“We’ll have a nightlight tomorrow—or as many as you need,” Eddie offers, then glances at me as if almost asking me, too much.
I shrug because I think that’s just right.
She sits forward, palms flattening on the sheet, then eases back again.Her breathing has length in it now.Her face is a little less haunted, a little more tired.It looks like after, not during.
“Tell me something mundane,” she says suddenly, eyes narrowing on me the way they did this afternoon when I tried to narrate her feelings and she reminded me I wasn’t hired for that job.
“Again?”I ask, grateful.“I have a never-ending catalogue.”
“I’m here to listen to all of them.”
I point at Eddie.“He once paid three hundred dollars for a Japanese kitchen knife because he was bored watching television at fucking three in the morning.”
Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose.“It was a very good knife.”
Cleo blinks, then exhales in a sound that could become a smile tomorrow.
“Do you want music?”Eddie asks carefully.“No lyrics.Just ...ambient noise.Or the sea.”
“The sea,” she says.“The sea doesn’t ask me to clap for it.”
“I don’t ask you to clap for me when I play,” I feign hurt.
She angles herself into the pillows like she’s negotiating with a stubborn horse.“Will you—” She stops, bites her lip.“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”
We will.We move and take the threshold.I slide down one side, Eddie the other.The hall light casts a thin band across the floor.The room holds everything else.Between us, the doorway makes a frame that isn’t a trap.Cleo lies back, eyes open to the ceiling, then to the window’s pale smear, then to us.
“If I sleep,” she says, “wake me if I?—”
“We’ll be here,” I say.
“We’ll wake you,” Eddie assures her.
Her fingers loosen.She turns her head toward the window and lets her eyes fall in a slow, stubborn surrender that looks like trust’s distant cousin.
The house returns to its night sounds.Ocean.Heater.The occasional tick that means wood is deciding how to be wood.Eddie breathes beside me, and even that is a choice—quiet, even, the opposite of a man about to call a pilot.
“Hey,” I murmur across the doorway after a few minutes.“Thank you.”
“For what?”he whispers.
“For waiting for me—for giving her space.”
He nods once, eyes on the ceiling like he’s memorizing it so he doesn’t have to stare at the things that scare him.“Static,” he says under his breath, checking the word in case we need it.We don’t.Not right now.
Cleo slips under, not like falling—more like stepping down into a pool she decided had the right temperature.Every so often, her brow tightens and then eases.When it tightens, I count.When it eases, I breathe.
We’re both awake now, the two of us in a doorway practicing a discipline we’ve never been good at: staying.We sit until the fog thins and turns the window a lighter gray, and the gulls start their vulgar commentary on the morning.
At some point—half an hour, an hour—my head tips back and bumps the jamb.Eddie winces on my behalf.I mouth,I’m fine.We don’t move.
Cleo murmurs something I don’t catch.The ocean keeps doing its one trick a thousand ways.The day is out there making itself.Inside, for now, we keep the lamp on.
ChapterThirteen
Eddie
Instead of calling my therapist, I schedule a session for us—Barret and me.A couple’s therapist, as he asked.I’m following the rules.It’s fucking hard, but no one can say Edgar Reznor doesn’t try.I’m actually doing it.
