Travel-sized mouthwashes.
Tongue scrapers. Floss.
Dental hygiene in bulk.
Okay. So.
Either he’s secretly a serial killer, or?—
Nope. Serial killer’s all I got.
He said no girls have been here...
I glance over at the door leading directly outside from the basement.
Three hundred girls?
Odds are, he lied, and this is his whorehouse.
Then I spot the trash bin,
where a crumbled yellow Post-it sits on top.
I uncrumble it,
expecting a phone number
or arsenic measurements,
but it reveals:put yourself first.
My heart calms as the day replays,
reminding me that I'm overreacting,
jumping to conclusions.
I leave it, step into the shower,
and reach for his soap.
Minutes later, I step out wrapped in steam,
skin flushed, mirror fogged.
I grab the pad of Post-its on the shelf, the pen, and write a note, open the medicine cabinet, and stick it behind the mirror:you're enough.
I throw on the clothes—too-big sweatpants and a tee hanging past my hips—then head back upstairs where the house has gone still.
For the first time all night,
there’s no laughter bouncing off the walls,
no clinking glasses,
no Italian women out-talking each other.
Only hush, darkness,
