Page 93 of Anarchy Missing

“Well.” I sigh. “What other things happen? Because yeah, this is weird, but it doesn’t seem to affect your daily life. You go to work, right? You seem to function just fine to me. So you have to cut the heat and light out of yourself at night. If that’s all it takes to keep it under control, I’m thinking we’re getting off easy.”

He starts rubbing the soap on my arms, but I gently take the soap from his hand and start washing him instead.

My new scratch, drawn around his heart, is just superficial. Most of the light that was leaking through is already fading. The ones on his shoulders are puncture marks that make red streams of light that shoot all the way up to the ceiling like lasers. The scratches down his arms, the ones I made when we came together, are flat planes of red.

“You’re kinda beautiful if you ask me. Like a work of art.”

I get a small smile out of him for that remark.

“I mean, if you have to do this every night, then we can make the most of it.”

He shoots me a full-on crooked grin. “How?”

“Well,” I say, taking the bar of soap to his chest for an excuse to rub him. God, he’s built like a superhero. “Your body is amazing. You can think of it like tattoos, you know? Make the marks the way you want them. Then you would be in control. And if they fade, they fade. If they stay, they stay. You’re beautiful now, Case Reider. And you’ll still be beautiful with the light scars. All we have to do is come up with a plan.”

“I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy,” he says.

“Me neither, if I’m being honest. That’s pretty much how everything in life works. You set out with a plan and shit happens. You deal—or don’t. And get through it, either way. And then one day you’re there and you think, if I had known then what I know now, I’d never have done this. Because nothing’s ever easy. Dreams, though. They get you through it. And a little part of me thinks that maybe I would do it. Even if I knew how hard it was gonna be. I’d still have the tenacity and resolve to take that first step.”

I finish talking—realizing I just spewed out a litany of life lessons—and feel a soft flush of embarrassment.

“What did you do?” Case asks, tracing a fingertip down my cheek. “That made you doubt yourself like that?”

I think it through, wondering if I’d like to tell him this very personal story. Then the light from the heart I scratched on his body flickers and disappears. And I decide I do. He showed me something very deep inside himself tonight and when he asked me about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing since that night at the cathedral, I summed it up in four sentences.

So I take a deep breath and let the words out. “I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. Like… in grade school I’d pretend to be a judge.” I smile, recalling the makeshift courtroom I had set up in my parents’ basement. “So when I got to undergrad and finished with honors, I felt like I was on my way.” I smile down at Case, who has placed both hands just above my hips. His thumbs rubbing out gentle caresses across my skin. “But it was so hard. I wasn’t very good at it.”

“Which part?” Case asks, eyes intent on mine.

“Everything. I realized I wasn’t that good at it, you know? I couldn’t learn the case law. And I had trouble making connections. Like coming up with precedents to help my case studies. And public speaking, Jesus Christ. I got so nervous. I’d break out in a sweat and my voice would crack when I talked. One time I puked in the bathroom before a presentation.”

“That’s not so unusual, Lulu.”

“No, I guess not. But I had it bad. And I dated this third-year when I was a first-year in law school. He was such an asshole. I don’t know why I stayed with him all year.”

“Did he—”

“No,” I say quickly, knowing what he’s gonna ask before the words come out. “He didn’t hit me or anything. But the things he said to me… they destroyed me that year, Case. He called me stupid and ugly. Told me I’d never make it as a lawyer and laughed at my dream of being a judge. I realized later, after he graduated and moved on to mentally abuse someone else, that I was clinically depressed. Law school was hard. I didn’t like it anymore. I hated the thought of becoming a lawyer. I…” My heart is beating so fast that I have to stop and breathe deeply for a few seconds.

Case rubs my shoulders, encouraging me to continue.

“I took some pills…”

“Lulu—”

“And drank some wine—”

“For fuck’s sake. Where were your parents?”

“Wolf Valley,” I say. “Five hundred miles away. And I had spent the whole year with third-year asshole, so I didn’t make new friends that first year. I had no one.”

He hugs me tightly to his chest.

“I wised up before I lost consciousness and called 911. They pumped my stomach and kept me on suicide watch for seventy-two hours. And then they had me talk to a therapist and sent me home. But I had to go to counseling that whole second year. I don’t even have words to describe how mad I was at myself. And disappointed.”

“What did your parents say?”

“I never told them.”