“Tristan’s pretty sick right now, so he’s not feeling that happy either.” I put a folded-up shirt on top of the pile. “Besides, hearing your laugh is already making me feel better.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who made me happy enough to laugh. I was a little bummed out before I called.”

“How come?” I pick up two socks and pair them, adding them to the pile of socks.

“I don’t want to gripe about my problems when you’re having a bad day,” he says.

“Please, tell me,” I beg, going over to my closet and getting a few hangers out. “In fact, it’ll make me feel better to listen.”

“You’re too easy to please, but if that’s what you want, then…” He sighs heavyheartedly. “It’s nothing major, but remember earlier how we were talking about moving? Well, I was sort of hoping my dad would change his mind, but when he got home tonight he told me that he listed the house with a Realtor, and he had boxes for us to pack our stuff in. And I think he might be excited about it or something.”

“Did you ever tell him that you definitely didn’t want to go with him?” I collect a stack of jeans in my arms and turn for the dresser.

“Sort of… I mean, I said I’d think about it, but I know I won’t move,” he says gloomily. “And I don’t want him to sell the house… it’s the only real thing I have left of my mother.”

I stop in front of the dresser, wanting to cry for him. It hurt a lot to lose my father, but at least I got to spend twelve years with him. Quinton’s mother died giving birth to him and he never got to know her.

“I understand that completely,” I say, opening the dresser drawer. “Even though it took me forever to drive it, I could never imagine getting rid of my father’s car.”

“Did you…” He struggles for words. “Did you ever get that dent fixed that Donny… that… drug dealer put in the fender?”

I’m actually surprised he remembers that, seeing as how he was so out of it when it happened. “Yeah, you can’t even tell it happened anymore.” I place the stack of jeans in the drawer, then walk back over to the bed.

“Yeah, but it did. And it’s my fault it did… I’m sorry, Nova.” He sounds like he’s choking up. “For everything… all that shit that went down in Vegas.”

I pick up a hanger and a shirt. “You don’t need to be sorry for anything. I told you that and I mean it. What happened in the past is in the past. We’re moving forward now. Remember, a clean slate.”

“You sound just like my therapist,” he states as I put the shirt on the hanger. “He keeps pushing me to let go of the past and take down my pictures hanging up in my room… but I don’t want to forget everything. In fact, I need to remember, otherwise it’ll make it easier for me to go back… if I forget all the bad stuff that happened.”

I get what he’s saying, but I still wish he didn’t feel so bad about some of those things. Besides, they weren’t all bad. Like the couple of kisses we shared, the dance. The few talks we had a year and a half ago during the summer we spent together when we first met, getting high and going to a concert. And the couple we had this last summer in Vegas. Those moments were genuine. “I think it’s okay to hold on to the past just a little, but at the same time I know I always feel better when I’m moving forward and letting go. As for the pictures, I actually had all Landon’s boxed up for a long time. I finally took them out and put them in a album, which I look through every once in a while.”

“And it doesn’t hurt to look through them now?” he asks.

I go to the closet and hang the shirt up. “Not really. In fact it feels good to remember some of the stuff, because there were some really good moments.”

He’s quiet for a while. “Still, it feels like everything’s going to fall apart the moment I take them down from the wall. Even in Vegas, I had sketches lying around. I just can’t imagine not having them around me to remind me of… everything.”

“You’ll get there,” I promise, returning to my bed. “I know you will.”

“I sure hope so, otherwise I’m going to have a nagging therapist to answer to every other day.” His tense tone relaxes a smidgen. “Although things could be a lot worse. I could be living in that shitty apartment again in Vegas.”

“You regret that, then?” I’m so glad to hear him say it. “Being in that place?”

“You know what, in the beginning when I was coming down I didn’t,” he says with honesty. “But now, yes. I don’t want to go back to that place again. I think it was a good thing when it burned down… of course I wouldn’t be saying that if anyone got hurt, but some of the stuff that went on there was really fucking bad.”

His comment suddenly reminds me of Delilah. “Speaking of that, can I ask you a question?” My voice carries caution as I slide the remaining clothes to the side and sit down on the bed. “Warning, it’s kind of an intense question.”

“I don’t care,” he says. “I want to help you with whatever it is.”

I hope I’m not crossing a line by asking. “Were you around when the apartment burned down?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. “Yeah, why?” he finally asks with wariness.

“Well, Delilah’s mom called me today, asking if I knew where she was, which was weird since she never cared where Delilah was all during the few years that I knew her.” I flop down on the bed on my stomach. “She said she was missing and I just want—need to know if she’s okay. And I was wondering if maybe you knew.”

“If Delilah is okay?”

“Yeah, or maybe where she could be, possibly.”

Silence takes over the line and my heart squeezes inside my chest with the fear that maybe he does know something and it’s really, really bad.

“I don’t really remember much.” He eventually speaks with hesitation. “Other than the fire was started intentionally and…” He swallows hard. “A gunshot was heard right before it happened.”

“Gunshot?” My eyes widen and I cover my mouth as I start to breathe loudly.

“Yeah, and it came from… God, this is so hard to talk about.” He gradually exhales. “It came from our old apartment.”

I’m shocked. Appalled. Terrified. Sickened. Many different things that are so overwhelming I’m suddenly sick to my stomach.

I lower my hand from my mouth. “You think Dylan shot her?” I don’t even know why I say it, other than that I can’t forget how strange and creepy he was acting and how Delilah had signs of abuse on her.

“I’m not sure, since I was living downstairs with… someone at the time, but it could have been a lot of things. Anything from a drug deal to the simple fact that maybe Dylan’s gun went off. But no one was found in the remains of the fire, so no one was hurt,” he says, his voice cracking at the end. “And even though I hate to say it, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Delilah was living on the streets somewhere high or… even working as a prostitute.”

I suck back the tears threatening to spill out as I rest my cheek against my bed. “Dylan had a gun?” My voice is just a whisper.

“Yeah, at least he did right before I moved out, which was only a couple of weeks before the fire,” he says. “But I don’t really think he’d do anything with it. I think he just had it to make himself seem tougher than he was.” He doesn’t sound that convincing, though, and I’m not even sure he believes himself.

I realize how much we’ve been talking about death for the last few minutes and how that’s probably not the best thing for him. No matter how much I want to get answers, the last thing I ever want to do is make him hurt more than he already does.

“This conversation has really gotten dark, hasn’t it?” I ask and I take his silence as agreement. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?” He sounds depressed, which pretty much matches how I feel.

But I can handle being sad. It’s him I’m worried about. So I try to think of something cheerful to say, but I’m having a hard time. “How about work? How’s that going?”

“Okay, I guess,” he replies, and I can tell by the deflated tone of his voice that I failed in thinking of a better topic. “I mean, it’s painting houses, so it’s not too complicated, and the hours are flexible, so that’s good.”

“But you don’t like doing it?”

“Not really,” he admits. “It’s not really my thing.”

“What is your thing?” I ask, really wanting to know what he thinks about the future, because he rarely ever talks about it. “You said earlier that you wanted to paint and draw. Is that what you want to do? Be an artist?”

“Maybe. Although if I did, I’d have to accept that I’d more than likely be poor for the rest of my life and that I’d also probably have to have a side job.”

“Does it really matter, though? If you’re doing something you love?”

“I guess not, but being poor would sort of suck, at least that’s what Lexi always used to say.”

The lengthiest pause passes between us at the mention of Lexi. He never, ever talks about her. I can tell that it was completely accidental and that he probably wants to take it back. Dammit, this conversation is really turning into a depression-fest. I need to find a way to salvage it somehow.

“Do you think you’ll ever go back to school?” I ask, trying to casually skip over the topic.

“I already told you, maybe one day.” His voice is uneven and I can tell he’s on the verge of crying. “I mean, I used to think about it a lot, but I don’t know… it’d be really real, you know.”

“But sometimes real is good.” I pause as I hear the front door open. Moments later my door opens and Lea sticks her head in. A week ago she cut her hair to her chin and she always wears it down now. It looks good, but right now it’s wet, like she’s been swimming in the indoor pool at our apartment complex. But she’s dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, not really swimming attire, since usually she just goes in her swimming suit.