He shakes his head. “I just…tell you things.”
“Well, you have to tell me now. Now I’m in suspense. What are you going to tell me?”
He presses his lips flat. “Stress.” He heaves out a long breath. “I get fucking stressed out. And…I like to be distracted.”
My imagination springs into overdrive, painting a picture of Dash on his burgundy silk sheets, naked and covered to his hips, hard under the covers, stressed out and needing assistance.
My face blazes as blood rushes to my cheeks.
He’s confiding in you. Say something. I inhale quickly. “Why are you stressed out? Just…like…everything?”
He nods, then sighs. “Am, I have to tell you something.”
“Okay,” I say softly.
He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a bandana. It’s tie-dyed, bright blue and orange and yellow. “Would you— Ammy, can you wear this? I started smoking.”
“What?”
“I want to smoke. A cigarette. But I don’t want you to breathe it, so…I brought you this. I stopped by the studio space one last time. I grabbed it for you.”
My mind is a whirring blur of ecstasy and puzzlement and joy. He thought about me in advance. Not Alexia; me. Followed by, He’s smoking.
I can only nod.
Dash ties the bandana around my head, positioning it so it covers my mouth, as if I’m some kind of bandit.
Then he turns his wide eyes on me, digging again in his pocket. He’s frowning as he brings out a pack of Marlboros and a small, green lighter.
“I’m sorry,” he says, taking a cigarette out of the pack.
“Tell that to your lungs, hombre.” I reach for him, brushing my fingertips over his forearm. “Don’t say sorry to me.”
He lights up and inhales deeply, blowing the smoke away from me. The wind carries it further in that direction. I watch as his taut, tense shoulders slowly sag.
“Fuck. I understand…why people get addicted.” I watch his chest expand as he inhales again.
“You have to quit.” I hold my hand out. “Leave these with me when you go.”
“Your dad would flip if he found them.”
“That’s true, but I won’t let him find them. I’ll get rid of them.”
He looks at me, then at the pack, before handing it to me, reluctance written in the frown lines on his face.
“Wait, though. Are you going to feel like crap if you don’t have them on the drive?” I fish into the pack, the firm smoothness of the filters strange against my fingertips. “Here.” I hold one out. “If you feel crappy when you get to your new campus, maybe you could bum one. But only one.” I kiss the filter. “Make this your last one from a pack that’s yours. You promise?”
I watch the furrow in his brow as he flicks ashes on the roof. He lifts his gaze to mine. “Promise.”
He inhales again, shutting his eyes. “Fuck.” He blows the smoke out. “You don’t know how it feels…” he tells me with a small, tired smile.
“To smoke one?”
He nods, face tilted to the sky.
“What’s it like?”
“Just…freeing.”
“Yeah?”
He nods. “Like a vacation from your brain.”
And that, he’s telling me, is what he needs. Freedom. A vacation. My mind whirrs, devouring information about Dash, then spinning outward, searching for an adequate reply. “Maybe moving will give you that. Do you think?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds pessimistic as he stubs the cigarette out. “Places aren’t that different really. I don’t think there’s anything special up in Providence.”
“Why’d you pick there, then? Why, why?”
“It’s a good art school,” he hedges.
“Yeah, but there’s a ton of good schools. Like the one here in our freaking state.”
“Yeah, I know.” He blows his breath out.
“I’m teasing. I’ll leave you alone.”
He pulls one big knee up, rests his forehead on it. He looks so tired, after a moment I scoot closer to him. My hands are itching to touch his hair. To comfort him, the way he’s soothed me probably a million times since I moved next door. Still, I tell myself I can’t. That when he lifts his head, I need to have my greedy hands folded safely in my lap. I’m so worked up, I start to count the seconds. When I get to seventy, I take a halting breath, then slowly wrap my arm around his shoulders.
I want to say something—something helpful; something meaningful—but I find my throat won’t work with Dash so close: his muscled back and shoulders firm and warm under my arm.
I can feel his lungs expand and then relax, can feel the micro-motions of his skin: as if he’s shivering.
“I feel like you’re…not happy. I’ve thought that for a while,” I whisper. “Seems like something’s wrong…”
I feel him exhale, long and slow. Then he lifts his head and meets my eyes. “Not everyone is meant to be happy, Amelia.”
His words hit me like an anvil. I’ve seldom heard such dramatic statements, at least outside the books I read, and Dash…well… All my life he’s seemed so happy. Carefree, easy-going, witty, fun. He’s Dash. Everyone likes Dash.
I take a moment to absorb the weight of his statement before shaking my head. “I disagree. Everyone deserves to be happy. Especially you.”
He leans against my arm, still wrapped around him. “You’re too good, Am. That’s why you don’t get it.”
“I’m not good. I’m just normal. Remember that time you made your parents throw a joint birthday for you and Hollis Smith?”
“We have the same birthday.”
“Oh, c’mon…” Hollis Smith has some kind of rare syndrome, and he can’t speak or walk. He can’t even understand what someone tells him, at least not in the usual way. “What you did for him was really nice.”
“I was twelve.”
“I know. That’s the point I’m making.”
“I didn’t do it again, did I?”
“You’re always vacationing on your birthday.”
“Not always.”
“Almost always.” Dash is a New Years baby. I lean my head against my shoulder, which, with my arm still around him, is kinda propped on him, and I try to think about Dash being sad.
I could feel it—before now. Had found him over and over again at the periphery of my mind, wandering those fields with a strange blankness on him. I sift through my recent memory, searching for some event or conversation… a clue of what went wrong. What and when?
I tighten my arm around him, letting out a big breath of my own. I feel his back flex underneath my arm. Maybe I should move my arm, but…I don’t want to. Not yet.
I look up at the sky, surprised to find tears gathering in my eyes again. He’s leaving in the morning, and after that, things will never be the same. He’ll move on, and I’ll get older; I’ll move on myself. All these years will go into the vault of memory, locked, collecting dust: a relic I can’t touch again.