Play Me Real (Play Me 4)

And Dylan suffered because of it. He died because my father wanted to get me away from him. He died because my father considered him expendable, a toy that had long outlived its usefulness. And because I was too lazy to follow through. I should have checked. Should have made sure my father did what he’d said he would. But there were mid-terms and papers due, parties and the girl I was fucking at the time—a girl whose name I can’t even remember now. I just remember that instead of calling Dylan, instead of checking on him, I went back to her dorm room. Fucked her. And when it was over, when I got back to my own place, it was to find a message from a hysterical Janet telling me that they’d found Dylan’s body.

How I could have fucked up so completely—how I could have yielded control to my father like it was nothing—I still don’t understand. It’s a mistake that will haunt me the rest of my life, a mistake I’ll never in a million years forgive myself for.

I wait for Aria’s judgment, for the disgust she must be feeling to show in her eyes. But for long seconds, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, I’m not sure she even breathes as she stands there staring at me, huge tears glistening in her dark eyes. Turning them liquid and lovely. So, so lovely.

Another time I might appreciate the way she looks—tousled and beautiful and just a little bit ravaged. Like she’s gone a few playful rounds with me and lost. Or won, whatever works for the metaphor.

Except there’s nothing playful about the story I just told, nothing playful about how I’m feeling. Catharsis is supposed to make people feel better, but I’ve never felt more like shit than I do right now. Except maybe in the days—and weeks—after I got the call from Janet telling me that Dylan was dead. And that I had killed him.

“You should probably go,” I tell her after the silence stretches between us like a jagged desert canyon. “Tell one of the guys at the valet station you need a ride home and they’ll arrange it. Or they’ll get you your car—whichever you’d prefer.”

“What I’d prefer is for you to sit down and listen to me.” She grabs my hand, tugs me toward the couch. But I don’t move. I can’t. If I do, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I only know that it won’t be pretty.

She catches on eventually, stops trying to pull me where I don’t want to go. And instead gets super close to me, fitting her luscious body against my own. And then her hands are on my face and she’s tilting my head until I’m looking her straight in the eye. Until every breath I take is one she exhaled first.

There’s an odd kind of comfort in that, a rightness that I don’t have a fucking clue how to assimilate right now.

“It’s not your fault,” she tells me, her beautiful dark eyes boring into mine. “It’s not your fault.”

“That’s not true.” I turn my head, try to look away, but she’s right there. In my face. In my space.

“It’s not your fault,” she tells me again. No fuss, no muss, no ridiculous platitudes that I got by the bucket load when he died. Just her and me and the lie that she can’t let go of.

“Aria—”

“It’s not your fault.”

I tug on her hands, pry them off my face. “Stop.”

“You stop.” She grabs on to my shirt, refuses to let me turn away, walk away. Refuses to let me do anything but stare her straight in the eyes and listen to the words she keeps repeating like a mantra. “It wasn’t your fault, Sebastian. Dylan made his own choices in life—bad choices, dangerous choices, deadly choices. What happened to him—it wasn’t your fault.”

“I let him down.”

“He let himself down.”

“I didn’t help him—”

“You tried to help him. You were betrayed.”

“I should have known better. I should have realized—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she tells me again. “I swear to you, Sebastian, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Stop saying that!” I say and even I can tell that I’m getting louder, more desperate sounding. But doesn’t she get it? Doesn’t she understand that she can’t do this to me? Not now, not today, when I just stood in that parking lot and listened while Dylan’s mother called me a murderer. Not now when all the memories are raw and real and so, so fresh.

“I can’t,” she tells me, her hands soft against my arms, my chest, my face. “Not when it’s the truth.”

There’s a part of me that wants to stay here forever, right here, in this fairy tale that she’s creating. In a world where I’m not culpable for my best friend’s death and all the shit that’s come after it. But this isn’t Wonderland and I’m not Lewis Carroll. I can’t bend time, can’t reshape things just to strike my fancy.

“You have to stop,” I tell her again, injecting as much force and rage into my voice as I can.

She doesn’t even flinch. “I’m not going to. It’s not your fault, Sebastian. What happened to Dylan was a tragedy. It was awful and horrific and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but that doesn’t make it your fault. None of this is your fault.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do understand, better than you could possibly imagine. There was nothing you could have done to save Dylan, nothing that could have made this thing turn out the way you wanted it to.”

“You’re wrong.”