Levitating Las Vegas(34)
Author: Jennifer Echols

The similarity between their stories was strange. But of course it was only coincidence—there was no other explanation for it. Rob couldn’t read minds. Besides, Holly was more interested in what Elijah had said before. “You had a girl roommate?”

He nodded. “I did.”

“But that’s not all she was.” Holly was jealous of this strange girl who’d lived in the same house with Elijah and had still preferred to move in with her boyfriend. How could this be? How could any chick prefer any guy to Elijah? The girl must have found out about Elijah’s MAD somehow.

Color crept into Elijah’s face until he was blushing almost as red as his shirt. He explained haltingly, “That’s really all she was. I’ve never had a girlfriend. Because of the MAD. I guess I don’t want to drag somebody into that. I don’t want her to have to take care of me. You know what I mean?”

In answer, Holly slid her hand onto his knee. She knew exactly what he meant, and she wished she could simultaneously share her pain with him, and take his away.

But the instant her fingertips touched his jeans, the motion transformed into something else entirely. Heat shot into her own face as she realized he would probably mistake her touch for a come-on, and that this was okay with her.

She said quietly, “I didn’t want to break our dates in ninth grade. My mom made me. I was hoping that came across in the way I wrote the text.”

He looked down at her hand on his knee and shook his head. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, as if she had hurt him very, very badly when she broke their date. Almost as badly as it had hurt her.

She was probably reading him wrong, or he was having some horrible side effect of Mentafixol withdrawal.

He sniffed, opened his eyes, and raised his head. “It’s just as well,” he told her with a wan smile. “I came down with MAD that night.”

“Me too!” she exclaimed.

He widened his eyes at her.

She hunched lower in the bus seat, as if that made her voice softer. “What does that mean?” she squeaked.

His brow furrowed. “Well, we’re probably about the same age.”

“My birthday’s at the end of July.”

“See, mine’s July twenty-first. And when this shit went down, we were fourteen years old, which is about when people get MAD if they’re going to get it. It was waiting inside both of us. My mom told me all we needed was a strong emotion to let it out.”

“You were my strong emotion,” Holly said woodenly. She was full of so much emotion now, so much anger at her parents for keeping her away from Elijah, that she could hardly feel anything at all, as if her soul were squashed flat under the weight of their betrayal.

Elijah didn’t know that, though, or want to know. She was having a conversation with him about their doomed puppy love, not confessing the darkest secrets of her insanity. Suddenly she felt uncharacteristically self-conscious in her sequined bikini. Bikini and crazy did not mix.

But when she looked over at him, he was watching her face, not her cle**age.

“I mean,” she said, “when my parents said I couldn’t go out with you, that’s what triggered my MAD.”

“When I got your text breaking it off, that’s what triggered mine.”

They shared a long look. Holly gazed into Elijah’s eyes and imagined seven years were passing between them, an entire young adulthood of what could have been. His solid knee under her fingertips turned to fire.

Still watching her, he leaned back against the seat, breaking the spell. “So, you’re off work tomorrow night?” he asked off-handedly.

“Right.” She tried to sound nonchalant herself, rather than elated that he was feeling around for a way they could see each other again. “There’s no magic on Monday. How’d you know?”

Elijah shrugged. “The billboard over Interstate 15.”

“That billboard is the bane of my existence.” She realized how this sounded. “Not that I care you know what my day off is. I mean, not that I mind.”

Unlike Rob, who would have insulted her at this point, Elijah actually helped her out of the conversational hole she was digging for herself. “Big plans for your day off?”

“Small plans. I make the rounds of the other casinos to see their shows. Ha, exactly what I invited you to seven years ago.” She knew she shouldn’t pursue their friendship. Two people off their medication for MAD were surely more than twice as dangerous as one. But she felt a connection with him, and she simply couldn’t let it end. “Would you like to go with me? Tomorrow? To see some magic?”

“I’m off tomorrow, too,” he said. “I’m going out of town.”

“Oh” was all she said, sheepishly. The darkness in his voice advised her not to ask where he was going.

“But thank you,” he said. “It’s very nice of you to ask.”

“Sure,” she said faintly, wishing he would follow that up with one sentence more, an invitation to take her out the day after. He didn’t. Her too-vivid imagination had led her to believe he might still be interested in her after all these years. He wasn’t. As casually as possible, she removed her hand from his knee and settled it in her own lap.

She empathized just a little with Rob, who liked her more than she liked him, and didn’t want to take no for an answer. She thought about reaching over, sliding both hands into Elijah’s hair, and kissing him.

He touched his lip.

Her startled heart kicked into overdrive, then checked itself and powered down. The spell was broken now. The newness had worn off. They weren’t surrounded by Glitterati’s pumping music and blinking lights and transvestites, and she realized he wasn’t touching his lip because she was thinking about kissing him. Instead, the reverse was true. She was thinking about kissing him because he kept touching his lip. She should buy him some lip balm.

He snapped her out of her thoughts by asking, “We’re coming up on your stop, right?”

She checked the nearest street sign out the window in the dark. “We are.” She wondered how he knew where she lived. He must have come across her address in the employee directory. At any rate, he wanted to get rid of her, and she didn’t blame him. People with MAD shouldn’t hang out together. Slipping her arm through the strap of her purse, she said, “I meant to ask you how you’re doing without . . . you know.”

“So far so good.” He met her gaze head-on, but something in his tone let her know he was far gone, and it wasn’t good. However, if he wouldn’t tell her about it, she couldn’t help him. She couldn’t help him anyway, she realized. Not without her own prescription refilled. And it was time she let go of her fantasies about Elijah and got off this bus.