He didn’t want to kill himself or anything like that, he just couldn’t help thinking that it would be so much easier to simply stop existing. He thought about the wedding, about his family, about all the money they had spent to make the day happen.

  He thought about his guests, people he had known since he was a child, flying from all over the world to come and watch him get married. He supposed now they would have a good story to tell, but it still made him feel sick to his stomach to think about all the time and money they had wasted to come to a party that would now never happen.

  Gabriel pushed the glass door open with his shoulder and pulled Holden in with him. He still had his fingers wrapped around Holden’s hand and Holden didn’t think that he was going to let go any time soon.

  Holden didn’t want to look at Gabriel. He tried to shake him off, so that he could take off his jacket, so that he could take off the rest of his clothes, but Gabriel just shook his head ever-so-slightly, which was enough to tell Holden that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, let go of him.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Gabriel practically dragged him inside, pressing the button to the eleventh floor. Holden noted that it was Gabriel’s apartment, not his own, that they were going to.

  They had lived in the same building for what felt like a very long time, but Holden wasn’t exactly when it had happened. He just knew that it has and it was a fact of life that Gabriel lived near him and that they could always go crash at each other’s places whenever something had happened. Holden assumed that this counted as something happening, but he wasn’t sure that he was ready to talk about it. He wasn’t sure that he would ever be ready to talk about it.

  He leaned back against the mirror in the elevator, letting himself feel the cold glass on his face. It didn’t matter that it was dirty—it normally mattered that it was dirty—and it didn’t matter that Gabriel was watching him with what Holden could only describe as pity.

  It felt like nothing mattered anymore. It felt like everything that he was doing had stopped mattering the moment that Sean had turned around and walked out of the reception area, leaving them all behind, leaving Holden behind and standing at the altar like a fucking idiot.

  He opened his eyes and looked at Gabriel.

  “Hey,” Gabriel said.

  Holden swallowed. He was done taking off his jacket, and at some point, though he wasn’t sure exactly when, he had taken it off and it had fallen on the floor. He wasn’t sure when he had taken it off, he didn’t even remember moving his arms, but it must have happened at some point because the jacket was on the floor and the top of his white shirt was unbuttoned so that it revealed his chest, which was weird.

  “Holden.”

  Holden blinked.

  “Holden, I need you to talk to me.”

  Holden blinked again. He opened his mouth, and then he closed it, unable to actually bring himself to make any sound. There was nothing that he could say, there was nothing that he should say. It felt like every part of him was unable to speak.

  “Holden, please,” Gabriel said. There was an edge that had crept into his voice that Holden knew hadn’t been there before. He wasn’t sure what it was, all that he was sure of was that he didn’t like it, and that the last thing that he wanted to do was make his best friend worry about him.

  “I—I can’t,” he said, his voice croaky and shaky and all wrong. It was low and gravelly and terrible, and it didn’t even sound like it was him who was speaking, to the point where the sound of his of voice startled him.

  “It’s okay,” Gabriel said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  Holden blinked. He had no reason to believe Gabriel, but Gabriel seemed to be sincere enough, but that was the thing about Gabriel. He always seemed sincere. He had this horrible habit of being amazing and honest all at the same time and Holden was never sure how to process it.

  “You should stay with me tonight, huh?”

  Holden blinked again.

  “I can crash on the sofa,” he said. “You can stay on the bed and you can sleep it off.”

  “Sleep it off,” Holden repeated. He wasn’t sarcastic, he was just factual, but it made Gabriel wince.

  “Fuck, I don’t know—I don’t know what the protocol for this is,” Gabriel said. “I’m just—I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

  Holden bit his lower lip and nodded. Gabriel was only trying to make him feel better and he didn’t deserve to get the brunt of Holden’s anger. “That makes one of you, I guess.”

  “Holden.”

  “What?” He asked. “Am I not telling the truth?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Yeah,” Holden replied. “That makes two of us.”

  The elevator dinged again and the doors opened. Holden took a step out into the luxurious hallway. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, if he was supposed to wait for Gabriel. He was at Gabriel’s door before Gabriel was.

  A11.

  The way the apartments were numbered always struck Holden at being extremely weird. He waited until Gabriel dug the key out of his pocket and the lock clicked as he opened it. He took a step forward into Gabriel’s apartment and started to take off the rest of his clothes. He didn’t care that Gabriel could see him, and there was nothing intimate about the way that he was getting rid of the suit he was supposed to be wearing when he was getting married. He had, mercifully, managed to talk his parents out of the tux idea.

  It was too much and the last thing that his parents wanted him to be was ostentatious, so he had managed to stick with a relatively simple black and white suit that was still perfectly tailored to his figured and cost about twice what he made per month. He fucking hated it. He wanted to set it on fire. He wanted to set his own body on fire, as long as any trace of the fucking suit remained on him, and he would have set the suit on fire when he was still wearing it if he could. Soon, he was almost completely naked in Gabriel’s living room, wearing nothing but his socks and his underwear, and he was only vaguely aware that Gabriel was watching him with his jaw on the floor.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Holden said. He walked toward Gabriel’s bathroom, opened the door and turned on the faucet. He sat on the toilet and waited for the water to heat up enough so that there would be steam filling the room and he was sure that when he stepped into the shower, the water would be scolding hot.

  His eyes stung when he finally walked into the shower. He only vaguely noticed that he was still wearing his underwear and his socks when they had started to stick to his skin. He took them off, throwing them on the bottom of the shower, and watching them as they slowly went toward the drain and got smaller as they absorbed all the water and got smaller in size and bigger in volume, until they blocked the drain and the water started to accumulate in the tub.

  His skin was hot and itchy, so much so that he wanted to tear it off with his fingernails. He scratched his side, in the deepest and most satisfying way that he could think, letting a moan escape his lips when the hot water on his newly acquired scratch caused a searing pain that he hadn’t been expecting.

  He didn’t even try to sidestep it. He liked it, at least it felt like something, and something was better than nothing, especially when nothing had been all that he had managed to feel all day long.

  Holden heard Gabriel knock on the door. “Holden? You okay in there?”

  Holden grunted as a reply, which was clearly enough, because he could remotely hear Gabriel walking away from the bathroom.

  He turned the shower off when it started to get cold and walked out of it, wrapping a hand towel around his waist. It looked like a loincloth, but it was better than nothing. When he stepped outside into the living room, Gabriel was nowhere to be found.

  On the sofa, there were clothes—Gabriel’s clothes, which were always a little big on him, but they were the kind that Holden would wear. Gabriel wore skirts and dresses more than he wore jeans and slacks, but Gabriel had dug into his wardrobe until he had found jeans that would fit Holden. There was a belt on top of the jeans, a package of underwear that hadn’t been opened, and one of the shirts he wore to bed with the faded rock band logo on the chest.

  Holden wanted to thank Gabriel. He needed to thank him, except he couldn’t bring himself to go knock on Gabriel’s door. He got dressed, and everything about these clothes felt better. The plan was to sit on Gabriel’s sofa and wait for him, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit down. He would text Gabriel later, he thought.

  He sighed, then stood up. He hesitated only for a second when he opened the front door, walked out, and closed it softly behind him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It took Gabriel a few minutes to leave his bedroom. He had stopped hearing the shower and he felt like he had been holding his breath until he could hear Holden speak out, but there were no words. Holden didn’t say anything and Gabriel couldn’t help but worry.

  He could clearly remember the last time that Holden hadn’t been able to speak. They had just gotten out of school when they got the news about Holden’s brother… and then Holden didn’t speak, at all, for what felt like months.

  It could have been a few weeks, Gabriel wasn’t sure, but it felt like forever. There was nothing that Gabriel could do to get him to talk and it took him a long time to realize that getting him to speak wasn’t his responsibility, but Gabriel still felt like he had failed him. He couldn’t fail him now, not after what happened with Sean. That would have been the height of cruelty.

  Holden had clearly gotten out of the shower and was in the living room. Gabriel hoped that Holden had used the clothes that he had left out for him. Gabriel was pretty sure that Holden hadn’t noticed, but he had gathered the suit clothes and put them in a laundry basket which he had then stuffed in the utility room. He opened his bedroom door, fully intending to ask Holden if he wanted something hot to drink, but Holden wasn’t anywhere in the apartment. It wasn’t a large apartment by any means, with one big open space which spanned the kitchen, dining and living room, a little bathroom, and a utility room which barely had enough space for a mounted washer and dryer and the hamper. There were no places for Holden to be, really.

  Gabriel looked at his sofa. The clothes had been taken, the underwear package ripped open and placed neatly in the middle of the sofa, and the socks had been left behind.

  “Holden?” Gabriel said. For the first time since he had started living in this tiny apartment, it felt like a Cathedral, and his voice echoed around him and inside his own head, hitting his brain like sharp waves of pain.

  “Holden!”

  He knew that it was pointless to scream. It was pointless to do anything but go out and look for Holden, but he thought that there was a chance Holden could hear him and Gabriel wasn’t going to lose any opportunity to get Holden to listen to him. He left his apartment without locking the door behind him and started running down the stairs until he had reached the third floor. He raced toward C3, Holden’s apartment, and knocked on the door.

  The door creaked when Holden knocked and opened slightly when he touched it. Gabriel’s eyes opened wide, his heart going a million miles in his chest. This was the first time in his entire life that he had managed to walk into Holden's apartment without knocking on the door first and waiting for ages until Holden opened it and flashed him a big smile. Gabriel hadn’t realized how much he missed that stupid, goofy smile until he was faced with Holden’s terribly empty apartment.

  Holden was someone who always made sure to lock the door after he had walked into his apartment because of what had happened with his brother. Even though they lived in one of the safest areas in the city, Holden was always on Gabriel's ass, telling him that he should lock the door when he went to bed, telling him not to just let people simply walk in when he was having a party. Gabriel had always thought that it was the stupidest thing ever, but right then, he really appreciated it.

  It also terrified him, because he wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about the fact that his best friend wasn't in his apartment, and that he had clearly already walked inside at some point. Holden's apartment was relatively clean, if a little messy. He needed to do the dishes, put some clutter away, but that was the way it always was, partly because of the cleaning service that Holden hired to come every week or so.

  It was hard to tell if Holden was there because the clutter remained relatively the same. Gabriel walked inside, looking around as he practically screamed Holden’s name, caring very little about the fact that his neighbors might be able to tell that something was seriously wrong.

  He stopped when he spotted Holden’s phone. It was still plugged into the outlet in the kitchen, sitting atop his tiny microwave. Holden hadn't taken it to the wedding, because he didn't want anyone to bother him during his important day. That was what he had told Gabriel, anyway.

  It made sense to Gabriel. Everyone that could be there was already going to be there, so people could send his congratulations at any point and Holden could check them when he got home at the end of the day. That had been the plan anyway, but now, Gabriel desperately wished that he had taken his phone with him. The screen was lit up every couple of seconds, and the phone danced as it vibrated, notification after notification coming in.

  The only indication that something was wrong was that Holden’s bedroom door was wide open. He always kept it closed, because he was intensely private, but it was wide open and it looked like an invitation. A threatening invitation. Gabriel had never liked seeing an open door less in his entire life.

  He took a deep breath and walked inside, ready to scream out for Holden again, but he couldn’t. The moment that he walked into Holden’s bedroom, he saw that his bed was unmade, that his closet was wide open, and that he had taken the suitcase that he kept inside his closet. There were clothes thrown all over the floor, on the wardrobe, inside the closet.

  His jeans and some of his shirts were gone, Gabriel noted. He sighed, took his phone out of his pocket and started to make phone calls.

  ***

  It had been two weeks. Two weeks without any trace of where Holden Brochu might be.

  Gabriel was very close to filing a police report. He had tried, once down at the police station, and once with an acquaintance called Lawrence. They had both gone to school with Lawrence and Gabriel thought that he might be more receptive to trying to find Holden, but there was no way to do it. Holden had updated his social media status a couple of times to say that he was fine and not to worry about him, which meant that the police had basically told Gabriel that there was nothing they could do about an adult walking voluntarily out of his own house.

  Gabriel turned around in his chair. His office felt too small ever since the wedding had gone down and he was struggling to keep up with his projects. The proposal spreadsheet was still dauntingly empty and all that Gabriel had managed to do was input the email addresses next to certain company names. He hadn’t been able to send any emails, or to even do the rest of his duties, and he was sure that his immediate supervisor would have come down harder on him if Mr. Brochu hadn’t told her to cut Gabriel some slack.

  It felt like everyone at work knew that Holden was gone. Everyone knew that Holden and Gabriel were best friends. Every single person at the office had been there when Gabriel was walking Sean down the aisle and Sean had turned around to run out of the venue. Gabriel hadn’t been able to do anything. He was sure that they were talking about him, though no one had been bold enough to ask him where Holden was. It made sense, Holden’s position was a pretty general administration one, but they all knew that he was CEO’s son and the next in line to take over the Brochu building dynasty.

  Gabriel didn’t have to field that many questions related to Holden because everyone there knew that the reason he had the job in the first place was because Holden's father was the head of the company.

  There was no shame in nepotism, at least not when it came to Brochu Incorporated, but Gabriel had done everything that he could to make sure to prove himself as a good worker. He had managed to do it, until these last two weeks, where he had been absolutely nothing but useless.

  He sighed and went back to his task when his phone rang. “Hello, this is Gabriel Acosta,” he said when he picked up the phone.

  “Gabriel.”

  Gabriel’s heart started to beat fast in his chest. “Holden? Are you okay? Where have you been? Do you—”

  “I’m okay,” Holden said. “I’m sorry to have worried you. Can you come meet me?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. “Where are you?”

  “At the Ramona Inn next to the beach,” he said.

  “Your parents are—”

  “I know,” Holden said. “And I’ll talk to them. I swear. Right now, I would just really like it if you could come meet me.”

  “Okay. I’m going to have to tell your dad.”

  There was a long pause before Holden answered. “Yeah,” he said. “Tell him you’re meeting me. Don’t tell him where.”

  “Don’t move,” Gabriel said, noticing how chipped his nail polish was. He had painted his nails black the day after Holden had left in an attempt to relax, Pattie sitting next to him and telling him that everything would be okay. He didn’t believe her, and his hands were shaking so he had gotten nail polish all over his skin, something that he hadn’t done ever since he was about sixteen years old, a few years after he started doing his own nails.

  “I won’t,” Holden replied.

  “Holden…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

  Holden didn’t say anything for a second. Then he sighed and said something that sounded like assent to Gabriel, and that was good enough for him. Well, maybe not, but it had to be, and he supposed that was what mattered.

 

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