Breaking Nova (12 page)

“They were like that when I came out,” I say, picking at my fingernails.

“Why didn’t you put them out?” Quinton asks me, allowing his feet to fall to the floor.

“I don’t know.” I rack my brain for my real answer and the one that comes to me is kind of frightening.
Because I was thinking about smoking it. Because I wanted to see what it was like—what it was like for Landon. Why he thought I was too good to see what it was like.

He leans forward, picks them up, and scrapes the tips gently along the edge of the table, putting them out. “You don’t want this shit, Nova. Trust me. You’re too good for it.”

His words tear at my heart, because they’re so similar to what Landon used to say to me all the time. But they also annoy me. I want people to stop telling me I’m good when I don’t even know if I am. I’m not sure if my irritation is directed at him, though, or if I’m just lashing out on him because I’m frustrated with Landon for leaving me. Or maybe all the secondhand smoke in the room is bringing out an ugly side of me. “How do you know what I want? You don’t even know me.”

“And you don’t even know me,” he says calmly as he places the unlit joints on the table. He glances over his shoulder at Tristan, who’s distracted by the pipes in the kitchen, and then he leans in toward me and lowers his voice. “So let me give you a little insight. You don’t want to be here, sitting with me, talking to me, or asking me to go to concerts. You don’t want to know me, or this fucking fucked-up world I live in, Nova. Trust me.”

With a neutral expression, I slant forward and snatch a lighter and one of the unlit joints from off the table. “You don’t know me, either, and you don’t know what I want, so don’t try and tell me you do.” I know that what I’m doing is probably wrong, or at least that’s what I used to believe. Right now, I feel different. I don’t care about right or wrong. I don’t care about anything.

With an unsteady hand, I place the joint in my mouth, and ignoring both their protesting looks, I cup my hand around the end, and flick the lighter, figuring I can handle it. Nothing can prepare me for the fiery burn, though. As soon as the smoke hits the back of my throat, I cough and gasp for air. I lean forward, sticking my hand out, with the joint pinched between my fingers, wanting to get the joint as far away from my face as possible.

“Shit, Nova, are you okay?” Tristan hurries around the couch, removes the joint from my hand, and extends his hand out to the side of him, with the joint between his fingers, to get the smoke as far away from my face as possible. “What are you doing? You don’t do this shit.”

“You don’t know me either.” I sit up straight, still coughing while my eyes water.

Quinton frowns as he retrieves the joint from Tristan’s hand, and Tristan gives me a pat on the back, although I can tell he’s trying hard not to laugh at me.

Quinton positions the joint between his fingers, then he places the end between his lips, and his chest rises as he takes a deep inhale and holds it in. He balances the joint in the ashtray and relaxes back in the chair, letting his head fall back as he breathes out the cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Nova, you should go home,” he says in a sluggish voice, rubbing his hand over his face, as Tristan drops down in the sofa beside him, his eyelids growing heavy.

It feels like I should still be irritated at him, but I can’t really feel anything. My mind and body are numb and the counting and need for control are silent.
Silence.
Without even knowing what I’m doing, or whether I’m doing it because I want to understand, because the secondhand smoke has clouded my judgment, or because I actually want to do it, I slide my arm across the coffee table and grab the joint. Quinton turns his head and watches me as I place it into my mouth. Copying his exact movements, I let my chest expand as I suck in a breath, then I trap the smoke in my lungs, standing on the edge of the unknown, waiting and waiting, then finally I let it out, falling off the edge completely, wondering how hard it’s going to be to climb back up. Or if I’ll even want to.

Maybe this is what I’ve been searching for during the last year. Maybe I’ve been waiting around to fall. Maybe I don’t know what I want or who I am without Landon, and maybe this is all in desperation to figure stuff out.

Or maybe I’m just lost and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.

This is an honest-to-God first for me. I’m ripped out of my mind, nearly floating to the ceiling—or falling to the floor, depending on how you look at it—and I can’t bask in the detached feeling. Nova’s got me preoccupied. Her blue eyes are red as hell, her pupils glossy, and I can tell she’s struggling to keep her eyelids open. I don’t like how caught up I am—how worried I am about her. I get high so I don’t have to worry or think, but somehow she’s more powerful than the drugs, but what I’d like to figure out is why. What makes her so different? What makes her so consuming?

I tried to talk her out of smoking the joint. The old Quinton—the good, sober one—would have snatched it right out of her hand, because it’s obvious she’s never smoked weed before and she’s doing it to cover up something. But I’m too far gone, and before I know it Tristan, Nova, and I are squished on the couch, sharing a king-sized bag of Doritos, staring at the movements on the cracked computer screen as the screen saver dances to the beat of the music.

“Do you think it’s trying to tell us something?” Nova asks with a dazed look on her face as she analyzes the pink-and-green streams on the screen.

Tristan snorts a laugh as he grabs a handful of Doritos and drops them into his mouth; half of them fall onto his lap. “Yeah, that we should stop assessing lights on the screen.”

I have my arm draped on the back of the couch and Nova’s hair is scattered on my skin. “I think it’s trying to coexist with the lyrics.”

She brings her lip in between her teeth as she glances up at me. “That’s insightful.”

Normally, when a girl looks at me the way she’s looking at me, I’d take her back to my room and lose track of time for a little while. But the good inside me is conflicting with the bad, and I can’t seem to bring myself to say anything to her.

“Not insightful,” I say. “Just thoughts.”

She nods, like she gets what I’m saying, but how could she, because I’m not even making sense to myself. “Do your thoughts ever get jumbled in your head?” she wonders, rubbing at her eyes with her fingertips.

I can tell we’re about to head down that path, paved of weed, smoke, and senseless nonsense that can only be found when the mind hits an idyllic state of stupidity, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to get to know her, because it’ll mean too much and I don’t want meaning in anything in my life. It’s the point of existing in the state I’m in; the one where nothing matters except getting high and feeling numb, because once things start to mean something, it becomes harder to follow the wrong path.

“I think we should find a way to get you home,” I say, lowering my feet to the floor. I mean it. I really want her to leave, not just so she’ll quit messing with my emotions, but because she doesn’t belong here in this house—in this lifestyle.

She frowns, seeming hurt. “Why?”

I glance at Tristan, hoping he’ll chime in and help, but he has his head tipped back against the sofa and his eyes locked on the ceiling. “Because… I don’t think you should be in a place like this.”

She looks as if she’s struggling to get mad, her cheeks tinting pink, like she wants to be angry with me. “Delilah’s still back there with Dylan, and I can’t leave her here. Plus, she’s my ride home.”

“We can find you another ride,” I say. Tristan lifts his head up and looks at me inquisitively. “Maybe we can ask Frankie.”

“Who’s Frankie?” she asks, her head falling back as she tries to look me in the eyes. My arm is still on the back of the couch, and her head is resting in the crook of it. Her neck is curved back and her chest is sticking out a little from her top, giving me the slightest view of the curves of her breasts. Under normal circumstances, with a different girl, I’d just take her back to my room and fuck her, then tell her to leave. But she keeps blinking up at me, looking helpless, and all it does is make me want to hold her. It’s driving my goddamn body and mind crazy.
It’s definitely time for her to go.

“He’s the neighbor.” Tristan stands up, collecting the bag of chips off the table. “And Nova can stay here if she wants.”

“I want to,” Nova says, slowly picking her head back up. She blinks and gathers fallen strands of her hair behind her ears.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I object, despite my body’s opposing reaction. I’m about to add a list of reasons why someone like her should not be sitting here with us, when the front door opens and two guys come strolling in like they own the place. One of them has a backpack on and the other has what looks like a closed pocket knife in his hand. He’s probably carrying in case Dylan or Tristan tries to screw them over with whatever they’re dealing. It’s only a threat, warning everyone not to mess with them, but when you’ve got a room full of illegal substances and a bunch of paranoid people high out of their minds, things can get ugly fast.

“What’s up?” Tristan says to the shorter of the two as he winds around the sofa, yawning. They slap hands and bump fists, and then the taller one’s eyes land on Nova as she sits up in the sofa. He’s got sores all over his face, his teeth are yellow, and his gaze drinks Nova in like she’s a dose of heroin as one of her straps fall off her shoulder. She shifts uncomfortably, leaning into me as her shoulders slump in.

I position the strap back up over her shoulder, then slip her fingers through mine as I stand up, pulling her with me, despite my initial reaction to go over there and see what they’re dealing—see if I want it. “Have fun, man,” I say to Tristan, leading Nova toward the curtain.

Tristan waves at me, totally distracted by the idea of getting drugs, and I’m not surprised. Yeah, he may have a little bit of a thing for Nova, but when you’ve tasted the addiction of drugs, it’s pretty much all that matters when it’s in front of you.

Nova more than willingly follows me toward the hall, grasping my hand, and one of the drug-dealing crackheads says something about having a ride with her when I’m finished. He thinks I’m going to screw her, but there’s no way I’d try to, especially when she’s this far out of her mind. She’s too sad and lost, and the last thing I want to do is ruin her more. But the good-guy thought process is the old Quinton seeping through, and by the time we reach my room, I’m panicking, trying to decide whether to run out of the room and leave her here alone, or scoop her up, lay her down on the bed, and rip her clothes off.

Nova instantly makes herself at home, strolling up to the iPod dock and picking up my iPod. She bites on her bottom lip as she scrolls through the songs, her head swaying from side to side as she contemplates the song list.

“You have good taste in music,” she observes, peeking up at me through her eyelashes.

I run my fingers through my hair as I linger near the doorway, with my hand on the doorknob, ready to bolt. “Yeah, I guess.”

She taps the screen, puts the iPod in the dock, and seconds later lyrics fill up the room. She sinks down on the edge of my bed, tucking one of her feet underneath her ass, and then her eyes lock on me. “Quinton, why did you move here?”

Every single one of my muscles wind into overly tight knots. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” she says simply, and then looks around at the drawings that are tacked on the wall. When she spots the one of Lexi, she stares it for a very long time, and her eyes start to fill with water. “I used to have a boyfriend that sketched like you.” She angles her head to the side and a tear slips out and falls down her cheek. “But he’s dead, so he doesn’t anymore.” Blinking franticly, she forces her eyes from the drawing, and looks desperately at me, like she wants me to say something to make her stop talking.

Tristan told me her boyfriend died, although he never explained how. Death is a sensitive subject for the both of us and we always try to dodge around it, even though it’s always there, existing, an invisible wall between us.

“Nova, we don’t have to talk,” I say, finally daring a step away from the door. “We can just go to bed or something.”

She glances at the bed behind her and then her cheeks turn a little red. “Like have sex?”

The depressing atmosphere lightens a little, and I rub my hand across my face, trying not to laugh at her. “No, like lie down, shut our eyes, and go to sleep.”

“But I’m not tired.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Contradicting herself, she yawns and stretches her arms above her head. “Well, maybe we could lie down for a bit, I guess.”

I nod and she instantly collapses onto the bed. Her brown hair is sprawled across the pillow and her eyes look lost, like she’s floating away from reality. My fingers long to grab a pencil and paper from the dresser and capture the perfection in her face, her eyes, and her body, but I promised never again and I need to stick with it. Drawing someone, in these circumstances, is way too personal.

Breaking the moment, she turns onto her side and faces the wall with her back to me. He dress barely covers her ass, and one of the shoulder straps is falling down again. Some guys would have completely and utterly taken advantage of her at this point, but as much as I’ve slept around, taking advantage is something I can’t do. Even with as far as I am in the fucking dark, the good Quinton still has a vague amount of control over certain things.

I lay down on the bed beside her, careful not to touch her, keeping one arm under my head and one on my side, as I scoot back so I’m barely on the bed.

She rolls over, facing me, and then stares at me for so long, it almost drives me crazy. “Did you love her?” she finally asks.

“Who?”

“The girl on the wall.”

My heart pounds inside my chest, nearly cracking my lungs. “Yeah… but I don’t want to talk about her.”

She looks perplexed, drifting off into her thoughts. “Okay… I understand.” She releases an uneven breath before shaking her head. “What’s your favorite color?”