And just like that, someone gets more for them to drink. The laughter starts up again. They move from the deck to the firepit, where I can still hear them, though their voices are softer, dulled down by the distance.
I put a pillow over my head so I can’t hear them at all. I don’t actually know that I’m crying, but all of a sudden my face is drenched with tears that seep into the pillowcase, making it wet.
Sometime later, I come to. I must have rolled over in my sleep, because my body faces the other way, across the porch, out the window and toward the firepit, which has gone cold, taking any traces of light with it so that I can’t see the empty camping chairs or the empty bottles of booze.
It’s not quiet outside. Bugs like crickets and cicadas make noise. Thunder rolls across the sky in the far-off distance, while, closer by, embers sputter in some dying fire that’s been left to burn out all on its own.
I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, or how much time has passed since everyone went in. I slip my hand out from under the covers, reaching for my phone on the nightstand, seeing that it’s two thirty in the morning.
It’s black outside, though it’s not black inside the cottage because someone left the kitchen light on before they went to sleep,which they never do, which tells me they were too drunk when they went to bed to remember to turn off the light.
Images of Daniel and that girl come rushing back to me.
I roll over in bed. I turn the other way, toward the screen closest to the bed. I close my eyes again, wanting to fall back to sleep and forget, to lose myself to unconsciousness, to never wake up.
A noise comes to me from outside. It’s close by, a heavy, deadened sound like when walnuts fall from trees.
I throw my eyes open and search.
It’s too dark outside to see anything. The kitchen light is a disadvantage. Because of it, I can’t see out, but if anyone is standing outside, they can see right in.
I hold my breath, fixating on the world outside, trying to get my eyes to adjust, staring but not really seeing anything.
Lightning flashes in the sky, and in the blaze of light it gives off, I see him, a dark silhouette standing at the tree line, facing our cottage.
I gasp, telling myself to be quiet, to hold still.
He comes forward. As he gets closer, the moon just barely illuminates his edges from behind, so that they’re woolly and unfocused. I inhale, staring at him standing far enough away that I can’t make him fully out, but close enough to know he’s there. To hear him breathe.
I lie perfectly still and he comes closer, stepping up to the window, his face coming into view. I watch his eyes, which reflect the kitchen light, glowing outside.
“Where were you?” he asks, leaning out to touch the screen.
Slowly, I push myself up to a sitting position. I drag my body to the far side of the bed, furthest away from the screens. I pull my knees into me, wrapping the covers over them. “What... what are you doing here, Daniel? It’s the middle of the—”
“I said, where were you?” he asks again, cutting me off thistime, and I go silent because there’s a bite to his words, an edge to them I’ve never heard before, at least not directed at me. He says, as if upset, “I waited for you for hours. You didn’t come. If you weren’t going to come, you should have told me.”
“I... I don’t feel good,” I say, hearing and feeling a vibration to my words that I know is fear, though I tell myself not to be scared, that I don’t need to be scared because it’s just Daniel, and Daniel wouldn’t hurt me, except that he already has. I think of him leaning into that girl tonight, stroking her face with the back of his finger, saying,Then we have to make the most of it.
“You sure about that?” he asks.
“Yes. I feel sick.”
“You’re not lying to me?”
“Why would I lie about being sick?” I ask.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
I hesitate and then I say, “I saw you with that girl.”
“What girl?” he asks, like I’m dumb. Like I didn’t actually see them together. When I say nothing, he sighs and says, “That was a mistake. A lapse in judgment. She has a boyfriend, for one, and is stuck up as hell. I don’t like her.” He pauses, takes a breath, says in some sickening, sycophantic way, “I like you, Reese like the candy,” as if trying to butter me up, to get back on my good side, except that this time when he says it, it isn’t cute. This time, it gets under my skin. He asks, “Is that why you’re mad? Is that why you didn’t meet me at the lake?” softer, crooning. He sets his hand on the screen again, pressing so that the edges of it start to peel away from the frame. If he pressed any harder the screen would break and then he’d be on the porch with me. “Come outside,” he says. “Let me make it up to you.”
I say, “No.” Because he doesn’t actually like me. I’m an idiot for thinking a guy like him ever would.
He pulls a face. “No?”
“No.”
