I pocket the phone.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
She holds my gaze longer than she should, then goes back to her coffee.
By ten, I'm going out of my mind. She tries the laptop again—I watch her stare at a blank screen for twenty minutes, fingers hovering over the keys, before she slams it shut hard enough to make me flinch.
"The words won't come," she says when she catches me looking. "Every time I try to write, I see his face. The way he smiled when he talked about killing people. Proud of it. He expected me to be impressed."
I know that look. I've seen it on camp guards handing out punishments and on the men who burned Red's garage and then shook the sheriff's hand the next morning.
Orcs kill when we have to. We don't brag about it after.
"Yeah," I say. "I know that kind of ugly."
She looks at me, waiting for more.
I don't give it to her.
"Write something else."
"I can't write about anything else." She runs her hands through her hair, and the shirt rides up her thighs. I look away. "It's all I can think about. That and—"
She stops.
"And?"
"Nothing." She crosses to the box of books I gave her, still sitting where she left it by the armchair, pulls one out—Rebecca—and puts it back. "Tell me something. Anything. I need to think about something other than my own head."
She's not asking because she wants to know. The silence is eating her alive and I'm the only thing in the room that talks back.
"What do you want to know?"
"Anything." She looks at the wall where the built-in shelves used to be—bare studs and empty space, wires hanging loose where I haven't finished the work. "Why'd you tear out the shelves?"
"Wasn't using them."
"So you just... ripped them out?"
"Big screen's going to fit perfect there." I shrug. "Once I finish the wiring."
She frowns. "An orc who watches TV."
"What do you have against TV?"
"Nothing. I just never have time for it." She shrugs. "What do you watch?"
"Sports. Old movies. Whatever's on."
"That's very normal of you."
"I have my moments."
She's pacing again, moving toward the window with her arms wrapped around herself, swimming in black fabric and looking smaller than she is.
"What's your real name?" she asks. "Diesel—that's a nickname, right? How'd you get it?"
