When Stars Fall by Wendy Million
Chapter Nineteen
Ellie
Ten Years Ago
Wyatt and Isaac are passed out in lounge chairs on the other side of my parents’ pool. We went out last night and partied a little too hard. Par for the course lately. The two of them seem to be in a battle to see who can be more wasted. Calshae and Nikki found their outlandish behavior hilarious, but I can’t help feeling as though we’re on a collision course.
Beside me, my mother flicks through a magazine. We’re here for a long weekend. Wyatt’s idea. He wanted to get Isaac away from LA for a while. His father’s death and the dried-up acting roles have finally led Isaac to agree to a production company. The only problem is that neither of them are in the proper headspace to build the company with good people. Instead, I’m the one trying to do the hiring, and I don’t have a freaking clue what I’m doing.
“When you first brought him home,” my mother says as she flips a page, “I could see what he was. I’ve seen it before. But I wasn’t worried about you because I thought you were smart enough to stay out of it.”
I’m glad for my sunglasses when she stops turning pages to stare at me. The sheer number of tabloid stories about Wyatt and Isaac meant their exploits were bound to get back to my mother. She doesn’t follow gossip, but Bermuda is small, and lots of other people would be happy to fill her in on her eldest daughter’s colorful, celebrity-filled party life.
“You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, wouldn’t you? No matter what you get yourself into, I would always help you get out.”
“I’m fine.” Despite the life Wyatt, Isaac, and Anna lead, the only thing I have ever craved is Wyatt—his company, his attention, his touch.
“But they aren’t. And if you truly are fine, then you’re lucky.” She tips her chin at Wyatt and Isaac. “The path they are on doesn’t lead anywhere good. You understand that.”
If she’d witnessed the depths Wyatt and Isaac had sunk to over the last few months, she’d lock me up in a rehab center as a precaution. Isaac had a friend of a friend hook him up with all kinds of drugs the minute we arrived on the island. Their addictions don’t take vacations.
When Wyatt suggested coming here, I tried to talk him out of it. There was never any doubt my mother would recognize what was happening, but I’m surprised it took her almost twenty-four hours to say something. Of course, Wyatt has been glued to me since we arrived. Just as strong as his raging addiction seems to be this overwhelming need to keep me close, as though he’s afraid to lose anyone else.
“It’s just because Isaac’s dad died,” I say.
“They weren’t like this before?”
“Not like this,” I say. Sometimes uncontrolled, but never this sustained. “Wyatt says he can pull himself out.”
“Ah, yes. The promises of an addict.” She sets the magazine on the table between our lounge chairs. “I know you love him very much. But there is a difference between being a partner and being a caretaker. To me, it seems as though the balance has shifted.”
I adjust my sunglasses and cross my arms. “This is temporary. Once he and Isaac get beyond Kabir’s death, they’ll be back to normal.”
“What is normal?”
I huff out a breath.
My mother releases a sigh. “You’ve never had to face the death of someone close. My mother died when you were very young, but here’s what I’ll tell you about that kind of grief—it might fade, but it never, ever goes away. What those boys are carrying now, they’ll be carrying thirty years from now. How they carry it is their choice, but it’ll always be there. Right now they’re trying to bury their grief under a mountain of substances. The bad news is that once they try to level out again, they’ll realize the grief they haven’t dealt with is still there. Just as powerful and present as it was before.”
“I’m not leaving him,” I say.
“I’m not asking you to, though I can’t say I’d be upset if you did.”
Wyatt and Isaac stir on the loungers, and the front door opens. Nikki and Calshae tease my dad for being inside on a beautiful day, and their flip-flops slap against the tile floor as they make their way to the open patio doors.
“Don’t get dragged into those deep depths with him.” Her stare is penetrating. “When you can’t get someone back, the temptation is to get lost with them.”
On Front Street, Isaac slings his arm over my shoulders and passes me his cigarette. “Your momma is scary as fuck.”
I choke on the smoke and cough my laughter. “She’s not scary.”
“She is. I grew up with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ parents. They never ask why I might seem out of my head sometimes, and I don’t mention the drugs. Every time I talk to your mom, I feel like she’s going to crawl into my brain and discover all my secrets.”
“Evelyn’s not that bad,” Wyatt says, and he flicks the ash off his cigarette. “She sure as shit doesn’t think I’m good enough for her daughter. Cannot blame her for that.”
I leave Isaac to wrap both my arms around Wyatt’s middle, and Isaac turns to talk to Calshae and some of my other friends from high school while we wander toward the Hamilton Princess for drinks on the terrace. “I love you, and so she’ll love you.” Eventually. At some point she’ll have to love him because I plan on being with him forever.
Isaac takes a tin out of his pocket, and he lights a blunt. He motions to Wyatt after he inhales deeply. I try to grab it on the way past, but Wyatt blocks me and takes his own puff before raising his eyebrows.
“Get Ellie a regular one,” he says to Isaac before taking another drag.
The one he has must be laced with something, and when he releases a deep sigh and his shoulders loosen, I figure it’s heroin. When I’m home, I keep my consumption of harder drugs to a minimum. My mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Wyatt understands me, looks after me.
Isaac lights a joint and passes it to me. We’ve reached the entrance for the Hamilton Princess, but instead of going in, we stand outside the arched entrance smoking. Wyatt and Isaac keep their blunt to themselves, but I pass the joint to any of my friends who want it.
Inside, we order rum swizzles from the bar closest to the terrace entrance. We aren’t there long before Wyatt passes me his glass, and he disappears to the bathroom with Isaac.
Calshae appears at my side, stirring her drink with her straw. “I’m not sure my liver can take another night with them.”
“It’s a whole new level of partying,” I say. After three years, I’ve experienced it all.
Wyatt returns, and he takes his drink from my hand before turning to Calshae and asking about her future aspirations. Since he’s been working in the industry forever, he loves asking other people about what they want to do with their lives.
As the night wears on, we lose track of each other in the crowd. People are snapping photos of him and asking for autographs. Since I grew up here, I’m less in demand, and Isaac might as well be Wyatt’s groupie for all the attention people seem to be paying him.
Last call has gone out when I go in search of Wyatt. He and Isaac have disappeared to the bathroom several times in the last half hour, which means they’re likely hopped up on a wicked drug combination. I strut around the terrace, weaving between groups of people. This panic gripping my chest could be paranoia or it may be justified. Hard to tell after the amount I’ve had to drink.
Rather than asking people if they’ve seen him, I head toward the water. Though Wyatt is a terrible swimmer, he has a strange fascination with water when he’s high. In the distance, outside the well-lit area, I catch sight of a figure tightrope-walking along the waist-high ledge that borders the water to the left of the marina. The top of the wall is flat and wide, but Wyatt is weaving.
“Wyatt?” I call when I get close enough. A commotion breaks out behind me on the terrace, but I’m laser-focused on him. One wrong step, and he’s tumbling into the dark ocean below fully dressed. It’s not a long drop, but at night, with his poor swimming . . . I can’t catch a full breath.
He glances up, and a grin splits his face. He seems to forget he’s on the ledge because he tries to walk toward me at a normal speed, and he topples off the side, toward the ocean.
I let out a cry, and I rush over to the edge. Down below, Wyatt is thrashing in the water, but rather than swimming to the boat dock or back toward the wall, he’s headed out into the darkness.
I kick off my shoes, and I launch myself into the surf. When I hit it, the coolness sends a shot of adrenaline through me. Wyatt is easy to catch, but he’s already barely keeping his head above water. I latch onto him, and he scrambles for me, pushing me down with his weight. Before I go under, I manage to snatch a breath.
When I resurface, Wyatt’s face is barely visible against the gentle waves. He’s going to drown. A cry of agony escapes my lips, and I plunge back over to him. I manage to grab the neck of his T-shirt, and I drag him through the water behind me toward the dock. At the edge of the concrete pier, I swing him around, and Wyatt grips the ladder.
“You’re stronger than you look.” His voice brims with amusement, and I want to slap him.
The adrenaline and the shock of the situation has washed away any of my drunkenness. We could have died. He could have died. I hold onto the ladder with one hand while I grip his chin with the other. “Are you okay?”
“If you wanted a swim, you should have told me.” He runs a hand down his face, wiping away the residual water, and he grins.
Once we’re at the top of the ladder, he slings his arm around my shoulders while rivers of water run off us. The terrace has been cleared out, and the staff eye us as we walk past.
“Are you okay?” one of the bartenders calls to us as he cleans up his station.
“Went for a swim,” Wyatt calls back. “Water is refreshing.”
The guy chuckles, and I shake my head.
Outside the hotel, Calshae, Nikki, and Isaac are bent over laughing about something while the rest of my friends are trying to coax them toward Front Street so we can walk home.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Isaac climbed the moon gate and got banned from the hotel for life. They took a copy of his license and everything.” Nikki blinks and cocks her head. “Are you wet?”
“I went for a swim, and Ellie came too,” Wyatt says.
Isaac claps Wyatt on the back and launches into the story of when they were high and jumped off a roof into a shallow pool. As they walk, water forms rivers on the ground from Wyatt’s soaked clothing. I shiver as a breeze sweeps across Front Street.
While I peer into the starless sky, Nikki recounts Isaac’s moon gate escapades, and I wonder whether my mother is right—that the depths will keep dragging us down until one of us drowns.
