Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Chapter 12
Twenty Questions
2004
IT WAS AFTER DARK WHEN SHANE BROUGHT GENEVIEVE TO AN IMMENSE,uninhabited mansion on Wisconsin Avenue. As always, he felt nothing but derision for people who’d own a place like this and not even bother to live there. If it were his, he’d have to be forcibly removed.
The decor looked like a museum. There were gold-filigree accents and animal-skin rugs everywhere. Twinkling chandeliers. A dizzyingly abstract, primary-color-splashed painting hung over a horsehair couch in the foyer. That couch was a prickly horror, never meant to be sat on.
Genevieve plonked herself down on it immediately.
She didn’t ask how Shane knew the alarm passcode. Or why, despite the house being bathed in darkness, he knew his way around. Tomorrow, he’d explain that it was his friend’s childhood home. She lived on campus at Georgetown Law. Her dad was the Korean ambassador, and since her parents more or less lived in Seoul, the house was usually empty. She’d extended an open invitation for Shane to stay whenever he wanted to escape.
He hoped Genevieve wouldn’t ask what he did in return for her generosity. Not that he was ashamed. He just didn’t want her to know how desperate he was.
But then Shane remembered her expression in the ER when he asked her to run away. The look on her face had been wild, a flash of despair mixed with thrill. An automatic yes, because the alternative was unthinkable.
This was a girl who understood desperation.
Shane led her through the Mexican-tiled kitchen, to a servant’s stairwell, and up to a suite on the third floor. Once a fancy teenage girl’s bedroom, today it doubled as attic storage. Photo albums, dolls, ancient magazines, snow globes, and flutes were stacked in neat piles. There were two massive French doors leading out to a terrace overlooking a rolling green backyard with a kidney-shaped pool. Holding Genevieve’s hand, Shane led her slowly to a canopied four-poster bed, plush with pale-pink bedding.
Then he reached under the bed and pulled out a tray with gallon-sized baggies holding endless amounts of weed, pills, syringes, powders. They were labeled by feeling: COMA (Valium), CHILL (weed), PARTY (cocaine), LSATS (Adderall), WHORE (ecstasy), NUMB (Percocet), and so on.
The Georgetown girl was a whimsical drug addict. And he was her dealer.
Shane peeled off his tee and collapsed on top of the covers next to Genevieve. They smoked a roach till it was gone. At some point, they curled into each other, Genevieve’s face nestled into Shane’s neck, his fingers tangling themselves in her curls. It was a hazy, blissful thing, holding her so close in this innocent way.
He slept harder than he had in his life.
* * *
Around 10:00 p.m., Annabelle Park strode into her parents’ home. She was wearing a baby-pink Juicy Couture minidress and diamond studs. Nestled inside her Louis Vuitton dog carrier was her Chihuahua, Nicole Richie.
Annabelle knew Shane was there. He’d called. Of course, he and his beautiful dick were always welcome. Plus, he was fabulous company, because he never spoke. She’d gossip to him about DC elites, and he’d lie there, looking deceptively attentive. Grinning, she trotted up both flights of stairs.
Annabelle flung open her old bedroom door. Instantly, she was assaulted by the decadent scent of expensive weed—and the sight of Shane, in her bed, all cuddled up with some chick. That messy motherfucker! Her first instinct was to kick him out, but…well, she wasn’t a monster. Where would he go?
In ten months, she’d learned only three things about Shane. The first was that he lived in some Miss Hannigan–ass “children’s shelter.” The internet said it was an asylum where minors were sent after failing more than twenty trial runs with foster families. The “good” kids took brain-dulling antipsychotic meds with no argument, while “bad” ones were put in solitary, tied to radiators, twisted Victorian shit. She couldn’t send him back there.
(By the way, yes, Annabelle was feeling mildly jealous. But it would pass. After all, she was in the middle of planning a $125,000 fall wedding to Dr. Jonathon Kim at the Four Seasons in Georgetown.)
Whenever it was vacant, Annabelle’s parents’ house was a crash pad for her assorted strung-out friends and their strung-out friends. There were few things she respected less than her parents’ house. Shane and the waif with the tragic hair could stay. The staff would be back next Monday to clean up, anyway.
Annabelle crept in to get a closer look. Shane and the girl sported matching black eyes. She was clasping Shane’s arm as if she were adrift in a biblical-level seastorm and he were her only anchor.
Annabelle felt sad for her. Shane couldn’t be anyone’s anchor. He’d never love anything more than getting obliterated.
The second thing she knew about Shane was that despite being chased by some powerful demons, he always survived unscathed. But Annabelle suspected that the girl who fell for him wouldn’t have the same luck. When it was over, she’d stagger away, scarred for life.
Annabelle tiptoed downstairs to the servants’ kitchen. She grabbed two bags of frozen peas and a chilled bottle of Polugar vodka. Back upstairs, she carefully laid the frozen bags on their faces (for the bruises). Then she placed the vodka on the nightstand. Shane couldn’t wake up without it. That was the third thing she knew about him.
With a smug hair flip, she picked up Nicole Richie, spun on her Choos, and left. Annabelle’s haters thought she was a mean coke whore with fake cheekbones—and yes, she did have fake cheekbones, but she also had a very real heart.
Annabelle Park, soon to be Annabelle Kim, was twenty-two and was grateful to be an adult. Grown women knew better than to attach themselves to time bombs. Teenage girls couldn’t wait to be ruined.
* * *
When Shane woke up, he didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, or where he was. All he knew was that he awoke gently. Floating. Peaceful.
And as he did, Shane gradually came to the awareness that he was caressing the preternaturally soft, sweet skin of a girl. And that he was big-spooning this girl, and it was Genevieve. And then he remembered everything. School, the hospital, the frantic dash to the house, and then smoking and smoking before drifting off together.
Hazy flashes from the night came rushing back. He remembered jolting awake from a dream, realizing she was too far away, and pulling her against him, with an unthinking neediness he’d never allowed himself to feel before. At one point, during a brief glimmer of consciousness, he’d realized they were clinging to each other ferociously, smothering each other so that it was almost too hard to breathe, but it felt so good that before drifting off again, he thought, Fuck it, dying like this would be worth it.
Shane opened his eyes. Genevieve’s head was lying on his good arm (which was 100 percent numb), and his casted one was resting on her hip. He took in the spacious, girly room with the canopy over the king-sized bed shading them from the sun streaming through the glass terrace doors. The clock on the wall read 2:00 p.m. They’d slept for thirteen hours.
Groaning a little, he felt his usual morning tremors, the uncontrollable shaking that alerted him he’d need a drink. Soon. But not right now. Right now, he needed to bury his entire face in the coconut-scented warmth of Genevieve’s hair. The way she had become so important to him in just a day was inexplicable.
But inexplicable things happened to him, and Shane accepted life’s oddities. He didn’t know if this made him an adventurer or an idiot, but one thing was true—nothing interesting ever came from a clear path of rationality.
On the bleachers, all he’d wanted to do was enjoy his vodka-and-ketamine buzz while reading a book he’d already read fourteen times. It was comforting to Shane, knowing what words were coming next. And that was what was inexplicable about Genevieve. It felt like she was supposed to come next. Like the chapter had already been written, and they were just taking their places. Like he already knew her by heart.
Shane inhaled her scent again, savoring her. Nothing’s better than this, he thought sleepily. That was when he noticed the vodka on the nightstand.
Suddenly wide awake, Shane gazed from the bottle to Genevieve’s perfect almond-brown shoulder and then back to the bottle. With clarity, he decided that the two most urgent things in the universe were (a) keeping her in his arms and (b) procuring the vodka. How he would get from here to there without waking her up was a question of logistics.
Carefully, his good arm still trapped under Genevieve, he reached over her with his casted arm, fingers still inches from the bottle. He scooted her forward a bit and, with Herculean effort, lunged across her and grabbed at it. Shane twisted off the cap with his teeth and downed three huge gulps.
As he took a breath and another swig, the shaking slowed, and he started to feel normal.
Shane reached over Genevieve and placed it back on the nightstand. He stared at the ceiling. Then he rolled her over and reached for it again.
“How many times we gonna do this?” asked Genevieve, her voice muffled by the pillow.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “You’re awake?”
“I am now.” She grabbed the bottle and handed it to him, turning so they were face-to-face. God, she looked adorable in his T-shirt, with her wild hair and sleep-creased cheeks.
“Hi,” he said, with a face-splitting smile.
Genevieve smiled back—but then her expression grew dark.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, I’m just…I’m confused,” she stammered, looking lost. “What happened? Where am I? And…who are you?”
Shane’s eyes widened. Had Genevieve’s head hit the floor after she got punched? Did she have concussion-related memory loss? No. No. He wouldn’t panic.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked.
Genevieve squeezed her eyes shut. “Cincinnati.”
“Cincinnati?”
“It’s in Ohio,” she said.
“You serious?” Shane sat up, propping himself against the velvet headboard. He dropped his head into his hands. “No, no, no, no…”
Genevieve’s mouth trembled and then her eyes crinkled, and she burst out laughing. “You’re so shook!”
“Fuck me,” he breathed. Despite himself, his mouth curved into a grin, and then he chuckled shakily. “I really thought you had amnesia.”
Looking proud, Genevieve sat up next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “Convincing, right? I grew up watching Days of Our Lives.”
“You’re a very strange person,” he said worshipfully.
Nodding in agreement, she leaned her head on his shoulder.
“No, but for real. You remember how we got here, right? You’re not scared?”
“Nothing scares me,” said Genevieve with confidence. Shane didn’t quite believe her, though, because just then, the phone in her backpack buzzed. And she tensed against him. It buzzed and buzzed, but she made no move to answer it. He wondered who was calling her. Slipping his arm around her shoulders, he pulled her closer, wanting to obliterate her worry (or at least cuddle it out of her). Genevieve let out a small, contented sigh that ended in a slight moan. And it took all he had not to kiss her.
Shane couldn’t. He couldn’t make it about that. With everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, kissing should’ve been nothing. But with Genevieve, it’d be something. With her, it’d be a promise.
“I don’t even know you,” murmured Genevieve, tracing an old scar on his chest with her index finger. “Why don’t we feel like strangers?”
“Don’t ask,” said Shane. “You pull a loose thread and the whole shit unravels.”
Her phone buzzed again. This time she looked over at her backpack, which was flung across a wicker chair. Her face was cloudy with worry and dread, but she continued to ignore it.
She bit her bottom lip. “Hey. Wanna go somewhere and be bad?”
“Youthful-indiscretion bad? Or arrested bad?”
“I can’t get arrested. My face is all bruised up. How would my mug shot look?”
“Authentic.” Stretching a little, his leg hit something cold. Shane dug underneath the sheets and unearthed a bag of defrosted peas. “We slept with peas? These yours?”
“No. Everyone hates peas.”
“Huh.” Shane took an indulgent swig from the bottle. Something oxidized in his brain, and he was starting to feel properly drunk. “This is good vodka.” He studied the bottle with a quizzical expression. “Whose is this?”
“Do you have amnesia?” Genevieve said, smirking.
“Yo,” he said, “my short-term memory is so fucked.”
“Ketamine is a terrible habit.”
“Life is a terrible habit,” he said, a reckless glint in his eye. “Wanna go down to the pool and get fucked up?”
Before she could answer, Genevieve’s phone buzzed again.
“Yes, let’s go swimming!” she said quickly. “But what about your cast?”
“Saran Wrap,” he said with a shrug. “Will swimming hurt your head, though? I don’t wanna make it worse.”
Genevieve rested her chin on his arm. She gazed up at him with a soft expression, a trace of a smile playing on her lips.
“No one ever asks,” she said quietly. “I’ll be fine. But how fucked up are we getting? What if we drown?”
Shane couldn’t respond. He was tangled up in her face. He lost track of the conversation completely, hopelessly captivated by her onyx eyes, her languid energy, the buzzing warmth of her skin against his.
What if we drown?
He already had.
Genevieve’s phone buzzed again. This time, she shot Shane an apologetic look and yanked the phone from her backpack. From the bed, Shane saw the name LIZETTE flash across the screen. She muted the phone and tossed it on the chair. And stood there, rubbing her temples with her knuckles. Her mood had changed. She was radiating anxiety.
“Does your friend have anything for pain?” She sounded vague and far away. “I don’t have my pills.”
Shane reached under the bed for Annabelle’s stash and crawled out of the bed, handing Genevieve the baggie labeled NUMB. “Yeah, I sold her most of this shit. I’ll just restock later.”
“Thanks.” With downcast eyes, she grabbed a switchblade-sized pouch from her backpack, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Preoccupied, she started scratching her inner arm, the skin blazing an angry red.
“Genevieve. You good?” he asked, moving closer.
“No!” She raised her hand, stopping him. “I mean, yes. I just…need to…use the bathroom. Give me a minute.”
Nodding, he said, “Whatever you need to do.”
Genevieve walked across the buffed-to-perfection wood floors to the adjoining bathroom, the interior of which was outfitted in Burberry-plaid wallpaper and gold fixtures. She shut the door behind her.
He knew what she was doing in there. He wanted to stop her, but it was none of his business. On the one hand, they were currently sharing a space. But on the other, it would be hypocritical of him to dictate which destructive behaviors were or weren’t appropriate.
Clutching the vodka, Shane knocked on the bathroom door. “Can I just stand here? On the other side of the door?”
The silence lasted too long. Shane wondered if he could break down the door if he had to.
“Why?” Genevieve’s voice sounded weak.
“So you’re not alone.”
“Really?” She paused. When she spoke again, her voice was closer. “Yeah, I guess.”
Shane leaned his back against the door. Scratching his jawline, plucking at his bottom lip, cracking his knuckles. “You wanna talk, or…”
Just then, he felt a Genevieve-sized pressure on the other side of the door.
“Okay.” She sounded close enough to touch. “Let’s talk.”
“Twenty questions,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’ll go first. What kind of French are you? Haitian? Algerian?”
“Louisiana.”
“Your dad’s from Louisiana?”
“My dad’s unknown.”
“So’s mine.”
“Ever wonder who yours is?”
“Nah, I’m good. The concept of ‘father’ just feels made up, like Santa or the Easter Bunny.” Shane tapped the bottle against his leg. “Never believed in those niggas, either.”
“When I was little,” said Genevieve, “I wished he was Mufasa.”
Shane paused. “I’m gonna say something controversial.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen The Lion King.”
“It’s just…victors write history, right? What if Mufasa was the bad guy? And we don’t know, ’cause he’s the star of the story? ‘Circle of Life’ feels like propaganda to put working-class animals in their place. Like, shut the fuck up, you’re meant to be eaten. Maybe I’m buggin’.”
“You’re not buggin’; you’re a psychopath,” she said, but he could hear a smile in her voice. “My turn. Do you know your mom?”
“Nah. Orphan. You got a mom?”
Her silence felt heavy. “Sometimes.”
“Better than nothing, right?”
“Debatable,” she sighed. “My turn. Any hidden talents?”
Shane tapped his bottom lip, wondering if he was going to admit this to her.
“I can sing,” he confessed haltingly. “Really sing. On some smooth R&B shit. Like, no matter the song—it could be ‘Happy Birthday’—my voice comes out sounding like Ginuwine. It’s fucking embarrassing.”
Genevieve wailed with laughter. “Sing something! A big song, like ‘End of the Road.’ The ‘Thong Song.’ ‘Beautiful’ by Aguilera.”
He half grinned. “You want me to humiliate myself for you?”
“No, I want you to want to humiliate yourself for me.”
They laughed, and soon they were quiet. Shane taking measured sips and Genevieve silent.
Shane was seeing double. He closed one eye, and his vision rebalanced.
“Hey,” he started. “Why do you do it?”
“Don’t know. I go into a daze.” She sounded far away again. “There’s a relief after.”
“Does it hurt?”
“That’s the point.”
“Same with my arm,” he admitted. “Hurts, but I need it. Like it’s the glue holding me together.”
She said something inaudible. And then “Gonna sit now.”
Shane felt her weight slide down the door. He sat down, too. He didn’t know how long they were like that. Time was elastic. After a while, Shane passed out. He must’ve slept hard, because when Genevieve finally opened the door, he fell flat on his back with a dull thunk.
“Let’s go to the pool!” She sounded strong, cheerful.
Shane peered up at her from the floor. Genevieve was wearing a brilliant smile, like the pills had kicked in and what had been hurting her no longer did. She was soaking wet, hair dripping. Had she taken a shower with her clothes on?
The only sign that she’d cut herself was the discreet Band-Aid on her inner forearm.
Stupefied, Shane stared at his drenched T-shirt gripping her skin, her bra, her panties—and he was caught between a helpless surge of arousal and uneasy fascination. It’s like nothing’s happened. She didn’t seem hurt. She seemed triumphant. A force of nature.
For a heated, drunken moment, Shane thought he’d hallucinated the whole thing.
But then, confidently, she stepped over him, dripping everywhere and striding out of the room. “Get up!” she called out over her shoulder.
Without thought, he did.