“I got us a room,” she whispered, pressing her lips lightly against the divot where my shoulder and neck met. She breathed lightly on the place where I imagined she'd left a lipstick mark. I felt the slightest stiffening in my rented pants.

Crush it. Crush it with your mind vice, Landon.

Chapter Eleven

Ash

July 29^th

Carson took a drag of her cigarette, then blew smoke across the grey living room like a crop-duster. Though she'd allegedly (and very reluctantly) come to Pastor Sterling's house to help me and mom pack up the family's jewels, my sister had basically taken one look around the rambler and parked herself on the couch. While our mother's giggles could be heard somewhere in the back of the house (apparently in response to all the funny jokes I'd never heard the Pastor make), it was clear that I was the only one who'd be packing today. With a confusing mixture of rage and curiosity, I'd been shoving items from Landon's childhood home into cardboard boxes for more than an hour.

“I don't get it. Why isn't Wonder boy here? It's his house.” Carson stretched her long body across the couch, her damp skin creaking along the plastic. There was not a bit of AC at the Sterling's. I had to admit—I was surprised by the condition of their house, especially given how well Landon put himself together. His hair and clothes were forever on point, despite the grimness of this... shack. It seemed like companies and UT alums were always trying to ply him with commercial contracts and swag, local celeb that he was. But so far, I'd discovered ancient dust-bunnies in the living room, baked-on food stains in the kitchen, and a whole unexpected ecosystem on the front lawn. It was hard to imagine a Pastor living like this. It made even mom’s and my thin-walled rental look like a Bellagio penthouse.

“Have you seen his room yet?” my sister asked, her eyes suddenly narrowing. Though I'd been careful not to tell her much about Landon, I had a hunch that Carson knew more about my non-relationship with the stepbrother-to-be than I'd felt like letting on.

“No. And Carson, that's private—I'm not going in there.”

“Are you kidding? Whenever one has an opportunity to snoop as good as this one—why, it's a moral imperative.” Biting her lip with glee, she sprang from the couch. I heard the screen door clatter at the back of the house. Anya and her old man were tottering out into the garden. We had the place to ourselves.

“Carson! Carson, I mean it!” My voice caught in my throat as I trailed behind my sister's colorful caftan (the thrift shop purchase), watching her open doors and shut them with a cheesy smile on her face. There were only about three doors on the main floor, and two of them were closets. At the exact same time, our heads swiveled towards the stairs.

Carson went first. With all her yoga and Pilates BS, she was much springier than I was. I feebly continued protesting—“It's not even really his room, you know! He has an apartment on campus!”—but knew it was too late when I saw my sister, looking rapt in a doorway. We'd found his room. Landon Sterling's private, childhood room.

“Moral imperative,” Carson mouthed again, impatiently pushing a thatch of flyaways off her face. She took a theatrical Bugs Bunny tiptoe, and was over the threshold. I sucked in some air and followed suit.

I don't know what I expected, exactly. Maybe more of the same apparent absence of a mother figure—dirt in corners, piles of laundry. But what I noticed first was how clean Landon kept his room. There was a child's rug on the floor, white but printed with Thomas the Tank Engine and friends, and this had remained surprisingly pristine despite what I assumed were years of use. The little bedroom was also well-lit, being tucked away in the corner of the house. You could see both the street and a slice of the backyard via the high, clear windows.

Carson was fingering two football keepsakes, pinned to the wall with thumbtacks—one a signed Longhorns jersey, another something from PeeWee football. Along the same wall was a neat constellation of Polaroid photos. I drifted towards these, and immediately discovered young Landon, grinning up at a camera from behind a big cake. He looked about six in that photo. His dark hair fell in front of his face in a big, overgrown flop. His eyes contained the same child-like glee that they had on the night we'd been introduced—yet in the picture, he was missing two front teeth. Adorable.

And in every subsequent photo, Landon looked the same: thrillingly alive, glad to be there, honest, excited. There were a few professional shots of him in football gear, with one knee in the grass and a helmet in his hand. Another of him in his graduation cap revealed a boy who was flirting with the camera like there was a pretty girl behind it. My eyes moved down: there was Landon and some scowling senior boy I thought I recognized from that damn party Melanie had dragged me to. In this Polaroid, Landon and his pal held tallboys and wore glittery specs bearing the numbers “2011!” A New Year's party.

At the center of the makeshift collage were two photos of Landon with women. On the left was one of him and a statuesque date. She was beautiful and haughty looking, and despite my best intentions I immediately felt a pang of jealousy on seeing him with his arm around this unsmiling model type. Didn't help that Landon had his lips on the model's cheek, and his eyes were closed with bliss. I reached out and pressed my thumb lightly over the pretty girl's face, so it was just him, leaning down to kiss no one in particular. I smiled.

The next—and final—photo was an older one, a Polaroid going crispy yellow at the edges. I immediately realized that this was the first pic acknowledging the Pastor, who looked young and almost dapper in his uniform, with his crew cut, and square jawline. Landon was nowhere to be seen. I searched for evidence of a date in the corner. I decided the snapshot had to have been taken sometime in the late 80s, before the Pastor had fought in the Gulf. He was standing beside a woman, lightly touching her shoulder. She was smiling in the same way Landon did, in every other pic—with a pure kind of joy in her features. Her hair was dark like her son's, and her bone structure as defined. His mother.

“Like what you see?”

I jumped about a foot in the air. When I turned around, Carson was nowhere to be found—yet there was Landon, his jaw scrunched and brow furrowed in a way that made it hard to believe he could have ever been that grinning, silly boy from the photographs.

“Landon. I...”

“What the fuck are you doing in my room?”

“We're...I'm...” His eyes were narrowed with cruelty. He looked at me like he didn't recognize me. And then his gaze traveled from my face to my pointer finger, which was resting on the white rim of his mother's picture.

“You need to get out.” He took a menacing step towards me. I noticed for the first time that he was dressed to the nines—or at least he had been, the day before. He wore a crumpled dress shirt opened a few buttons at the neck and dark tuxedo pants. A suit jacket was slung over his shoulder. Seeing the fire in his eyes, I fought the urge to ask him where he'd been the night before—but no sooner had I decided to cower than my own temper rose up like a wave. This sack of shit couldn't intimidate me. We'd established that the night we met. I wouldn't be spoken to like that, by him or any other man. In a show of defiance, I stood up straight and puffed my chest out.

“You watch the way you talk to me, Landon,” I purred flatly. “I was just trying to help.” Then, for emphasis, I took one long look around the rest of his room. The tidily made up bed. The panel of trophies. The old clunker computer, taking up most of a desk. It meant nothing. None of this stuff meant anything. Let him pack it up.