Page 269 of Ominous: Part 1
I smile in the night, inhaling the scent of the sea over the smell of nicotine. “Tell me what the fuck is up with you and Dom anyway.” I ensure I’m whispering, but the conversation between Janelle and Jasper is growing louder, their laughter filling the air, and someone turned on music because it’s climbing in volume from a speaker somewhere behind me, or maybe in the awning over our heads. A hip-hop song I don’t know, but I sway my hips a little all the same.
Luna snorts. “He’s looking for someone to mommy him, and we’re always off and on because that is not me.” She curls her short bangs behind her ears, pursing her lips as she exhales again.
“And you think it’sme?”Downstairs, before I walked in on her and Eli, Dominic whispered to me Luna was confident I’d fuck him if he just asked. He said it as a joke, but I knew there was truth behind it.
Luna glances at me, grinning a little, her cigarette between her index and middle finger. “No,” she admits. “I just…”
“Wanted to get Eli alone?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like that with me and him,” she says. “It’s just a good time, you know, and… I don’t know.” Her face turns pink. I can see it even in the dim lights. She ducks her chin, avoiding my gaze. Finally, she shrugs, sighing. “We’re all a little messed up.” She glances over her shoulder, and I know she’s talking about her entire friend group. “Eli most of all,” she says quietly, so he can’t hear, her eyes on mine again. “It’s just attention without strings.” There’s a vulnerability to her words, and maybe it’s the alcohol I can smell on her breath, or the weed, or the nicotine, all of it going to her head, along with our fight, but I appreciate her getting real with me.
I don’t think I could reciprocate, but it feels nice, all the same.
“I get it,” I say, and I think I mean it. Nic was kind of that. I tap the unlit end of the cigarette over my bracelets, thinking of my scars. From the outside, it’d appear he meant something to me. Mom thought I wasbrokenover him. Sebastian wouldn’t look me in the eye for a week, and even Reece left me alone out of disgust, maybe, or, I like to think, a little fear.
But I didn’t give a fuck about Nic.
I gave a fuck about what he gave me. What Luna wants. Dominic, too.
Attention.
“Anyway,” Luna says, sighing. “Guess I’ll stay off that if you’re gonna be drawing knives and shit.” She side-eyes me, and I just laugh, and for once, with someone besides Eli, I think I actually feel it.
I take another inhale, blowing out smoke before I ask, “You guys don’t do anything for Halloween?” I didn’t bring a costume because Eli never said anything about it, and I can enjoy it without dressing up, but I’m kind of surprised.
Luna grins. “We do.” She tips her chin up, exhaling gray smoke into the night sky. “A Halloween Hangover party,” she says with a laugh, turning to look at me.
I frown, thinking this is another rich kid thing I don’t understand.
“Every year, my parents go out of town two weeks after Halloween, on a cruise. I have a party at my place.”
“Wow,” I say, shaking my head. “Was no one going to tell me this?”
“I’m telling you now.” She winks. “You’re invited. Just leave the knives at home, killer.”
Dominic,Eli, and I stay up later than anyone. Luna goes to bed with a grand exit, flicking her tongue between her peace fingers. Janelle and Jasper were much more somber, and I think they were trying to be sneaky, because one minute, they’re on the balcony with the rest of us, and the next, they slipped through the door, gliding it closed quietly.
I had a few drinks, Dom a few more, but Eli didn’t drink anything.
We all smoke, though, passing the joint and listening to music as the waves roll. And eventually, we end up in mine and Eli’s bedroom, the three of us, together.
I lie between them, passing the joint to my left. Eli’s fingers graze my own, lingering for a heartbeat before he takes the weed, and I drop my hand by my side, my arm against Dom’s.
The lights are on a dimmer switch, a set of three on a horizontal bar attached to the ceiling, and they’re at their lowest setting in Eli’s room. I thought it was his dad’s, when he dropped our stuff in here earlier this afternoon. But no.
Of course, it’s his.
A king bed in gray, black walls, a door ajar leading to a bathroom with only one sink instead of two, but the claw foot bathtub is there, just like the one at his house.
There’s another balcony, too, and now, only the screen separates the room from the outside, the sound of the ocean turning over against the shore drifting in, heavy curtains pushed apart to let the cool breeze filter through into the room.
It’s mainly empty, save for the pair of nightstands, our luggage, the door to what I assume is a walk-in closet, the entrance to the bathroom, and the three of us, on the made-up bed, wearing our pajamas.
Or rather, I’m wearing pajamas—a loose, white tank with a green skull on it, faded and picked from years of use and oversized, black shorts—and the boys are in gym shorts, no shirts.
Bare skin, too close, but I’m high enough not to care.
“You believe in heaven?” Dom asks the question beside me as he chokes on a crackling laugh.
