I stopped and made him stop, too, by placing my hand on his chest briefly. I was starting to worry again. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, calmer now. He avoided Jenn’s eyes but once he saw mine, he relented and said, “Just a sudden migraine or something.”
Uh oh. The guilt took hold of my heart and squeezed it.
Jenn sighed and gave him the keys to the Mini. “There’s some Excedrin in the glove compartment.”
He nodded thanks, wincing at the movement, and took off down the road back to the car. Jenn pulled at my arm, turning me around and led me on our way to the restaurant, walking slow enough for Dex to catch up.
“Does he get headaches often?” I asked, hoping that he did. He never seemed to when he was around me. Maybe Jenn brought them on. That wouldn’t have surprised me at all.
“Sometimes,” she said casually. “He used to when we first started dating. Not so much in the last year or so. I don’t know, I don’t really pay attention.”
No kidding, I thought.
She caught the look on my face and explained, “You know Dex, it’s always something.”
That was true but he was still her boyfriend. Speaking of which…
I stopped and looked behind us expecting to see Dex heading back from the car. Only I couldn’t see him anywhere on the dark street.
I glanced at Jenn. “Where did he go?”
She shook her head and then had a quick look at her diamante watch.
“I have no idea but we’re already running late.”
Yeah, cuz you can’t park worth shit.
And then she turned around again and started back on her way. I couldn’t believe it. I stood my ground and said, “I’m going to go find him.”
She sighed, long and exasperated, but it made her stop. She came back to me and said, “Fine.”
We hurried down the sidewalk, looking for him. Maybe he was back at the car. Maybe he popped into a store.
But the car was empty and the closest store was a linen shop. Not exactly Dex territory.
“Dex?” I called out. A few passersby turned at the sound of my voice but kept walking.
“Arghh,” Jenn growled, and pulled out her phone. “I’ll just call him.”
We waited for a few seconds. I could hear the phone ring through her phone. And then I heard Dex’s suddenly ironic “Final Countdown” ringtone ring out into the air. Jenn and I looked at each other and then took off down the street toward the sound, which was actually past the car in the opposite direction.
“Dex?” she called as we looked around us.
We followed the sound, the ringtone that kept repeating, sounding more ominous with each tinny ring.
We turned a slight corner and found ourselves looking down a dirty, narrow alley. Halfway down, beside a Dumpster, Dex was sitting on the ground, his head between his legs, his hands covering his ears.
The sight shocked my heart. It apparently shocked Jenn, too, because she just stood there at the entrance to the alley, looking more annoyed and afraid then concerned. I gave her a crazy look and ran over to Dex as fast as I could go.
“Dex!” I cried out softly and dropped to my knees in front of him, the cold wet ground immediately soaking me.
I placed my hands gently on his shoulders but he didn’t look up. I looked wildly at Jenn and couldn’t believe she was still standing there.
“Jenn!” I yelled at her. I turned back to Dex and scooched in closer. I took a quick look at his body; he seemed fine, but was behaving like a little boy in the middle of a nightmare. I couldn’t see his face at all and it was unnerving.
I put my hands on his and lifted them off his ears. They were cold. I squeezed them and slowly tried to rub some life back into them.
“Dex?” I whispered. “It’s Perry. Dex, are you OK? I’m here. You’re safe. Please just let me know you’re OK.”
I felt Jenn come behind me and stop.
“He’s fine,” she said.
My jaw dropped and I whipped my head around to give her a vicious look. “How the hell do you know he’s fine?”
“Because he used to do this. Didn’t you, Dex? I thought he was done with the panic attacks.”
“Panic attacks?” I repeated and looked back at him. He slowly raised his head and looked at us. Me first, then Jenn. His eyes were red like he had been crying.
“I am fine,” he said, emotionless.
“See,” she said. “Now I’m going to the restaurant before Sarah and Jorge think we’ve ditched them.”
And then she just turned on her heel and walked down the alley, disappearing around the corner.
I wiped her behavior out of my head and turned my attention back to Dex. How could he be fine? He was sitting on the wet ground in a city alley, in the dark. He was the furthest thing from fine and even if it was just a panic attack, that was nothing to brush off.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. His eyes were closed shut. I touched his cheek and laid my palm against his icy face.
“What happened?”
He shook his head slightly.
“Please, Dex,” I implored and leaned in closer. I put my other hand on his face and raised his head somewhat. He opened his eyes and looked into mine. My insides crumbled at how lost and scared he looked. Seeing him like this made brought the threat of tears to my eyes.
“What happened? You can tell me. You can trust me. You know you can. Is it…your medication?”
I don’t know why I asked this since I was pretty sure that’s what it was, but I needed to hear it from him. This was turning out to be one terrible idea.
But he did that slight shake of the head again. It actually didn’t make me feel any better.
“Perry,” he whispered, his eyes flitting to the right, toward the Dumpster. “Can you go look down the alley? And tell me if someone is there?”
“Someone?” I asked. He just nodded and closed his eyes tightly again. “OK, no problem.”
I got up and peered down the alley. I couldn’t see anyone. It was a dead end, after all.
I even took a few steps toward the Dumpster. I looked around the edge of it but there was no one there either.
I turned around to go back to Dex.
And then I did see someone.
Standing at the other end of the alley, where the people were passing by. It was just a silhouette, but one that I had seen far too often these past two days.
She wasn’t moving, but against the grainy streetlights I could see the blood slowly falling off of her.
Splat. Splat. Splat.
Then she turned, her broken neck at that unnatural angle, and was gone.
I walked over to Dex. He looked up at me. I stared down at him. We both saw it. And now I knew the problem.
I held out my hand for him and told him to get up. After a moment of hesitation he did so, and I steadied him with my hands as he got used to his feet.
“You saw her too,” I told him.
He breathed in deeply but didn’t exhale. I stepped closer to him, close enough so that he had to back into the damp alley wall. I ran my hands through his thick hair and held them there, holding his head steady.
“You saw her,” I pressed. “You saw her, you saw what I’ve been seeing this whole time.”
“Yeah. I saw her.”
He exhaled and tried to look at the ground but I held his head tightly. Headache be damned. He was going to look at me.
“What is the problem? She’s a dead girl. She’s a ghost. This is what we do, Dex. We see ghosts. We see things others can’t. Why is this any different?”
“Because I shouldn’t be seeing her!” he said through gritted teeth.
“Why not?” I asked. “Why not? Why not for you? Why do I have to?!”
“You don’t understand,” he said, trying to move his head out of my grasp. I grabbed his hair tighter and held him in place.
“Tell me then!”
His eyes darted around, trying desperately to not meet with mine. He was going to lie, I knew it.
“I…I know her.”
I wasn’t expecting that. I let my hands drop off of his head.
“What?”
“This is not a good sign, Perry. This is not a good sign,” he said. His eyes were watering. His low voice quavered. He looked so lost, so small, so helpless and afraid.
I stepped closer again and brought my hands around his shoulders and brought his head down into the nook of my neck. I held him for a few moments, feeling his cold skin against mine, his breath as he exhaled slowly. Eventually he took his arms and wrapped them around me, holding me so tight it almost took my own breath away. My insides felt like they were mourning, for him and for whatever pain he was going through. And if I had anything to do with it.
“It’s Abby,” he said after a few minutes, speaking the words into my neck in wet bursts.
“Your…ex…your old girlfriend Abby?”
He nodded.
Oh boy. That was a f**king doozey. It explained so much. His ex had died in college after a fight with Dex. She had been cheating on him, Dex went over and they fought. Then she locked herself in the bathroom with a bottle of gin, escaped through the window and drove away. And then ended up being another victim of drunk driving.
And here she was, suddenly haunting Dex. But why now? Why now that I was in the picture?
“Dex…why do you think this is happening now? Has it happened before?”
He relaxed a bit in his grip but still held me in an embrace. I wasn’t about to let him go, so this was fine with me.
“No. I mean…” He brought his head away from my neck so he could talk properly. Our mouths were still only a few inches apart. He rested his forehead against me and kept his eyes closed. “Last time I saw her…was after she had died. She…well, she was everywhere I was. And it drove me insane. And I guess with my past…it was too much. And that’s how I got in the institute.”
“She literally drove you insane?” I asked, voice low, conscious of how close our mouths were.
“Yeah,” he breathed out. “Just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
I thought about that and tried to figure out what to do next. What was there to do? She was a ghost and like it or not, we were both seeing her.
“Did she try to harm you before?” I asked.
He sighed and straightened up, breaking up the closeness of our embrace. He looked around him at the dark alley.
“Not exactly,” he said. “But I never gave her the chance.”
“How did you get rid of her?”
“Medication,” he said. “Therapy. Whatever they did to me.”
At the mention of his medication, I swallowed hard and looked straight forward at his chest.
I debated on saying anything for a while. I didn’t want to make him suspicious. I already had a feeling he’d go home and check his meds, which meant I could easily be busted if I wasn’t fast and careful. In the end I couldn’t figure out what to say. So I just gave him a small smile.
“You’ll be OK, Dex,” I said. I was so close to leaning in an inch and kissing him delicately on the lips. Very close.
“Will I?” he breathed back, his frantic eyes powering down with a wash of passion.