“That doesn’t make sense. Here,” I prompted, handing the water back to him. As I did, I cast a quick look at my cell phone’s clock, anxious about Brayden. “Drink some more.”

Adrian complied and then continued speaking, arm back over his eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to feel like something’s eating away at your mind?”

I’d been about to tell him I needed to leave, but his words left me cold. I remembered Jill saying something similar when she was telling me about him and spirit. “No,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what it’s like… but to me, well, it’s pretty much one of the most terrifying things I can imagine. My mind, it… it’s who I am. I think I’d rather suffer any other injury in the world than have my mind tampered with.”

I couldn’t leave Adrian right now. I just couldn’t. I texted to Brayden: Going to be a little longer than I thought.

“It is terrifying,” said Adrian. “And weird, for lack of a better word. And part of you knows… well, part of you knows something’s not right. That your thinking’s not right. But what do you about that? All we can go on is what we think, how we see the world. If you can’t trust your own mind, what can you trust? What other people tell you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, for lack of a better answer. His words struck me as I thought how much of my life had been guided by the edicts of others.

“Rose once told me about this poem she’d read. There was this line, ‘If your eyes weren’t open, you wouldn’t know the difference between dreaming and waking.’ You know what I’m afraid of? That someday, even with my eyes open, I still won’t know.”

“Oh, Adrian, no.” I felt my heart breaking and sat down on the floor near the couch. “That won’t happen.”

He sighed. “At least with the alcohol… it quiets the spirit and then I know if things seem weird, it’s probably because I’m drunk. It’s not a great reason, but it’s a reason, you know? At least you actually have a reason instead of not trusting yourself.”

Brayden texted back: How much longer? Irritated, I answered back: Fifteen minutes.

I looked back up at Adrian. His face was still covered, though the candlelight did a fair job of illuminating the clean lines of his profile. “Is that… is that why you drank tonight? Is spirit bothering you? I mean… you seemed to be doing so well the other day…”

He exhaled deeply. “No. Spirit’s okay… in as much as it ever is. I actually got drunk tonight because… well, it was the only way I could bring myself to talk to you.”

“We talk all the time.”

“I need to know something, Sage.” He uncovered his face to look at me, and I suddenly realized how close I was sitting. For a moment, I almost didn’t pay attention to his words. The flickering dance of shadow and light gave his already good looks a haunting beauty. “Did you get Lissa to talk to my dad?”