Cold Kiss

something for you to drink. Just stay here for a second.”
    I won’t cry again—there can’t be any tears left anyway. But the kindness in Gabriel’s eyes is so sweet, and so undeserved, I have to look away when he lets go of me to walk into the kitchen.
    But I can’t sit still, either, and my leg isn’t numb anymore, so I get up and follow him. The kitchen overlooks the backyard, and the car is gone so I assume Olivia is, too.
    Gabriel takes a bottle of water out of the fridge and hands it to me before pointing to my phone, which is lying on the table. He doesn’t seem completely awake yet, and it’s so quiet in the apartment, I simply nod.
    I glance at the closed door where Danny is before I take my phone back out to the living room and settle on the sofa. At some point I’m going to have to go in there, and the fact that I would rather listen to the angry messages on my phone instead makes me queasy all over again.
    There are four phone messages, and six texts, which is actually less than I expected. Mom’s first message is tentative and a little confused: “Wren? Were you late? School called and said you missed homeroom. Everything okay?”
    Her next two messages aren’t as pleasant, and the one from Jess is short but effective: “Where the hell are you, Wren?”
    The texts are all from Jess but one, which is from Dar, and it simply reads: WREN? It’s just the one word, but I can picture her face as she typed it, hair falling into her face, a confused frown twisting her mouth.
    I’m so very screwed. On every level, in every way. In ways they haven’t invented yet, actually. It’s tempting to throw my phone across the room again, get up and walk out of the apartment, and just … keep going. Walk until I can’t walk anymore, until I reach the edge of the world, or at least the edge of town.
    Like a coward. God, that voice never shuts up. It’s always there, always ready to point out every horrible, stupid thing I want to ignore. If it’s my conscience, it’s working overtime, not that anyone asked it to.
    I’m still slumped on the sofa, my phone in my hands, when Gabriel comes into the room and sits next to me. For a minute, he’s as still as Danny, but then I feel his hand on the back of my neck, a steady weight. It’s even more tempting to lean back into it, let him catch me, but I can’t. I won’t.
    The pressure of Gabriel’s hand changes, and I finally turn my head to face him. I can see the things he’s considering saying, as if the words were scrolling past.
    “Don’t say it’s going to be okay.”
    His smile is small and sad, and I feel a little guilty for being so cold. “I wasn’t. It’s not. But you’re going to get through it. And I can help you, Wren. I will help you, I promise.”
    “Why?” I push up off the sofa and cross the room, arms folded over my chest, trying to hold in all the things I want to say, should say. “This is so not your problem.”
    “You know why.”
    “Then you must be as crazy as I am,” I say, and the words are bitten off, jagged and ugly in the silence. “Why would you want to be with me? After … after all of this ?”
    “Nothing’s that black and white, Wren.” When he looks up at me, his eyes are stormy, a deep cloudy gray. “You know that.”
    “What I know is I have to go home and try to explain to my mother where I was today, and then try to make Jess and Dar forgive me for ruining tonight, and then figure out how to…” I choke on the words I need to finish the sentence, but Gabriel follows my gaze to the closed door of his room, and I think he knows what I mean anyway. “God, how am I going to get him back to the loft?”
    “What are you talking about?” Now he’s on his feet, and he’s looking at me like I’ve really lost my mind. “We decided to bring him here.”
    “For now ,” I say helplessly. “While it was daylight. He can’t stay here!”
    “Why not?” For someone who’s being completely oblivious, he’s still looking at me like I’m the crazy one.
    “Oh yeah, Olivia will love that.” I pull out my best sneer, the one that’s gotten me into trouble with teachers too many times to count. “I can see it now, you’ll be all sensible and calm, ‘Olivia, there’s this epically whacked girl I like, and we need to keep her dead boyfriend here for a while, okay?’ That’ll go over great. Let me know when she signs you up for therapy and the good drugs.”
    “She already knows.”
    My mouth