Aside from Arden himself, there is nothing in the neighborhood of sexy here. I try not to acknowledge the relief I feel about this fact. What Arden does or doesn’t do in the privacy of his room—or for that matter, anywhere—is not my concern.
So why do I feel concerned about it?
I’m enfolded in these thoughts when Arden gets back from the restroom. He gives me a quizzical look. “Does it stink in here or something?”
I hope my laugh is not as revealing as it sounds. I would die a slow death if he knew I’d been thinking about him … doing things … in here … Dios mio. “No. I was just … admiring how clean it is.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Why wouldn’t it be? I’m never here.”
“Good point. Does that mean your parents are never here either?” Because from what I’ve seen so far, the rest of the house is just as spotless.
“Mom stays in her room mostly. Dad’s always gone.”
I wait for him to talk about his mom some more, but he doesn’t, so I nod toward the telescope. “Astronomy or pervert?”
He shrugs. “I like the idea of feeling small. Sometimes life can seem bigger than you, you know? But knowing you’re less than a speck in the whole scheme of things takes the pressure off, sort of.” The words hang in the air between us. So much for small talk.
But in a way, I wanted to have this conversation. There are so many things I want to know about Arden. He’s already blown my first impressions out of the water. And at the same time, I don’t want to know what’s inside him. I don’t want to delve into the raw Arden Moss.
Because I don’t want to fall for him.
“Life?” I say, against my better judgment. “Or death?” I nod toward the black-and-white picture on his desk. It’s of a girl about our age smiling in classic school-picture style. I know it’s Amber. She has his dimples. His smirk.
He sits down on the bed beside me. He doesn’t bother to give me space. Our legs touch. Our arms. His scent devours me. “Not so much life or death,” he says quietly. “More like emptiness.”
I know emptiness. I felt it when my parents got deported and it was just me and Julio. We clung to each other in those first few months. Needed each other. I felt hollow, misplaced, at the time. But I know my misery then doesn’t come close to the gaping chasm Amber’s death left behind in Arden. I can see it still, in the fresh anguish in his eyes.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I say, swallowing hard. “I just … It’s just that we’ve never talked about it. Not that we should have. I mean, if you want to, we can.”
“She was sick,” he blurts. “Toward the end she cried every day. Our bastard of a father wouldn’t acknowledge it. Wouldn’t get her the help she needed.”
I want him to stop talking about it now, to stop hurting himself with it. Regret is a tornado in my stomach. But there’s no way I’m cutting him off now. As hard as it is to hear, as bad as it burns, it must be like a thousand flames licking at his insides. He actually looks like an uninhabited version of himself. His eyes are pools of unspilt tears. And he doesn’t take his gaze off me.
“As cliché as it sounds, she was everything to me. We were two years apart, but she was like an extension of me. Well, I guess since she was older, I was an extension of her.” He interlaces his fingers in front of him, then leans his elbows on his knees. I can tell he’s sifting through memories in his mind. “She was my accomplice. My first accomplice,” he corrects, giving me a small smile. “I don’t think there was a single moment after I turned ten that we weren’t jointly grounded for something.”
“She overdosed on Mom’s pain pills,” he says. “I’m the one who found her. At first I thought she was sleeping. But something wasn’t right. She’d gotten fully dressed. Put on makeup—something that she hadn’t done in months. That was the first thing that threw me. Her eye makeup was a little smeared too. But more than anything I noticed how still she was. She looked like a doll lying there with her eyes closed. That’s when I saw the bottle on her nightstand. The lipstick mark on the empty glass sitting next to it.” He looks at me then. “After her funeral, I didn’t sleep. My mom even broke down and took me to the doctor for it behind Dad’s back. The doctor prescribed me pills, which I flushed for the sake of irony.” His corresponding laugh is humorless. “Night after freaking night I stared at my bedroom ceiling. Then one night I got up and went for a walk. And I’ve been up ever since.”
“Are you … you’re saying you still haven’t slept yet? How is that possible?”
Did he just lean toward me? “That’s the funny thing,” he says, his eyes on my lips.
“What’s funny?” I whisper.
“All this time, I couldn’t sleep. Until about three weeks ago. After a certain incident involving a purse and a cow patty and a girl with the longest eyelashes in the county.”
My breath catches. I can’t help it.
“Carly, you’re my cure. The opposite of emptiness. When I come home after I’ve been with you all night I sleep like a rock.” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that. It’s amazing. I’m not saying you’ve replaced Amber or anything creepy like that. No one could ever replace her. And trust me, I don’t think of you like a sister.” He clears his throat. Awkwardly.