Page 85 of Never After Us
Something shifts in his expression.It’s brief.As if a thought he didn’t mean to show slips through before he can catch it.
“Who did you lose?”I ask gently.“Your parents?”
“I never knew my parents,” he says, no edge in his voice—just fact.“I bounced between foster homes.People came and went.Some tried.Some didn’t.Some left emotional and physical marks I still can’t scrub out.”
My breath catches, but he keeps going.
“All those articles about my anger?They never tell you why.They paint it like a personality trait.Like I just woke up pissed off.”He laughs once—sharp, humorless.“Grief doesn’t always look like crying in the dark.Sometimes it makes you someone no one wants to understand.”
My chest aches, and before I can stop it, the words fall out.“Alec ...”
He looks at me, dead-on.“Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird.”
“You’re absolutely making it weird.”
“It’s just ...”I trail off, eyes still on him.“That’s not what I expected you to say.Now I want to hug you.”
“I don’t need hugs.”
“Obviously, you do.But I get it—you’re allergic to emotions.Maybe talk to your therapist about that.”
“That’s intrusive,” he says, lips twitching.
“You told me to grieve.We’re way past subtle.”
He shrugs.“Suppressing things isn’t good for you.And I figured ...it’s probably not good for your kid either.”
I narrow my eyes.“You’ve officially entered the Ari-zone.Which is terrifying because if two people say the same thing, I might have to start believing it.”
He smirks, satisfied.I hate that it’s attractive.Everything about him in this light is attractive—his honesty, his restraint, his inability to sugarcoat anything.
I clear my throat, reaching for safety in the form of sarcasm.“So.What else does that tape have in its vault of emotionally loaded bangers you think I’ve been avoiding?”
Because if we keep going down this emotional rabbit hole, I might actually open every journal and letter in this house and drown in whatever Lina hid.
“Music,” he replies.A beat.“For the things you won’t say out loud.”
“Me?”I glare at him.
“Not specifically you,” he says, running a thumb along the spines of vinyls stacked beside him.“But people who refuse to grieve.I know what that looks like when it walks in the door.I know what it sounds like when it can’t find a place to land.”
I look down at the tape in my hand, the lettering uneven and a little smudged.
“And what genre of emotional excavation am I supposed to expect?”I ask, because my voice can’t seem to form anything more vulnerable.
“Stuff I needed once,” he answers quietly.“Stuff I survived with.Maybe it’ll help you too.”
He slides a folded paper toward me—a handwritten list, creased and worn like he rewrote it a dozen times before deciding it was good enough.
The track list and open it carefully.
The Sound of Silence— Simon & Garfunkel
Wish You Were Here — Pink Floyd
Landslide — Fleetwood Mac
