"She'll be the death of you, boy."
Freddie's father glared at him, Karen simpering at his side. Oh, fuck you. Fuck both of you. But he didn't really have the heart to be really angry. There was cocaine in his veins and a buzz in his brain and he was in love and that was far too brilliant for him to snap at anyone...
"Nah, she's brill," he told them, grinning madly, not sure if he was saying it to get on his dad's nerves or just because it was true. (And it was undeniably true. His mind recalled the languorous, drunken kisses of earlier. The slow way smiles spread on her impossibly beautiful face. Her laugh, giddy and high-pitched with drugs. Oh God, she was brill. His girlfriend was brill.)
"She's going to hurt you bad. She's going to mess you up." But Freddie didn't listen. He said that sort of thing most days, his father. If he hadn't always been so fucking high (on love, drugs, or, most frequently both), he might have listened to him. He might have heard the warning bells. Seen that soft darkness that had always been in Effy's eyes getting larger. Creeping steadily inside her. Spreading its tendrils to places where they could be of more damage than eyes.
X
"She'll be the death of you," iterated Jonah Jeremiah Jones, in a quavering, high-pitched voice. He held his girlfriend's baby - Freddie couldn't remember either of their names - close to his chest like holding a baby automatically gave him the moral high ground. Maybe it did. Freddie neither cared nor knew. He didn't think much of the baby. He didn't think much of the girlfriend. Right now, he didn't think much of Jonah Jeremiah Jones.
These days he didn't think much of anyone else but Effy.
"She messed up everything, Freddie. She messed up me, and she messed up you, and - and she messed up Cook. And now we're all messed up and - nothing's right and - ouch!" Freddie had pinched him. At that point JJ hadn't quite been locked on, but Freddie wasn't taking any risks. "That really wasn't necessary, Freddie." Freddie fixed him with a look that said otherwise. JJ shuffled. The baby snuffled.
"That wasn't her fault." Maybe what Freddie had just said was true, maybe it wasn't. He didn't care. JJ didn't seem to accept it, either way. He looked up at Freddie, and Freddie noticed with a sudden and muffled surprise that there was strength in his eyes now. He looked at the baby now. How much had JJ grown up over the last few weeks - months - oh, he didn't know how long. He wasn't keeping track of time so well these days.
"She still messed us up."
And if Freddie had been less stupid and less drunk and less happy (and less in love, because you'll find that in love is actually a synonym of all of those things) hen he might have listened. He might have realised that what JJ was saying was irrevocably, undeniably true.
X
"She'll fucking kill us, Freds," said Cook, coughing. The mixture of fluids and powder that was the result of this wasn't something that Freddie really wanted to look into, so he just nodded nervously. Maybe Cook wasn't quite as eloquent as his father, or JJ, but hey, he made his point.
"None of your business."
"Yeah, I know, she chose you and now I gotta stay out of it and all that shit, but I don't know. That girl's no good." Freddie closed his eyes tight and in the blackness behind him he saw her face. I don't want to listen to you, Cook. I don't want to listen... Because nobody ever wants to listen to what they know is true, do they? Maybe Effy didn't mean any harm (although even that was beginning to be questionable, in the eyes of pretty much everyone else but Frederick McClair) but she was definitely causing lots of it.
"She is. She is good. I love her."
Cook looked at him for a long time and Freddie felt for a moment as if maybe it was all his fault. Not Effy's, not Cook's, not anyone else's but his. And of course that wasn't true. Of course he didn't really think that - or at least he didn't think he did. But Cook had always had fire, and now it looked as if he was beginning to have something more. Freddie wanted to apologise. He wasn't sure what for.
"Join the fucking club, mate."
X
"I'll be the death of you."
The words were breathed into his collarbone, and Freddie felt as if he couldn't hold her tighter. This strange and fragile girl. "I love you," he whispered back, and she closed her eyes and smiled.
Freddie ached. He ached all over. He felt Effy's lips, soft, warm, and the sharp and perfect teeth behind them, and wondered if he was aching because they had been at his neck or because they no longer were.
"You're beautiful, Effy," he told her, and he felt her nod. This strange and fragile girl. He was like an instrument in her arms, made of strings and keys that she could press, caress, and elicit any reaction she liked. He laughed darkly. Maybe it wasn't just his body she could play any way she liked, he realised in a moment - or maybe he had known that all along.
"You still want to risk this?"
"I'd risk anything for you," he told her, and as he said the words he knew they were true.
X
Freddie lay dying. There was no cocaine in his veins. There wasn't much blood in them, either. He looked up at the man above him and he realised with a sickening thud that this was her fault. Effy's fault, in a subtle yet irredeemable way.
She'd been the death of him.