The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary (grave mercy .txt) 📕

‘I’ve not changed,’ I say, frustrated. ‘I’ve not gone anywhere.’

Marcus claps a hand on my shoulder. Back in the warm of the cabin, my hands begin to thaw again. I can feel the slight buzz of that beer already.

‘The fact that you’re even saying that tells me you need help,’ he says. ‘And I consider it my sacred duty to save my best friend. All right? Now have another drink, and have a smoke, and try to remember how to have fun.’

The night passes in flashes. The weed is stronger than anything I’ve ever smoked before. My heart races; I’m quite sure that I’m just about to die. It gives everything an awful immediacy: this is my last dance, my last drink, the last person I’ll ever speak to.

The women arrive in packs, shedding their fur coats on the backs of sofas and strewing them across beds. The cabin is a mass of bare shoulders and legs and the perfume is stifling in the heat. I spend at least half an hour trying to work out how to turn the heating down, buffeting my way through the crowds to squint at dials on walls and boxes in cupboards, but to no avail. My shirt sticks to my back. Every breath seems to come too short, and the only thing that helps is dancing. When I’m moving it’s like I can outrun the fear, as if I’m spinning out of its grasp, and if I ever stand still Marcus is there with another drink, a pill, a woman with skeletal cheekbones and plump, hungry lips. So it feels best to keep moving.

I forget myself for a while, and it’s bliss. The next thing I know I’m sitting on a bed with two women – one very tall, one very short. The tall woman has her hand on my knee; her face looms in my vision, black-rimmed eyes, eyelashes impossibly long.

‘Are you and Marcus a thing?’ she asks me. ‘I’ve always wondered.’

I stand and the hand drops away.

‘He’s so pretty,’ the tall woman says, as though she never touched my knee at all. ‘If he’s straight, I’m calling dibs.’

‘I need to . . . go outside,’ I manage. The door handle won’t turn. My heart is beating so fast I worry it’ll come loose somehow. I rattle at the handle, throw my shoulder against the door. Behind me, the women laugh.

I turn the handle the other way and the door comes easily – I fall through into the hall outside. A man I’ve never seen before is kissing a girl who’s sitting on the bannister, her bum hanging over, her legs wrapped around his waist. If he lets go, she’ll fall. I edge past, terrified to touch them, terrified to send her dropping.

The door to the woods outside is open to let out the heat; I stagger through. The porch is full too, more bare limbs, more writhing bodies. I run until the music is quiet enough for me to hear the sound of my shaking breathing. The woods are pitch-black. Something touches my face. I scream. It’s a branch, heavy with night-time dew, and it leaves a wet handprint on my cheek.

I curl up somewhere, my back to the bark of a tree. The moisture creeps into my jeans, my boxers, so cold that soon I can’t feel the ground underneath me at all. I hug my knees. I think of Addie, how she makes me feel the very opposite of this bleakness, how effortlessly she fills the grasping, hopeless hole in my chest. She’s never felt so far away from me, not even in those months we spent apart. The music thrums behind the darkness like the night is growling.

‘Dylan?’

I scream when something touches me again. This time a hand.

‘Come on, you’re freezing.’

He takes me back to the cabin. The music gets louder and louder and louder. The beat is too fast – I want it to slow down. I ask Marcus and he laughs and squeezes my arm.

‘You’re OK, Dyl. Let’s just get you warmed up. You’ve forgotten where your limits are, that’s all.’

He takes me upstairs and kicks a drunk man out of the bath so he can run it for me. When I ask about the music again he shouts down the stairs and it changes: something eerie and slow that I like even less.

I cry when I get into the water. It hurts. It feels like someone has bitten off the tips of my fingers. Marcus holds my hand tight.

‘You’re OK,’ he keeps saying. ‘You’re all right.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ I say, and my shoulders shake. ‘I don’t know – I don’t know what I’m meant to do. I’m losing myself again, aren’t I?’

I remember suddenly that my phone is out there in the woods somewhere, with all those messages from my father waiting for me in the dark, and I shudder so hard I splash Marcus with water. He swears quietly, letting go of my hand for a moment to brush the drops off his T-shirt, but his hand is back in mine before I have time to be afraid.

‘Nobody knows what they’re doing,’ Marcus tells me. ‘Lie back. Go on. You need to get your whole body in the water. You should stop thinking so hard, Dylan. You’re your own worst enemy.’

‘Dad wants me to work for his business.’

There’s a fine crack running down the centre of the ceiling. I trace it with my eyes, tipping my head back, letting the water touch the crown of my head.

‘Fuck your dad. He’s been controlling your life for ever. Make your own choice.’

‘I did. I have.’

‘It’s not making your own choice if it’s for a girl.’

I flex my hands. My fingers still hurt. I look down – my toes are yellow-white.

‘How do I know I’m making my own choice, then?’

‘You go with your gut.’

‘I am going with my gut.’

‘You’re going with