I keep the broom in one hand like a ridiculous tightrope pole and shimmy along the strip of roof, inching toward the little ledge in front of the dormer. Below me, the yard looks mean and far. Above me, the sky is bright and unforgiving.
I try not to think about falling. I try to think about Tori’s face. She was furious and exhausted and still, somehow, the center of the only world I want to live in.
She said she went back to get divorced. I should have said something, anything, other than just standing there, speechless. I should have run down the steps, immediately, bare feet and boxer clad and begged for a do-over.
Instead I’m out here auditioning for America’s Dumbest Home Intrusions.Is that a show? We should make that a show.
The ledge is a narrow lip—eight inches, maybe ten—the accumulated snow and ice making everything stupid, cold, and slipperyas fuck. I knock off what I can with the broom, slide onto it, press my chest to the line of the dormer, and wedge my toes onto the shingle edges, calves trembling.
The window is right there. Salvation, quartz-cold and smug.
“Please be unlocked,” I breathe, and curl my fingers under the bottom sash.
It doesn’t budge.
I lift harder. Nothing. My breath fogs the glass and drifts back into my face. I drop my forehead against the pane and whisper a string of obscenities that could curdle milk.
I have two choices: negotiate my way back across the roof and down the murder pergola with a bruised ball, or break the window and crawl through.
The first ismaybesafer, but also maybe break-my-neck-ier, and humiliating. The second is dangerous in a might-slice-something-open kind of way, and still, humiliating.
I look down again. My feet skitter slightly on the shingles. My stomach drops. Decision made.
I test the corner of the pane with my knuckles—tap, tap. Solid.
I think about all the movies where someone blasts through a window with a jacket wrapped around their fist, then remember that I have exactly one garment on my person and it is currently covering the two parts of my body that are not meant for public display. Also, if I take it off, I’m not just the idiot breaking into his own house—I’m the idiot breaking into his own house bare-ass naked in twenty-degree weather.
“Okay,” I tell myself. “We’re doing this.”
I hook my thumb in the waistband of my boxers and pause.
There is a version of this story where I maintain a sliver of dignity. This is not that version.
Using my other hand to maintain my balance on the window, I peel the boxers down to my knees, then to my ankles, step out with one foot, and keep the other foot half-caught because the last thing I need is to drop my underwear off thisroof and into the frozen yard like I’m stripping for a very specific OnlyFans.
I lift said foot up into some weird yoga pose—please God don’t let me fall—and remove the boxers. I then wrap the fabric around my fist—once, twice—tighten it over the knuckles, and cock my arm.
“Leopold?” a voice calls pleasantly from below.
I freeze, half crouched, bare butt presented to the morning like an offering. I turn my head enough to see the side yard and, standing on her back porch in a robe, slippers, and one of those knit hats with a pom-pom the size of a softball, is Lois Schneider.
“Yes, Mrs. Schneider,” I say, because I was raised with manners even when I’m committing misdemeanor self-entry in the nude.
“I told you, dear, you can call me Lois.”
“I know, Mrs. Schneider.”
She peers up, shading her eyes with a liver-spotted hand. “Do you need help? Should I call someone?”
“No, ma’am. I’m fine.”
“Okay…” she says, unconvinced.
There is a pause long enough for me to hear three sparrows debate my life choices.
Then, “Leopold, why are you naked?”
“Not now, Mrs. Schneider!”
