And the girl who is-was-Jess holds her breath again as she tries to imagine a version of this day where he wakes, and sees her, and remembers. Now it is morning, in another city, another century, the bright sunlight cutting through the curtains, and Toby shifts again, rising up through the surface of sleep. She’d given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see.ĭon’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke?ĭarling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.

The same dark hair, the same sharp eyes, the same etched features.Īfter all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. Once, the darkness teased the girl as they strolled along the Seine, told her that she had a “type,” insinuating that most of the men she chose-and even a few of the women-looked an awful lot like him. His face is now inches from her, his lips parted in sleep, black curls shadowing his eyes, dark lashes against fair cheeks. Toby begins to stir, and she feels the old familiar ache in her chest as he stretches, rolls toward her-but doesn’t wake, not yet. In the last month, she has been Claire, Zoe, Michelle-but two nights ago, when she was Elle, and they were closing down a late-night café after one of his gigs, Toby said that he was in love with a girl named Jess-he simply hadn’t met her yet. What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided-a memory, a photograph, a name. She lied, but only because she can’t say her real name-one of the vicious little details tucked like nettles in the grass. The boy is still asleep, and she watches the slow rise and fall of his shoulders, the place where his dark hair curls against the nape of his neck, the scar along his ribs. It isn’t his fault-it is never their faults. She lies there, perfectly still, tries to hold time like a breath in her chest as if she can keep the clock from ticking forward, keep the boy beside her from waking, keep the memory of their night alive through sheer force of will.

The invisible life of addie larue pages