I take the notepad. It’s a small theft, but an ugly one. A piece of her I have no right to keep.
As I walk away, I look down at the stolen notepad in my hand. “Eighty-six days,” I whisper aloud. “I can keep her safe for eighty-six days. Then she’ll be free of me.”
I tuck it in my pocket and walk out. The elevator descends through the dark building, and with each floor, I tell myself the same lie again.
It’s better this way.
By the time I reach the lobby, I almost believe it.
21
ELIANA
seized: /sezd/: verb
1: when chocolate suddenly turns grainy and unusable due to temperature shock or moisture.
2: when an abrupt and disastrous turn of events takes something that was lookingsoooscrumptious and reduces it to a complete and utter disaster.
Monday morning finds me standing in front of my closet in a t-shirt and no pants like Winnie the Pooh. I’m holding up two nearly identical blouses and spending a stupid amount of time trying to decide which to wear.
Why do I care? I’ve never cared before. So long as my outfits passed the low, low bar that is “business casual,” neither I nor anyone at Hale Hospitality gives a damn how I’m dressed for the day.
But this weekend has changed things.
All weekend long after the fire alarm fiasco, I felt unsettled. “Ants in my pants” is what my mom would’ve called it. Antscrawling under the surface of my skin feels a lot more accurate, though. That’s the feeling—just constant awareness of all things sensory. Smells, tastes, the friction when I crossed my legs or rolled over in bed. A hypervigilance that was nearly enough to drive me crazy long before the day was over.
Yas lingered at my apartment for a while, chit-chatting about nothing at all. I think she knew we both needed a break from serious topics. The Brandon thing is this hideously ugly specter looming in the background of her life. The Bastian thing is looming similarly in the background of mine, although “hideously ugly” is not something anyone has ever said about Bastian Hale.
Regardless, both of us were plenty happy to just talk shit about theLove Islandcast of buffoons and munch on dairy-free popcorn for as long as our GI tracts allowed.
I was lonely when she left, though—and a little bit scared, too. Without her keeping up a constant stream of chatter, I had only my own thoughts for company.
That’s the worst kind of company there is these days.
Because my thoughts are filled with Bastian in all his many forms. Chef Bastian, Handyman Bastian, Changing Shirts in His Office Bastian. Sweaty Runner Bastian is a new addition to the mix, and he’s already taking up a disproportionate amount of my fantasy runtime.
As I fell asleep last night with ants in my not-wearing-any-pants, it was Sweaty Runner Bastian doing lap after lap through my head.
Abs like the Rock of Gibraltar and that strip of blonde happy trail hair like the lights on an airplane runway saying,This looks like a nice place to land…
Yum.
No,yuck.
Okay, fine, yum. Undeniably yum.
Which brings me to Monday morning, when precisely zero percent of those thoughts have evaporated and one hundred percent of the horniness remains.
The ants remain, too. As I pick a blouse, a lilac-colored gauzy thing with a high collar that fastens tight around my throat, the ants are crawlin’.
As I drink my coffee on the L, the ants are crawlin’.
As I take the stairs up to the office because I need to buy a little time to put my game face on before work begins, you better believe it: The ants are crawlin’.
I don’t think they’re gonna stop anytime soon.
It’s the normal hubbub when I step onto the twentieth floor. Shithead Kyle gives me a snide smile from his cubicle and Jovanni the cleaning lady pats my elbow and tells me I look nice today.
