I do what I always do when I’m feeling overwhelmed: I start inventorying. Lists are satisfying. Lists are safe.
Well, usually. But this list is full of bombshells and danger zones, one after the next. Because, even though it’s a bad idea, I can’t stop myself from listing all the things from tonight I know I’ll never, ever forget.
(1) Bastian Hale’s thumb caressing my throat as I swallowed Chilean Carménère.
(2) His laughter—real, authentic, honest-to-goodness laughter, un-self-conscious and unguarded—when Dante recounted the Great Lobster Bisque Fiasco of ’17, which involved fourteen gallons poured down a storm drain and somehow led to the police being called.
(3) Most of all, how the everpresent storm and steel left Bastian’s face, in a way I didn’t think it could. That’s what I’ll remember. That’s the taste that’ll stay simmering on my tongue, even after the lights go out.
Eighty-seven days left,I told him. Not ninety. Eighty-seven.
Then we’d better make them count.
What terrifies me most of all isn’t the disease that’s coming for me—though Christ, yes, of course the disease—but the sense that there are other things spiraling out of my control. Things that can’t be contained in neat little lists.Then we’d better make them countmetastasized during that car ride home until it was a third thing in the car with us, a living, breathing creature whispering filthy little fantasies in my ear.
I kick off my shoes. They land with a thunk halfway across the room. Hehuggedme tonight. He did it without a second’s thought. His body just told him to do it and so he did, and I hugged him back because what else could I possibly do?
It occurs to me that I should quit. Not the job—I need the money and the insurance and besides, I’d never go back on my word. But I should quitthis. Whateverthisis. I can’t be getting loopy for a man like Bastian Hale.
He’ll ruin me in the end. It’s the only outcome possible.
My phone buzzes in my purse. Yasmin, of course.
YASMIN KAUR
BITCH WHERE ARE YOU??? You said you’d text after the investor thing
Home. Alive. Slightly drunk. Have you ever had shellfish?
Explain immediately or I’m coming over to interrogate you
He taught me how to eat oysters
That’s the dirtiest thing I’ve ever heard and you didn’t even mean it that way
I giggle, then tear up, then feel horror at myself because that’s an insane set of reactions. But Iambeing insane. Iambeing weird. Because I’m sitting on my floor, tasting phantom oysters, and wondering what would have happened if I’d been brave enough to ask what “this” meant when Bastian said “not this.”
But I already know whatthisis.
This istrouble.
Suddenly, my phone starts freaking out in my hand. I assume it’s Yasmin again, because Lord knows the girl has zero tolerance for being left on read, but when I glance down, I see it’s not her at all.
Elly baby please call me
It’s an emergency
I need you
WHERE ARE YOU???
This is your MOTHER
i could be DYING and you wouldn’t even know
I close my eyes and count to ten. Then twenty. The lingering warmth from the evening evaporates like wine left open too long, all the good flavors turning to vinegar. Then, with a sigh that comes from somewhere deep in my bones, I dial her number.
She answers on the first ring, which means she’s been sitting there with the phone in her hand, waiting. “Finally! I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”
