I can feel my breath against the palms of my hands. I close my eyes and rest my body on the closed door behind me. 

The sound I make is something between a growl and a deep sad sight.

Classic, simple and precise—an image of confusion and regret. This is the face of someone who knows they’ve crossed a line they can’t walk away from. Not in a way that matters, anyway.

My heart is pounding. I feel dizzy enough to let a few seconds pass by, trying real hard not to reflect on anything. Not to think of it. It’s like I’ve been running a marathon and I’m dehydrated and my brain is melting, so I let it happen like that. I let it happen. Shouldn’t I be a little bit scared, at least? Shouldn’t I be stopping it all from happening, instead?

I’ve almost kissed Charlie, after all.

Once I’m breathing correctly again, after running into Billie’s room like nothing had happened at the bottom of the stairs in this particularly expensive British hotel, I crash into the bed.

The room is empty. Not even Dickinson is here to see me cover my face with my arms, nor grab the pillow to hide in it. What is it?

It felt wrong.

Of course. Right? It feels monstrous. Her bloody lips were close enough to mine. I would have gone all the way to wash them. If it hadn’t been for the security guard, I would’ve stained mine in the way. But they weren’t bleeding just yet. They were open, not ripped, breathing, moving, alive. Willing. And all I can think about is why on Earth would Charlie want to kiss me back. Me, little miss america. 

Why would I want to kiss Charlie, in the first place? Why would I put myself in such danger? Just for fun? 

I’ve been recklessly letting myself go for the day, but it’s time to return to real life. I’m biting off my nails, trying to reach back to my body.

Yeah, it felt wrong enough not to try it ever again.

Or so I try to conclude.

The problem is I know now, that I could’ve. And I can’t simply ignore it, can I? And this wouldn’t be my first time kissing a girl. The thing is there wasn’t a dare I could use as an alibi this time. There was no challenge to do the wrong thing. I just thought I wanted to. Thought I would just ruin it. But judging from the way my body is starting to turn its inside out, it must have been my worst idea to date.

Ashamed and unaware of why I can’t stop playing the moment in the back of my mind, I’m surprised by the blinding light of my personal phone. It’s been an hour since Charlie walked out on me. Or we walked out on each other. And it’s late at night. Who else could it be?

“Fuck.” I’m fast at picking up once I realize who it is: “Billie?”

Why is she using my personal number?

“Listen to me, I need you to call the emergency doctor contact we have,” her voice is shaking but it feels like she wants everyone to know she has everything under control. Like always. Billie’s voice is tight around my underbelly, twisting me again. My heart is pounding again but it’s different this time. I’m racing. “Amber, can you hear me?”

We’re both out of breath. Before I can say a word, I’m getting on the laptop and finding my contact list.

“What happened?” As my voice tenses up, she seems to loosen up the grip she has on the wheel. I can hear nothing on the other end of the phone but her accelerated breathing and some whimpers.

“Anna’s bleeding,” she says. “She hit her head.”

“What?”

“Amber, I need you to hurry up. I can’t call emergencies but I need a doctor right now.” She is breaking down as she speaks. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” still running against something. But I can see I’m getting better at hiding everything in a metaphorical trunk to get through things. I guess this is survivalist mode, right? The closest I’ll ever need to be. “I’ve got him on the other line. But I need you to talk to me. Can you do that?”

“Rent a car,” she insists. “You need to get us out of here before anyone recognizes us on the road.” In the middle of the night? I know exactly what I need to do, but I let her talk me through it. “I’m okay… Oh! She’s waking up.”

“Don’t move her.”

“I know,” her voice cracks one more time. She’s crying. “Baby, baby, talk to me. Come on, wake up. It’s me. Hey, it’s your Billie. Hey...”

More mumbling.

“I said don’t touch her, Billie.” The doctor picks up, almost happy to hear that he has been contacted in this circumstance. He sounds professional but there’s a ring to it that says that this bill is going to pay for his new house. “Billie, are you listening to me?”

I’m having two conversations at the time, but I’m able to balance them both.

“Amber, I’m scared.”

“It’s okay, babe. I’ve got you.” The rental for the car is working, I’ve tracked her thanks to the app, and I know what car Anna drives on the usual. I know how to find her. “I’m coming for you, okay?”

Before I’ve had time to consider it, I’m sitting on a car and driving through dark roads, but I know she’s at the other end of the line.

Right now, that’s the only thing that keeps me sane.

It’s been sixteen hours since the accident and I haven’t gotten much sleep yet. 

We’re staying up together, just in case. She could still have some sort of concussion we haven’t found out about yet.

After strict treatment of her wounds, the doctor reassured everyone that Anna would be fine. She has stayed in the clinic along with her team and her sister. Back there, even when everyone seemed to try to comfort Billie, she wouldn’t take it. She just paced around the waiting room like a tiger in a cage until the doctor told her Anna would be okay. I knew she was blaming herself for the car accident, as ashamed as angry.

I haven’t asked her about the whole incident. 

The way she’s sitting by the window is telling me that she doesn’t want to share that story just yet. And even when I know I will have to report back to Lilah on this, I’m dreading the moment.

I think I’ll wait until we’re back in New York. After all, this is all coming to an end: Billie and Anna, London, us.

So we decide not to talk about it. Bloody-hands-and-sweaty-palms Billie is really different from this apathetic-dormant-angry Billie. I hate them both. Hours ago, she would hold my hand real tight and beg me not to let her go. Now, she’s all crossed limbs and caged feelings. 

And I really don’t know how I feel about her now.

I don’t think I ever have. 

She is way too many things and none, to me. She is part of the job but she’s also someone who has confessed some of her deepest fears and secrets to me, and I hate her for making me hold all that weight like I was holding none to begin with. Who does she think she is?

“We’ll need some body make up,” she says.

“I’ve got photoshop on my laptop,” I answer, rapidly. “You won’t be able to see the bruises, don’t worry.”

“You’re skilled for that, too?”

I roll my eyes.

“Covering bruises is probably my most experienced skill, yeah.” And it burns my tongue to joke about it so lightly, but I like the pain.

I like the heavy feeling it brings along when her gaze feels like it’s lecturing me the way no one else ever has. When she looks at me, I picture what she sees. I imagine my eyes are red. That, even when I have managed to take off all of my make-up she can tell I need a shower to wash it all off. 

I wished she knew what I’m feeling, so she could tell me, too.

I don’t want to leave Billie alone for one second. I’m scared she’ll do something stupid, like call Anna or her team, and then Lilah will find out I’ve been about to get her in the biggest trouble of her career so far.

I’m angry at her, but I don’t want to be. 

And I hate her for that, too.

I hate her for making me worry about her as if we could ever be anything like friends. As if she’s not looking at me well knowing that she has turned me into her jailer for the rest of the trip.

“I miss Dickinson,” she sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

“I’ll have someone bring him back in a second,” I say, as I’m already phoning the studio she lied about staying in.

As I’m talking to the studio manager she paid to take pictures of the cat so she could send them to me as she tried to get Anna back, I am aware that I should be angrier than this. Angrier than short sentences and gray-skied gazes. I should be furious, raging, burning things down. But I am not like that and, honestly, the idea of ever being anything like it paralyzes me. So I’m just numb. 

Numb and dumber each second that passes by.

I feel stupid. I’m trying to make a list of the reasons, a list of causes and consequences that can make sense of it all, but none of them is working.

“Don’t fall asleep,” I remind her, when she closes her eyes.

“Sorry.”

I look at her and it breaks my heart. Because I know she is sorry. She is terribly and most ardently sorry for everything. But especially for dragging me into this. She said it in the car, in tears. She apologized to me a hundred times. To Anna, too, for being selfish enough to love someone that way. For driving both of them mad, tangling them in lies and hiding, being the type of coward to run away at each chance. For hiding them.

Her feeling sorry makes everything a little bit more difficult, if that’s even possible.

I don’t like anger, nor giving people the cold shoulder. I like holding hands and comforting people. When I was a child, I dreamt of being a doctor. Then I started failing all of my school classes and making out with boys in parking lots and my mom never told me how to wear lingerie but I bought it anyway, and let them have a few pictures, and I know she’s in Boston now, because last time I talked to her she told me about the marathon and I’m honestly a little bit heartbroken by knowing exactly how Billie is feeling about hers, deep down wishing she could tell her all about it, for her to be the one in the room, not me.

But she’s not here. And she won’t be, because they’re not letting her out of the rehabilitation clinic anytime soon. And her dad is out of the picture, managing money and suits and entering rooms she never learnt how to walk into without being put on the table as some sort of side dish.

But I am.

I am still here.

And I hate being angry at anyone else but me.

“Hey,” I lean on the window, next to her. We haven’t talked in a few hours, but I’m tired of it. “I got you this.”

She hasn’t stopped crying for hours, not really. But it is true that she hadn’t made a sound for a long time now. As she holds the small Big Ben keychain I got her back in the museum, I can tell it’s hard for her not to start crying again. That’s why I sit by the window with her, thinking about how ridiculous all of this must look from the outside.

Glamour, money, houses, family issues, youth, confusion, heartbreaks, desperate rich girls with dyed hair and newly painted nails. It’s all so stupid, and we’re just trapped there. But she’s not alone, and I want to let her know so.

“Thank you,” she says, resisting the urge to cry but not being really good at it.

“I’m sorry,” I say. There’s a brief pause for the both of us to recover. “You know what happens now, right?”

That’s the thing about your life being part of a bigger game. Neither of us has wondered what comes next. We simply know. We’ve been recovering, getting ready for the next round. Billie knows this better than I do, but it’s easy to follow her heart through it. The young woman pulls me into a hug, and I accept it. She may be strategic and a very good illusionist but I think she’s chosen not to pretend around me.

So, for everyone who’s still confused, here’s what comes next.

We lie again.

I haven’t seen her for two days. We’ve only talked via text message, and through our work phones. I’ve decided not to mention the stairs, and judging by the look she gives me when she opens the door, the bridge is long burnt down.

We definitely won’t have to talk ever again.

“We’re ready,” I say. “You’ve got everything you need?”

“Yup.”

She avoids eye contact, and I’m afraid to say I thank her for it. Many things have happened in these past two days. I know I can’t tell her none of it. Thinking back about it, I did warn her once we went back to our rooms, the bubble would pop.

I thought I had stopped thinking about it, but I haven’t. It’s hard to stand by her in the elevator on our way down to the parking lot, as we head for the rest of the play that’s still unfolding before ourselves.

As we go back to war.

When we get to the car, the chauffeur opens the door for us. The security car will follow us. Billie is there already, laying down in the back and merging with her blankets. We have hours ahead of us, before we get to Wales, so she should get as much rest as possible. After all, she’s the one who needs to look pretty for the pictures.

Regarding sleep, I’m not doing much better on that.

Charlie and I get into the back seats, first line. We sit down. Once I close the door and we fasten our seatbelts, the cabin goes quiet. The driver gets us out of the building, but the light doesn’t change. 

We’re behind black windows and black doors, and nothing can get to us.

The girl is sitting on the other side, just like she did when she fell asleep in the taxi on our way back to the hotel. There’s no magic glow today. This time, she’s looking at her phone, typing furiously. I lean on my window, too, exhausted. Is there something I could say, or do? My hands are tied here, aren’t they?

I can’t tell Charlie about why I didn’t reach back immediately. I don’t think she cares either. She looks like she’d explode if I spoke to her. Unlike that night, the distance between us is wide and scary.

We’ve only talked about them. And about how Billie wants her picture taken by Matt’s family house so that people can start spreading some words about them getting back together. None of us would tell her we’ve found ourselves wanting to do so only so that we could cover the traces of her and Anna’s car accident, and I’m hoping we really don’t need to. Not now, not ever.

“Hey, Molly,” she picks up her phone. “Yeah, we’re on our way. He was okay with it, I think… Yeah, he’s followed every rule, so we should be fine.”

I let it be the end because that’s all I ever learnt how to do.