“Come on Della,” I told her, completely exasperated by her shenanigans.

“What?” she asked innocently, blowing on her nails.

“You didn’t start painting your nails until I showed up. You knew I was coming at this time, but you didn’t think to grab the…” I lowered my voice even though we were alone in her flat, “pills first?”

She shrugged, adjusting her position on the other end of the sofa we were sitting on. She’d worn a dress that was short enough to give me a glimpse of her knickers every so often, as if she was trying to tempt me. But this time, I wasn’t interested. Maybe a year before, I might’ve fallen into her clutches, but I’d grown tired of this song and dance she routinely put on for me. If she wasn’t my main provider of the painkillers I needed, I’d happily do away with her.

“Don’t get so miffed, Sam.” She puckered her glossy lips and blew across her nails. She looked chuffed about holding me hostage in her company. Her long dark hair curled around her shoulders tantalizingly and she softly swung the hair away when she noticed I was looking.

“I just came for the pills, Della. That’s it. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me to be here.” That was really a lie—Della enjoyed torturing me. Her Cheshire cat smile was more than enough proof of that.

“What’s the big hurry? Got somewhere to be?”

I didn’t have anywhere to be. But, in general, I was restless. I wanted something I couldn’t pin down. My drawing had stalled and it was if my head was full of asphalt. I needed to get out of the city, maybe go to the country for a bit. Walk a lot. Something to get out of the world that Della currently inhabited. To get out of my own head.

Lotte had been gone for a fortnight, with only a couple words here and there about her time in America so far. Ames was distracted between the pub and the restaurant he and Mila were renovating, so I only got a couple one-word answers from him about Lotte.

I thought about her all the time. Of how she’d looked, laid under me, her hair splayed out like a crown. Of those big blue eyes, full of tears as she climbed into the taxi. I didn’t really know what those feelings meant, but I’d drawn her hand fifteen or so times on random scraps of paper before tossing them all, realizing that I wasn’t coming close to how it had actually looked when laid in mine.

My thoughts turned to her so often that I was half tempted to sign up for one of those social media sites she was on, just to see how she was doing. I had no communication with her—at least this way I could see her adventures without Mila having taken pity on me and showing me herself.

But every time I loaded up Facebook, I deleted the app immediately. I was afraid having that kind of accessibility to her would drive me further into madness.

Was it just my guilt that ate away at me? The way she’d looked when I’d told her it’d been a mistake was seared into my memory, but there was something else there, something nagging me to make reparations for what I’d said to her; something that wasn’t born from guilt, but perhaps grew beside it.

“So?” Della interrupted my train of thought, one sculpted eyebrow raised. “What’s going on?”

It would be so easy to fall back into the thick of it with Della, to confide in her about Lotte. Easy, but dangerous. Like handing over my soul to the devil, really.

“Nothing. I just want my pills and I want to be on my way.”

“You’re going through them like candy, and they’re not easy to get you know.” She sighed and tipped her head back. “At this rate, you’re going to burn out before I can get you more.”

The thought sent an icy shiver down my spine. “I’ll find someone else then.”

She laughed and the sound made me grit my teeth. “You’re not going to find anyone else who can help you as much as I can.”

She wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t need to validate her response anyway because she already knew she had that bit of power over me. “You’re the reason I need these anyway,” I told her, anger in my eyes as I looked at her. “If you hadn’t hit me with your car, I’d have been fine.”

We never spoke about it. The incident that had driven my ex-girlfriend to the point of hitting me with her car after a night of angry yelling and fighting. I’d been a shit boyfriend, there was no doubt about that, but she’d been a crazy girlfriend, jealous and simpering and accusing me of doing everything under the sun. One night, I’d had enough and had left her flat—pissed off my arse—and had stumbled down the road. Della, after too many vodka tonics, climbed behind the wheel of her parents’ car to chase me down, but in the darkness and the blur of her vision, she’d hit me.

I’d landed on the hood, my right shoulder making contact. We’d both lied about what happened because I’d felt, at the time, as if it’d been my fault. Years later, I wonder what would happen if I’d told everyone the truth. Sure, I’d told Lotte some version of the truth. That she’d run over my foot, which was more than I told anyone else. But it still wasn’t the full truth of what had happened.

Instead, I blamed the shoulder on a bad rugby tackle, but it’d robbed me of drawing for weeks until I’d finally taken the damned painkiller. It didn’t take long for me to feel like I needed the pills just to numb away the feelings that came with holding onto that secret.

And that was why Della was still in my life. She wasn’t just my supplier, but the keeper of my secret. She’d no sooner tell anyone about my addiction because then I’d tell everyone else what she’d done. We were tied to one another by deceit.

Black. So many times, I’d painted her. She’d been black every time, because that’s what she was to me. A black hole I kept falling into.

Very few people had a high opinion of me, and my association with Della was partly the reason. But here I was, twenty-eight, and still a pathetic shit. Running in the same circles, but with a problem with analgesics to boot.

“Did you see that Scott’s having a party?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“I don’t care,” I told her flatly. “Why don’t you just tell me where the pills are, and then I can be on my way?”

She tsked me as she blew across her nails. “Don’t be daft, Sam. If I told you where they were, you’d just steal from me.”

I shouldn’t have come, but she was the only one able to provide me with what I needed at the moment. A necessary evil.

I wondered how much longer I could endure her company just to get my high, weak as it felt now. I was needing more pills to achieve that high, which meant I was in Della’s presence more lately. Which was probably why she was increasingly obnoxious.

“Kate asked about you. Did you shag her?”

I braced my hands on my knees, steadying my breath. No one could rile me up as quickly as Della could, asking me about other girls and accusing me of things I hadn’t done. “Kate?” I asked, being purposefully obtuse as I ran my hand over the scruff on my chin. “Maybe.”

“You’re disgusting. You have a pretty face, but all the stuff underneath is shit.” She made a noise in the back of her throat and sighed, leaving the room immediately.

I hadn’t shagged Kate, Della’s friend, but the fact that Della wondered even the littlest bit about it made me happy. If the thought caused her the slightest bit of pain that her mere presence caused me, then it was worth it.

I really was a piece of shit.

I stared at my hands, at the paint flecked in the creases of my knuckles, and had a flash of Lotte’s milk-white skin under them. Dropping my head into my palms, I tried to banish the image from my mind. The last thing I needed to be thinking about was Lotte, and all that perfect skin.

I wished I could forget the sound of her heartbeat. The echo of it played in my head at the most inconvenient times.

It’d been two weeks and I still kicked myself for touching her at all. Regret wasn’t an eraser, however, so I could regret all day and night long and still remember the feel of her soft skin under mine.

I glanced at my watch. I was due to be at the pub in a few hours to help Ames get things ready for that night. When he’d asked me for help, I hadn’t hesitated—thinking of the promise I’d made him the years before, when I’d held him in the hospital after his wife had passed away.

Della returned with a baggie and I snatched it from her, eager to leave her. “It’ll take me a couple weeks to get that much again,” she told me. “Might want to think about slowing down.”

I clenched my jaw and turned around. “To hell with slowing down, I’d love to stop. Then I wouldn’t need to be around you anymore.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorway she stood in. “If you wanted that badly enough, you’d have gone cold turkey a long time ago.”

She was such a bloody idiot. You couldn’t go cold turkey off of painkillers without making it extremely obvious to those around you. I wanted to stop, there was no doubt about that. But I just didn’t have the ability to tell myself no.

I didn’t seem to have the ability to tell myself no in many aspects of my life. I was a selfish bastard, so full of flaws that it was remarkable that they weren’t so present beneath the pretty exterior that often got me the things I wanted.

When I arrived at the pub, I was an hour earlier than Ames needed. “Want a pint?” he asked me when I showed up. I’d managed to swallow a pill once I’d stepped off the bus, so I was finally feeling calm again. I nodded, striding up to the bar and marveling at how damned good the place looked. With the sale of Lotte’s studio, Ames had been able to put some much-needed upgrades to the place, and the entire room gleamed like freshly waxed wood.

“You look like rubbish,” Ames said, sliding the coaster on the bar top toward me and placing one exceptionally amber lager on top.

“It’s been a day,” I managed, sipping the beer and letting myself relax. Being around Della always made my nerves stand on end, as if her presence reached across the room and rubbed those nerves raw. She was a hard one to shake off.

“Where’s Mila?” I asked Ames, noticing that the pub was much quieter than usual without Mila and Jennie, Ames’ other employee, hanging out.

“She’s getting Asher settled. He’s struggling a bit, with Lotte gone.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.” I ran my thumb down the side of the cold lager. “Heard from her?”

“She’s somewhere in Utah at the moment. I think she’s a little bit lonely, but she’s holding on okay.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and pulled up a photo of Lotte standing beside a terribly-assembled tent. “Here’s the tent she tried to put together,” Ames said with a laugh. “She struggled more than just a little bit.”

Her smile was wide enough, but there still was that heaviness around her eyes. I almost thought to touch the screen, as if I could reach through and touch her, but I clenched my fist in my lap, halting me from doing such a preposterous thing. “How’s she getting on with the people she’s with?”

“Fine. She’s mentioned that they’re all avid outdoorsmen, so she’s struggling a little there. The elevation is more of a challenge than she’d expected. But she’s committed to doing what they’re doing, even though she’s got a few more bumps and bruises thanks to it.”

It was hard to imagine Lotte, delicate little bird that she was, wearing heavy packs and climbing boulders—but she clearly was proving she was more than capable. Ames swiped through a few more photos, of Lotte ankle-deep in a stream. She was wearing shorts that rode high on her thighs, revealing dozens of red little bumps all over her legs.

“Mosquito bites,” Ames explained, as if he was reading my mind. “She wasn’t prepared for them.”

“She ready to come home?”

Ames shrugged. “I’m ready for her to come home. Asher too, even Mila. It’s weird, not having her around.” He turned the screen off. “She’s my sister, in all the ways that count, and I feel strangely protective of her being an ocean away, with people I don’t know. Even though Mila vouches for them, I still feel … concerned.”

“I don’t think you’re strangely protective at all. You’ve been in her life longer than not—why wouldn’t you feel some sort of protection over her?” Which reminded me. I still hadn’t told Ames about Lotte’s last night in London. Of me, with her. “Do you think she’s breaking any hearts yet?” I asked, fishing, but concealed my tone with a smile.

“Probably only half a dozen. She told me the first night she was there, she danced with a bunch of girls she didn’t know. Got a few catcalls, I’m told.” He made a grunt and poured himself a lager to go with mine. “Between you and me, I hope she gets this trip out of her system, and doesn’t end up with some American leech. She deserves better.”

As I stared at my best mate, I wondered if he’d look at me and see me as worthy. As a friend, I’m sure he would. But good enough for his little sister? For the person of whom he was most protective of in the world? I had sincere doubts about that. And he didn’t even know about my habit, my addiction. There were few secrets between us, but my problem with painkillers and what had happened with Lotte would need to remain silent between us.

“She deserves someone great,” I agreed. “Probably no man would really measure up.”

“That’s true.” He took a sip of the lager and looked me over. “What about you? Any new conquests this week?”

I winced. I hadn’t touched another woman since Lotte. I was no saint, but I’d thrown myself into painting since Lotte had left. Anything to get the noise of her absence pushed from my mind. It just didn’t occur to me to find solace in another woman’s arms for that.

Unfortunately for me, the only painting I’d completed had been the Lyra constellation, set against a black and purple background. Lotte’s freckles.

“It’s been a bit for me.”

“A bit? What’s ‘a bit’? Couple hours?”

“A couple weeks,” I clarified, thinking of Lotte.

“Well, shit. That’s no small bit of time.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Have you seen Della lately?”

I lifted my head. “Della?”

Ames leaned across the bar and cocked his head to the side. “You wanker. You have seen her. Have you lost your marbles?”

It caught me off guard that Ames could read me that easily. It was a good thing he couldn’t see the purpose of my meeting her. “I think I lost them a bit ago,” I admitted quietly.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you look this down-trodden since you were made redundant from the recruitment agency. Speaking of, who gets made redundant from a job recruitment center?”

“Yeah, well that was a good thing. Horses for courses.” I shook it off, took another sip of my beer. “Shouldn’t surprise you, mate. I’m not exactly an upstanding citizen.” I laughed, but didn’t meet him in the eyes.

“You’re not all bad. Not too terribly pleasant to look at, but you’ll do.”

It stung. It was meant as a joke, a poke at my looks. I wasn’t blind—I knew I was, in some circles, good-looking to certain women. That was about all I had going for me, however, so to have my best mate rub it in was particularly grating. He didn’t mean any unkindness by it, it was just who I was, who he was.

“Come on,” he said, slapping me on the arm. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”

“I don’t know. I just feel—and I know, you’re going to be a plonker about it, but I feel like I can’t really think clearly anymore. I’m lacking a muse, some inspiration.” I looked over to the door when Jennie entered.

“What’s this I hear about you lacking inspiration?” she asked, shaking back her blonde bob for effect. “I’m right here, chap.”

I turned to face her as she hung her jacket up. “Did you conk your head or something?”

She rolled her eyes at me. Jennie had been in school with us, so she was—like Lotte—a sister to us. But a sister I hadn’t taken advantage of. I cringed immediately, unable to reconcile the thought of Lotte being like a sister and also someone I’d slept with. She clearly wasn’t like a sister to me.

“It’s just a question. It’s a silly thought, innit? You giving me inspiration?”

She slid a hand over her mop of hair and glared at me. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”

“Is there an echo in here?” I asked drily. I was in no mood to be teased, especially not when it felt like all the atoms I possessed were driving me to a nameless place, somewhere I couldn’t articulate. There was an emptiness within me, unfulfilled by everything I tried to shove into it.

“Sam is struggling with his art,” Ames explained, handing her a black apron as she stepped behind the bar. “Needs some inspiration.”

“Sorry, Jen.” I needed to shake off the mood that had followed me from Della’s. “You’re a gorgeous girl. Just not...” I rubbed my hand through my hair. “You know.”

“Uh, okay, thanks?” She put a hand on her hip and turned her head to look at me more clearly. “Are you going out on the pull or something?”

“Christ, no.” I shook my head. “Just because I enjoy the company of women doesn’t mean I need it to survive day to day.”

Jennie made a face. “Could’ve fooled me. Haven’t seen you traipsing about recently with anyone on your arm, though, so maybe you’ve turned over a new leaf.”

My lack of abstinence was a long-running joke among my group of friends, and it never bothered me, not really, until lately. “Maybe I’m over the chase.”

Ames and Jennie exchanged a look and I stared into my beer. If I hadn’t promised to help Ames with the pub, I’d have left by now. “Are we going to sit around and rag on me, or actually get some work done?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

“I dunno, let’s ask the gaffer since you seem to be stuck on that beer you’re nursing like a baby.”

I leaned over the bar, dumping my beer down the drain, and turned to them both. “I’m here to work,” I said, and softened my tone. I should’ve been feeling better now that the pain pill was kicking in, but I actually felt worse.

I needed to push it from my mind, back in the corner where thoughts of Lotte lived. I needed to shove her from my mind and stop worrying about her like I’ve done since I met her.