Once in the house, I busied myself with things I'd been dying to do for two days: namely wash everything. I headed up to Anastasia's bathroom, peeled off the clothes that had become like a second filmy skin, and slipped into the luxuriously soft kimono-style robe she had hanging on the door. I found a better hiding place for Sage's ring in a deep pocket of the backpack, then ran all my clothes down to the all-in-one washer/dryer in the laundry room.

He wasn't back yet, but I told myself I didn't care.

Back upstairs, I ran the water in that huge bathtub until it reached the proper temperature of burn-my-skin-off hot and searched Anastasia's chest of drawers for something to change into after.

Everything she owned was preposterously girlie—lots of silk nighties and imported lingerie with European labels, and not a T-shirt or a pair of sweatpants to be found. I laid out the only pajamas I could find that at least had pants instead of bootie shorts, then headed back into the bathroom and let the steam from the water finally warm me up as I sat on the edge of the tub waiting for it to fill.

I felt like I'd been lost a snowdrift for days, constantly chilled to the bone and without any real sense of direction. The only thing that had been keeping me anchored was knowing that Adam was with me, that if nothing else, I had an accomplice in all this mess.

Now my eyes wandered to the delicate gold clock on the wall above the tub. It was after midnight. I was ashamed to admit to myself that I was scared here without him. What if he didn't come back? Was I strong enough to finish this mission on my own? If I went home now, gave up on finding the adult Jenny, could I really live with myself?

I slipped into that cauldron-like tub, trying to clear my mind of everything but how good it felt to be immersed in heat, to let my muscles finally relax. My half-opened eyes fell on a bronze bottle of Anastasia's perfume. What must it be like to be her, I wondered. Surrounded by every luxury, a seventeen-year-old mistress in a fantasy house.

Twisting off the cork-style top of the bottle, I was struck by how delicate the rosy scent of the perfume was, how it transported me somehow to a place I couldn't exactly identify at first. But once I had poured a few drops onto my wrists, the memory came charging back to me:

My mother. She used to wear this perfume when I was very little. Maybe it was something that had been in vogue in the nineties. Maybe all the girls wore it.

Maybe she had stolen it in DW, from a house very much like this one.

I poured a generous amount into the hot water, letting the sweet smell of it drown me completely. Then I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that the hot water was Brady's hands, that in front of me his beautiful brown eyes were floating, full of that warm connection I had been so desperate to feel for so long.

But then my eyes opened, ashamed at the vision that had usurped my thoughts. Because the eyes I was imagining weren't brown.

They were green.

*

It was the crashing sound that woke me up, followed by annoyed cursing. I rolled over in the silken sheets, almost slip-sliding out of the bed as Anastasia's camisole top was made of the same material. The clock on the bedside table informed me it was one a.m.

Groggy and a bit disoriented, I headed downstairs. My clothes were still in the dryer, and my arms instinctively crossed over my chest as I got closer to the source of the sound.

Even in the dim light of the elaborately decorated sitting room, I could immediately make out that the liquor cabinet was open. A slumped figure that I recognized as Adam sat nearby on one of those upholstered love seats that cost more than a car, a bottle of what I assumed was vodka clenched in his fist.

"What are you doing?" I asked, turning on a light which made him flinch and glare at me.

"Drinking."

"Why?"

"To get drunk."

I watched him for a moment, knowing that if I had half a brain I would just let him be. But I couldn't leave. He had knocked over some of the trinkets on a nearby table and, not knowing what else to do with my hands, I walked up and started straightening them.

"Can you not do that?" he asked in a small voice through clenched teeth.

"She said to leave it the way we found it."

I tried to remember where everything had been sitting before, recreating it as best I could. I balanced the mermaid box in my hands, not sure where to place it, and I looked up to see Adam staring at me through angry and distant eyes. "Why do you smell like a whorehouse?"

A deep flush of embarrassment came over me. I swallowed down the painful effect of his words, trying to calm myself. "It's that girl's perfume. I put it in the bath."

"Don't use her stuff, Marina."

"Don't worry, she won't know it's missing."

"That's not what I mean. I don't like the smell."

"Well don't smell me then!" I turned to go, but I was stopped by a crashing sound. Adam had knocked over a lamp, whether intentionally or not I wasn't sure. It clattered now to the floor. I heard him groan to himself, picking it back up, and once he had it teetering upright on the table, his body tensed up again and he took another drink.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" I asked, trying to soften my tone enough for him to trust me.

"Nothing happened."

"Well, did Jenny tell you anything?"

"No." He wasn't looking at me, but down at the bottle in his hands.

"Did you..." I couldn't finish the question, both because the answer was none of my business, and because I didn't want to know it.

"Did I what?"

"Did you two..." I let the words hang there, swallowing down anything else that I was thinking.

Adam stared at me now, a sly smirk on his face and something that I could only read as resentment in his eyes. "Dave came groveling back, she let him in, I walked back here. Happy?"

"Oh." I didn't know where to go, and I was suddenly aware of how ridiculous I must look, wearing Anastasia's silk pajamas, planted like a lighthouse in the middle of this obnoxiously expensive room.

"I honestly don't care," he insisted. "She's just a kid. My Jenny was a twenty-three-year-old woman when I last saw her, not some stupid fucking kid who thinks everything is a game."

I couldn't help but feel that he was no longer talking about Jenny, and I flinched with wounded pride. "Wow, you're even meaner drunk than you are sober, you know that?"

"Go home then."

"I wish I could," I insisted. "You didn't see what happened last time this world leaked into ours because you were too busy chasing after your precious Jenny. I won't let that happen again."

"Are you really accusing me? After everything you've done to me? I was right about you the first time, Marina. You're as selfish as your mother."

Before I could control my rage, I hurled the music box at his head, but even in his drunken state his reflexes were tight enough to dodge it. It smashed against a wall and let out a few strained notes of canned music, the mermaid suspended in mid-dive, before it came to a stop.

"I am doing everything I can think of to help you!" I screamed once it stopped. "Why do you think I'm here?"

"I don't know!" he yelled back, the vodka swishing around in the bottle as he raised his arm in anger. "But I'm starting to wish to God I'd never let you come."

"You didn't let me do anything, Adam. I've never asked you for anything, least of all permission!"

"You asked me not to go back to the Portland beach."

"How dare you hold that over me? I told you why!"

"And so I haven't."

"You said you didn't want to! You said you were done with her."

"I am!" He turned and kicked the table I had just straightened up, knocking everything to the floor.

I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier. I knew he was drunk but it was no excuse. "You think you're the only one who's had to look into someone's eyes that you loved more than anything and see a blank stare coming back at you?"

"Try doing it six more years and see how it feels then," he returned, a bitter sarcasm working its way into his already hostile tone. "Do you know how many Jennys I've met? Do you know?"

"No, I don't. You never told me that—"

"Hundreds," he spat at me, raising the bottle to his lips but exploding with another thought before it could get there. "Hundreds of times I've looked into those eyes and seen a stranger." He started pacing a bit, but then, realizing that he had nowhere to go, returned back to where he'd just been. "She was all I had."

"I know that."

"I don't care what you know!" his voice came out anguished and pinched. "I'm alone!"

Despite my anger, the voice in my head couldn't help acknowledging that he was really crying out for help. I was furious at him for taking it out on me, but I couldn't pretend not to understand. How many times in the last year and a half had I wanted to throw a television set through the window? How many times had I cried myself to sleep? I measured my voice carefully, keeping it as calm as possible. "I'm alone too."

He laughed now, shaking his head, the bottle dangling precariously from his fingers. "What about all your boyfriends?"

"Which one?" I asked, laughing myself at how ridiculous it all was. "The one who dumped me as soon as he knew who I was? Or the one I can't remember dating?"

He took a drink, closing his eyes and letting the alcohol seep down his already wet throat.

"I am completely out of sync with my whole life," I reminded him, "and there's no way to fix it."

But he wasn't done feeling sorry for himself, waving away my words with a dismissive hand, "At least you have a life."

"What do you want, Adam?"

"I want..." he hesitated, looking around restlessly, "I want someone to look at me and actually know who the hell I am."

"Well, congratulations, you found her."

He looked up at me now, his shoulders slumping and a desperate emotion coming over his eyes. It hurt to even look at the rawness in his expression. There was no wall between us now, maybe for the first time.

I had spent so many months wanting to be in the same exact place as another person, an honest and exposed place, where I didn't have to remember which one of my myriad lies I was supposed to recite.

Now that I was here, I trembled to the bone, more afraid than I'd been since the day I heard that my brother had died. It was all too real now. There was no escaping what was passing between us. We really were the only two people on the planet who could understand what we were going through, what we were fighting for. The weight of it was suddenly oppressive.

I couldn't help but break away, turning my attention to the bottle in his hand. "This isn't helping things," I insisted, walking up to him and snatching the bottle away before he could protest.

"Give that back, M."

"No. You've had enough."

"I said give it back."

"And I said no," I returned over my shoulder as I went to put it back in its cabinet.

Before I knew it, he had rushed up behind me and was reaching around my side to grab the bottle back out of my hand. I held it up as high as I could, a ridiculous and futile gesture as Adam was probably six inches taller than me. His fingers worked their way up my arm, but I stubbornly refused to lower it.

It took a moment for it to sink in that he wasn't really reaching for the bottle anymore, which he could have easily retrieved at that point. He was just holding me from behind, his body curled around mine like a mollusk's shell.

His other arm came around my waist and I held still for fear of losing his touch, just feeling his strong stomach pressed against my back and the warm breath blanketing my neck. He let out a choking sob, his embrace turning more desperate with each passing second, and the desperation morphing into something more primal.

When his fingers grazed my hips, I knew I was done for. I forgot to be angry or scared or anything at all. My body grew weak in his arms, the vodka bottle slipping out of my grasp and crashing to the ground, its contents gurgling out and soaking my feet. But I didn't have the strength to care.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I turned around to face him.

I don't know if I leaned in first or if he did, but his mouth was on mine and every inch of my body was screaming to be even closer to him. Our stomachs seemed to plaster together, our mouths like opposing magnets, inextricably pulled towards each other. I couldn't believe how well we fit.

"We have to stop," he breathed into my cheek, but instantly his mouth was back, his strong lips devouring mine with an untamed hunger.

"I know," I whimpered between kisses.

"I mean it, we have to stop," he repeated, his fingers pressing weakly against my cheek.

"Stop then," I offered, though I made no effort to follow through on it.

He shoved himself away from me, his strength abusing what little power I still held in my weak knees. I wobbled before him, utterly defeated, my wet lips open in a needing, desperate invitation, pleading with him silently to come back. To give me back the warmth he had ripped away.

He stood a few inches from me, holding his position for seconds longer than I thought I could stand, leaving my whole body alive and stinging, a raw nerve exposed to fresh oxygen. Finally, delirious, he came flying back into my waiting arms.

Suddenly I was in the air, weightless, as he lifted me up and my legs wrapped around his firm torso.

"Do you want this?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" he whispered, already carrying me towards the staircase that led up to Anastasia's bedroom.

"Yes," I promised, "I'm sure."

Sage had warned me once, back in Portland, that this is what could happen inside the portals. When there are no consequences, you do unspeakable things.

At sixteen, I hadn't really understood what she meant. But I understood it now.

Adam's mouth on mine, my hands in his hair, my legs wrapped tightly around him as he carried me up the stairs, and the sweet dense musk of another girl's perfume radiating off of my overheated skin.

I knew the shame would come crashing down in the morning. I knew I should be thinking of Brady, but all I could think about was this exact moment, and how good it felt to be carried like that, to have Adam's strong arms under my legs, holding me up around him.

Down here, we take what we want.

Down World makes monsters of us all.

END OF PART TWO

KEEP READING FOR PART THREE OF YESTERWORLD