You're mine.
I take my coat off and hang it up.
I sit on the edge of my bed.
I should call Maeve. I told her I would. I pick up my phone, look at her name, and put it back down because calling Maeve means continuing this act. I don’t have the energy for that.
I lie back on my bed, still in my going-to-Cody's outfit, and look at the ceiling.
He loves me.
That's the thing I keep arriving at, keep wanting to move past, but can't. Whatever else is true — the videos, the camera, the controlled performance of him — underneath it, he loves me in whatever way Cody Ravenshaw is capable of loving anything. I felt it tonight. In the fire and the popcorn and the string lights and the way he said I'm not ready for you to leave and meant it.
He loves me, and he surveilled me.
He loves me, and he had a camera in my bathroom.
He loves me, and his face cracked for half a second when I told him where I found his car, and he still won't tell me whose house is on Nob Hill.
Both things are true, and I don't know what to do with that except lie on my bed, look at the ceiling, and feel it.
I turn my head and look at the window.
The mist against the glass. The orange glow of the parking lot below.
Tomorrow is Sunday.
The thought arrives quietly and sits in my chest in a completely different register from everything else that's been sitting there tonight. Not dread.
Just — warmth.
Barnes and Noble when they open.
I press my fingers to my lips.
Not Cody's kiss this time. The other one. The cold that became warm, and the hand at my throat with someone who didn’t ask permission because he's decided he didn’t need to. And how I let him because somewhere between the library and the alley I stopped being able to pretend I didn't want to.
This isn't a mistake. You'll see.
I stare at the ceiling.
What the hell am I doing?
I have a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend who just held me in front of a fire and kissed me. He made sure to mention that I’m his, but all I could think about was the person who would be at Barnes and Noble in approximately eight hours.
I am a terrible person.
I sit up.
I am not a terrible person. I am a person in an impossible situation that was built around me by people who made decisions I didn't consent to, and I am doing the best I can with the information I have and the feelings I have. The three men who are somehow all tangled up in my life in ways I couldn't have predicted when I packed one suitcase and transferred to UW Seattle for love.
I was so certain about that love.
I exhale.
I get up and wash my face, taking off my makeup. I change into something that doesn't smell like Cody's house, and I feel incrementally better with each thing I do. I have learned thatdoing things is always better than not doing things, more than I have in my entire life before Cody’s incident.
I don't sleep well, but I sleep.
