She pulls slightly away, so I can see her face. “You’re right—I did. But I get it, why you didn’t tell me. Dash, it’s awful, but I do see why.” Her brows are pulled together. She looks troubled.
“I know girls this happened to, and they were innocent, just like you were. You were young and you were fooled by Manda. Let me tell you something: I had diaries.” Tears gather in her eyes again. “I would always write about you in them. I am sure she read them. Once I even found her reading one.” Her lips are pressed together, like she’s trying to hold sobs in.
“It’s okay.” I stroke Am’s hair out of her sticky face. “Ammy, never feel bad. Never. You were not involved. It’s not your fault. You had nothing to do with it at all, it’s all on me.”
“It’s all on Manda! She’s a psycho.”
“She has problems. I can understand it more now that I’m older.”
God. I shut my eyes. I can’t believe I told her this, and Ammy’s arms are still around me. I feel slightly dizzy.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s a shit show, but it’s still going to be okay.”
I pull her closer, press my cheek against her soft hair. “Why do you do this to me?” I ask her hoarsely.
“Do what, baby?”
“Why do you…make me need you?” I ask, ragged.
“I don’t know.” She hugs me tighter.
“I wish I didn’t, Am. I would have stayed the fuck away and never bothered you again.”
“Are you kidding me?” she laughs. “I threw a pencil down in front of you and pretty much wore a giant ‘fuck me’ sign, something that I’ve never done for anybody else, by the way. I used to stalk you on the internet.”
“I don’t know why,” I whisper. I tilt my head back, toward empty, indigo sky.
“Don’t say that,” Am murmurs. She grabs my face, so that our gazes meet. “Don’t say you don’t know why. It makes me sad.”
“I know I don’t deserve it. I know you used to be my fantasy, and then I loved you and I couldn’t help it. Even if I wanted to—and I’m fucked up, so I never did—I couldn’t help but love you. Those glasses and your pretty hair that always smelled so good.” I run my hand over it now. “I loved your snail backpack and those awful Jar Jar Binks slippers you used to wear over.”
“Why did you love them?” she asks, and I can’t read her face.
I answer honestly. “Because they were you. You know how I feel about Jar Jar Binks, but they were silly. Funny. They were just Amelia.”
“That’s why this doesn’t really matter, Dash. With Manda. It doesn’t matter, not really, because I love you the same way. I love you because you’re Dash. I have this memory of you hitting me on the back, beside the pool that day when I was so little. I loved the way your hand hit me. As soon as you stopped hitting me, you were hugging me. I loved you way back then, before Manda. I still beat her to it.”
“Fuck, Amelia…”
“You were always mine. Not hers.” She holds me tightly, and I let her. I stand still and let her hug me, and it doesn’t seem quite real.
“Lexie knew about it, didn’t she?” she whispers.
My fucking eyes burn. “Yeah.”
“She backed you, of course, and of course, she couldn’t tell me.”
I try to swallow, but I can’t.
“It makes sense.”
“When Amanda came to Burbank last year, Lex came down and stayed with me.”
“Manda came to Burbank?” Ammy’s eyes stretch wide.
I nod. “Wanted to move in with me.”
“Holy shit. What did you tell her?”
“Threatened to take her to court. I probably couldn’t do it, but I think it scared her off.”
Am hugs me again, and my legs feel kind of shaky. I don’t want to knock us off the roof, so I say, “Let’s go in.”
“Can I come?”
“No, you have to live out here from now on.”
She smiles a little, and we make our way in silence back to Lexie’s window. I crawl into her room, and it hits me that she’s gone. Lexie is gone. I feel like I can’t breathe. I make it to her bed and manage to lie down—facing the wall.
“Can I get up here with you?” Ammy whispers, several moments later.
I need her... Damn, I really do. And so I nod.
Twenty-Five
Amelia
I scoot up behind him and I wrap my arm around his waist. I press my head against his back and shut my eyes and feel his chest move underneath my arm.
God. Poor Dash.
I can’t believe all that shit happened, and I didn’t have a clue. I could tell he was unhappy that year. That I do remember. I remember he was vague that night we sat out on the roof—the night before he left. He wouldn’t really say why he was going all the way to Rhode Island.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and more tears seep out. It makes me sad to know he’s dealt with this for all these years and I had no idea. I was just mad at him. Confused and mad.
And I was clueless.
His body is so big and hard against mine—he has always seemed so big and strong to me—it seems impossible to think of young Dash being manipulated like that. God, he said he wanted to die that year.
I rub my tear-streaked face against his back and wish I could have held him like this then. And then I remember—I did. I held him while he slept that one night on the roof. The night he told me he didn’t deserve to be happy, and I argued that he did.
I cry against his back, because I can’t believe this awful thing is woven into our love story. I would do anything to erase it, write it out like we might do in one of our films. But that’s not how life is.
I can’t write my mother back into this world, or rearrange the timeline so my dad meets Harlow sooner. I can’t skip back a few scenes so Dash knows that Lex is having trouble. I can want these things all day, and they won’t happen. My will won’t execute itself and create magic. I would know. I’ve tried before.
“If I could,” I whisper quietly, “I would have had you come back the next day and tell me this whole story. That’s what I would want.” I feel Dash’s breaths stall, and I squeeze him more tightly. “But you couldn’t. Sometimes we don’t get a choice. The right thing doesn’t happen. People die when they should still be alive, for no good reason. I know—” my voice cracks— “that this shit does not make sense. It doesn’t to me either. But it’s true, what we were saying earlier. We have to take it all. You can’t just cut the part where all that shit happened with Manda. You can’t make it disappear, and I can’t either. You have lived with that for years, Dash—and I can, too. Yes, it fucking sucks. But I can live with it. And, you know, you were a victim. You were innocent.”
I feel him shake his head and answer, “Yes—you were. I bet Lexie said the same thing, didn’t she?”
He takes a big long breath, then lets it out.
“Of course she did,” I say.
“She called her Rapey McManda.” I can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes me feel relieved.
“Of course she did.”
“Of course she did.”