The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Author:V.E. Schwab [Schwab, V.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books

XI

NEW YORK CITY, March 17, 2014

Addie has woken up a hundred ways.

To frost forming on her skin, and a sun so hot it should have burned. To empty places, and ones that should have been. To wars raging overhead, and the ocean rocking against the hull. To sirens, and city noise, and silence, and once, a snake coiled by her head.

But Henry Strauss wakes her with kisses.

He plants them one by one, like flower bulbs, lets them blossom on her skin. Addie smiles, and rolls against him, pulls his arms around her like a cloak.

The darkness whispers in her head, Without me, you will always be alone.

But instead, she listens to the sound of Henry’s heart, to the soft murmur of his voice in her hair as he asks if she is hungry.

It is late, and he should be at work, but he tells her The Last Word is closed on Mondays. He can’t possibly know that she remembers the little wooden sign, the hours next to every day. The shop is only closed on Thursdays.

She doesn’t correct him.

They pull on clothes, and amble down to the corner shop, where Henry buys egg and cheese rolls from the counter and Addie wanders to the case in search of juice.

And that is when she hears the bell.

That is when she sees a tawny head, and a familiar face, as Robbie stumbles in. That is when her heart drops, the way it does when you miss a step, the sudden lurch of a body off-balance.

Addie has gotten good at losing—

But she isn’t ready.

And she wants to stop time, to hide, to disappear.

But for once, she can’t. Robbie sees Henry, and Henry sees her, and they are in a triangle of one-way streets. A comedy of memory and absence and terrible luck as Henry wraps an arm around her waist, and Robbie looks at Addie with ice in his eyes and says, “Who’s this?”

“That’s not funny,” says Henry. “Are you still drunk?”

Robbie draws back, indignant. “I’m—what? No. I’ve never seen this girl. You never said you met someone.”

It is a car crash in slow motion, and Addie knew it was bound to happen, the inevitable collision of people and place, time and circumstance.

Henry is an impossible thing, her strange and beautiful oasis. But he is also human, and humans have friends, have families, have a thousand strands tying them to other people. Unlike her, he has never been untethered, never existed in a void.

So it was inevitable.

But she still isn’t ready.

“Fuck’s sake, Rob, you just met her.”

“Pretty sure I’d remember.” Robbie’s eyes darken. “But then again, these days, it’s kind of hard to keep them straight.”

The space between them collapses as Henry steps in. Addie gets there first, catches his hand as it lifts, pulls him back. “Henry, stop.”

It was such a lovely jar she had kept them in. But the glass is cracking now. The water leaking through.

Robbie looks at Henry, stunned, betrayed. And she understands. It is not fair. It is never fair.

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