This is what I’m working with.A boyfriend who sounds like a broken radiator, a neighbor with the hearing of a bat and the discretion of a tabloid journalist, and a body that’s held together by spite and ibuprofen.
I called Luke about soundproofing.At the time, it felt proactive.Forward-thinking.The kind of move a woman in control makes.I need a proper workspace.Client calls.Virtual meetings.I sounded professional.Polished.Completely normal.Never mind that I don’t technically have clients right now.Or an office.Or a job.But Luke doesn’t know that, and the lie came out so smoothly I almost believed it myself.
Then I said “sooner the better” and had to walk it back like an amateur.
He’s coming tomorrow.Which means tonight, Charles needs to be quiet.Which means I need more sedatives, or a miracle, or both.
From the basement, another moan rises through the floorboards.Long.Mournful.The kind of sound that carries.
The kind of sound that carriesacross a road to a woman with bionic hearing and no hobbies.
Less than a week.I’ve been here less than a week and I already have a neighbor building a prosecution, a boyfriend who won’t shut up, and a handyman coming tomorrow to soundproof the room where I’m keeping the boyfriend who won’t shut up.My ankle is the size of a grapefruit, my shin looks like I lost a fight with a cheese grater, and I haven’t washed my hair since New Jersey.
This is not where we should be by now.Charles and I were supposed to betalkingby now.Making progress.Having the kind of raw, honest conversations that lead to breakthroughs and eventually, ring shopping.
Instead, he moans and I drink bad coffee out of a mug that mocks me.
I rinse the mug.Set it upside down on the rack.Limp back to the basement door and listen.
Silence.
Finally.
I allow myself one breath.One moment of something that almost resembles calm.
Then the moaning starts again.
I settle for the sedatives.
But first, I have to drag him upstairs.
17
Luke
She answers the door looking like she hasn’t slept in a week.Hair pulled back, no makeup, a bruise-colored shadow under each eye that would make anyone else look ruined.On Marin it looks like a dare.Like she’s saying:this is what I look like when I stop trying.Still want to come in?
Yeah.I do.
“You’re early,” she says.
I glance at my watch.“By two minutes.”
“Still counts.”
She steps aside, and I catch it—something warm and sharp underneath the coffee and the cleaning product.Her skin, maybe.Or her shampoo.Or whatever’s left of either after days without sleep.
Marin smells like a house fire you’d walk into anyway.
Which is not a thought I need right now.Or ever.
She’s limping less than last time, but it’s still there—a hitch in her step she’s trying to power through like it insulted her.The gash on her shin is scabbed over.Angry-looking.She hasn’t bandaged it.Hasn’t even covered it.Most people baby a wound like that.Marin wears hers like it’s decorative.
I want to put my mouth on it.
I don’t like that.Not the thought itself—I’ve had worse.I don’t like that it’s her.Wanting something in general is easy.Wanting something in particular is where things go wrong.
“Basement’s this way,” she says, like I don’t know.
