I check the time.I’ve burned through seventeen hours already since having sex with Theron, which means I have fifty-five left.
I’m not afraid of the clock anymore—I’m afraid of the distance between him and me.
I get up.I don’t make a list or pace or talk myself through it.I just get up because my body already knows what my brain is still catching up to.
Grabbing my keys from the counter, I shove my feet into my shoes and head for the door.
I’m going back.
Chapter Eleven
Lilith
I pull the door open and immediately stop in my tracks.
May is standing in the hallway, her hand frozen mid-air and inches from my door.Her expression shifts from worry to relief the moment her eyes land on me, then almost immediately back to worry again, because May has known me for 10 years and can read me the way other people read road signs.
“Jesus Christ, Lilith!I thought something bad had happened to you.Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”
She pushes past me without waiting for an answer and heads straight for the kitchen.She puts the bottle of wine she’s carrying on the counter and starts rummaging through my drawers.
“Well?”she asks, grabbing my corkscrew.
“I’m sorry, May.I didn’t want to worry you.I was with Theron.”
She frowns.“Theron?Oh, wait, is he the guy you’re seeing?And you ditched me for him?That’s so high school,” she says with a laugh.“The sex must be really good.I haven’t heard from you in days!”
She pours us both a glass of wine and heads to the couch.I follow her because what else am I going to do?
“It’s not just about sex, May,” I start, sitting down next to her.“Theron, he… he’s…”
Christ.How am I supposed to find words for him?For what’s happening between us?In what universe does this sentence end in a way that doesn’t get me locked up in an asylum?
“He’s what?”
A kraken.“Um, it’s complicated.”
She frowns.“Complicated how?Is he hurting you?Keeping you from seeing your friends?If he’s isolating you from your life, then he’s trying to—”
“Stop, it’s nothing like that at all, May.He’s been nothing but good to me,” I interrupt.
“Did he force you to say that?”
“No.”I take a sip of wine, more to do something with my hands than because I want it.“He didn’t force me to say that.If anything, he’s been frustratingly careful about making sure I have a choice every step of the way.”
She studies me.I can see her cataloguing the things that are different about me, like my restlessness and the way I keep glancing at the door.
“Lilith.You’ve got me worried.Something’s wrong.I can tell, you know.There’s no use denying it.So, fess up.”
I look at my best friend.At the person who brought wine and showed up unannounced because she was worried about me.I think about how long I’ve known her, all the things I’ve told her and all the things I haven’t, all the years ofit’s fine, I’m just tired, I just haven’t met the right personinstead of the truth.
I wring my hands in my lap.“I don’t know if I can.You’ll think I’m certified.”
“Try me,” she says.
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I start at the beginning with the nightly walk and the street I’d never seen.I tell her about finding a bar with a wrought-iron sign that looked completely out of place.I mention the blue woman at the bar, the horned man laughing, and the shadow creature.Then I tell her about Theron stepping out of the dark like something I’d been drawing my whole life without knowing it.
