Brutal Kiss

She disappears downstairs and I’m alone with Rian. He shakes his head as he surveys the mess. Light seeps in through the vents, and sweat’s already beginning to pool under my arms.

“That woman hates my guts,” Rian says.

“Can you blame her?”

“Not really, no. Almost breaks my fucking heart, though.”

“Really?”

“No, not really.” He grins at me and winks, then gestures at the tubs. “Shall we get digging?”

“I’m trying to figure out what you’re looking for exactly.”

“In my many conversations over the years, I heard from several sources that Megan kept a diary. I’d like to find it.”

I snort and tug at my hair, twisting it around my fingers. He’s right, Megan did keep a diary. I saw her write in it a few times, but she never, ever shared it, and I have no clue where she kept it hidden. I wouldn’t be shocked if it were still down in her original room, tucked into a loose board or taped to the back of a cabinet or something like that. Megan was clever, and I have a feeling it won’t be easy digging up her old secrets, even all this time later.

But we get to work, anyway. Megan’s stuff is in tubs marked with her name in black Sharpie. I find old clothes, books, bedding, even the posters she used to have tacked up on the wall, neatly folded and preserved inside a massive atlas. I smile a little, holding up a CD holder.

“We used to listen to this stuff all the time,” I say, leafing through it. Backstreet Boys, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake… it’s like a time capsule of pop culture in the mid-2000s. “We’d lay on the floor of her room and talk about boys for hours with Q-102 on the radio. Sometimes we’d chat with people over AIM.”

“Ever talk about me?” He frowns as he rifles through a bin of jeans.

“I’m sure we did.”

He glances at me, eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“Nothing good.”

“You told me she used to encourage you to date me. Although nobody asked my opinion about all that.”

“You would’ve dated me if I wanted you to. Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have.”

“I don’t know. I was pretty popular.”

“Please, you used to stare at me like I was the only girl on earth.” Which is true. I remember his gaze across the hallways, intense and desiring. It was intoxicating whenever he swept his attention up my legs and lingered on my lips.

“I stared at you like I wanted to own you,” he says very quietly as he puts the lid back on his tub and grabs another. “How do you think I look at you now?”

“Not like that,” I say, blushing as I shove the CD case away and rifle through another stack of stuff. This bin’s like the contents of a junk drawer, the detritus of my friend’s life. Pencils, decks of cards, scissors, ancient makeup, nail polish, ChapStick. All that’s left of my old life.

“Then you haven’t been paying attention.” He gets up and shuffles across the space, pushing tubs aside to reach an old dollhouse. “What’s the deal with this?”

“She kept it in her room for years. I think her dad got it for her at a garage sale when she was little. It’s super creepy but she liked it.”

“Huh. It’s kind of cool. Looks pretty old, too…” He starts feeling along the bottom, into the different rooms, prodding at the walls—and then stops, frowning, fingers probing. “There’s something in here.”

I go over and watch as he yanks off a piece of the staircase. It wiggles free, and the space below is an empty void just large enough to contain a small black book full of crumpled pieces of paper, old and musty. The cover is textured slightly, and it ripples with color in the light as Rian holds it up with a massive grin on his face.

“That’s it,” I say, breathless, and gingerly take it from him. The inside’s filled with Megan’s handwriting, each entry no more than a few sentences, marked and dated in a precise hand. Every day going back a year or so before the accident, which means this is probably the last diary she ever kept. Sorrow drills down into my chest, and I resist the urge to cry. Inside, there are movie tickets, pay stubs from her job at the water ice place in town, and receipts from dinners we had together. She saved almost everything, and as I flip through, I catch my name more than once, and tears begin to fill my eyes.

Rian takes it from me. “Easy there,” he says. “I don’t want you to get the damn thing wet.”

“That’s her,” I say, slowly sitting down on the plywood floor. I wipe at my face, feeling stupid. “That’s Megan. It’s her, like she’s here again. It’s a real piece of her.”