at him and felt a sudden spurt of anger. “Don’t manipulate me like that. I fucking hate being manipulated,” I spat. He carefully considered my face.

“Duly noted,” he said softly and the apology was carried in his tone.

I got on behind him but would be staying pissed for a while.