Nine-Tenths

Forty-One

The next morning, I stay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and don't let myself squeeze Dav's pillow to my face.

One, because I refuse to be that pathetic.

Two, because it probably doesn't smell like him anymore.

Three, okay, I am that pathetic, but I won't give into it.

24 hours, and nothing.

No phone call. No email. No well-dressed, coiffed dragon on my doorstep with a shame-faced grin, dorky socks, and an explanation.

Nothing.

(Is it 24 hours when it becomes a Missing Persons case? No, that's 48. It's the first 24 hours after a kidnapping that are the most vital. Is it a kidnapping if he just got in the goddamned limo and went with them?)

In the afternoon, Hadi sends me a picture—the roaster is in. It's the sports-car of bean roasters, bigger than the last one, and sleek in a way that makes me wonder if it might actually launch into space if I press the wrong button. As she oversees the installation, we work together to craft the perfect post to explain the emergency closure that's both upbeat enough that it will encourage people to come back, and isn't so abrupt that it reads like Beanevolence failed a health inspection.

Or isn't the kind of honest that makes Lieutenant Governor Asshole come back.

Hadi wants to put him on blast.

I would like her to not get disappeared, too.

Because that's what it is.

Disappeared.

I call Dav, and his phone rings out. I text, and there's no read notifications. Dav has no social media I can find, and I never got his home phone number or address. "Dragon estate Canborough Niagara" brings up literally zero results when I search for it.

Nothing should get zero hits. There's a puzzle here, and that's a piece of it, but I don't know the shape of the whole thing yet.

On the second day, the grief hits me like a sucker-punch as soon as I wake up.

Not everybody you love will leave without a goodbye, Gemma had said.

Ha fucking ha.

I'm glad Katiya's in Europe, because it means I can lay around as long as I want, lunging for my phone when it buzzes, and ignoring every phone call and text that comes from anyone who isn't him. On the fifth day, Hadi abuses her spare-key privileges again, and the gang drags me to the Brass Monkey. I drink red wine that wasn't made by Dav, and feel recklessly angry enough to eat a slice of chocolate cake.

I puke in every trashcan between the bar and home.

That night, I clutch my stomach and hate my self-destructive bullshit, and miss Dav so hard it feels like someone has heated a metal cage and wrapped it around my lungs.

Sometimes, when my grief is at its worst, I get these... these flashes of images that sear into my head. Of... of Dad.

Dad as a corpse.

Dad as a rotting corpse, in a box, in the ground. I can't stop picturing his flesh gray and sagging off the bones of his skull. His brains and his tongue, liquefying—everything that made my father a person, I person I loved and who loved me back—putrefying, gone forever, and unable to come back.

And now I can't turn off the thoughts of Dav like that.

Dead. Corpse-still, unblinking and pale. Laying in a ditch, or at the bottom of the ocean, or buried in cement, whatever it is they do when dragons disappear someone.