“You should have your mother contact pest control,” he said coolly. “You’ve got a mouse problem.”
Her face was swollen, her eyes puffy, as though she’d been upstairs crying. He had a brief flashback to her out by the pool, her skin silvered in the light, her shoulders hitching. The smallest thread of guilt stitched through him. He pressed on in spite of it.
“One chewed clean through the cables on my TV. Isn’t that weird?” He turned back to the television, balancing his chin on his fist. “Felt pretty personal, actually. I think the mouse might have been mad at me.”
Now that she was here, he wasn’t sure what came next. His only thought had been to lure her out—to let her see firsthand that he wouldn’t be rattled. He braced himself to be dismissed, or else insulted in some manner or another.
Instead, Vivienne climbed over the back of the couch and curled into a ball on the opposite end. Surprised, he glanced over at her. She sat several cushions away, chewing at her nails, her knees tucked into her sweatshirt. She didn’t acknowledge him at all. For a while afterward, the two of them watched the camera follow a pod of humpback whales through the icy waters of the Arctic. Beneath the steady baritone of a celebrity narrator, he heard her sniffle.
“Ah, shit,” he muttered.
Her eyes snapped to his. He set down the remote and turned to face her, hooking his elbow over the back of the couch. The tip of her nose was red. Whale song thrummed through the quiet.
“Are you okay?”
Her response came swiftly.P-h-i-l-i-p isn’t paying you enough to pretend like you care.
“I’m not pretending,” he said. “I’m genuinely asking.”
Well, don’t. I don’t want to talk to you.
“Fine. Then we won’t talk. We’ll just sit here in uncomfortable silence.”
Good.
“Good.”
She turned back toward the television and so did he, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. On the screen, a silver school of fish broke over the thin dorsal fin of a dolphin. The minutes crawled past in torturous slow motion. Twilight fell, and then it was just the two of them and the deep blue sea, the soft sound of two bodies breathing in tandem.
By the time the credits rolled, Vivienne was asleep. Thomas stood and stretched, clicking off the television. As his eyes adjusted to the newly fallen night, the television sharpened into focus. Moonlight turned the screen mirror-dark, so that his own figure reflected back at him. Directly over his shoulder was a face. Vivienne’s, black-eyed and smiling wide. His pulse jumped and he spun around, expecting to find her just behind him.
She was still on the couch where he’d left her, her hands folded under her chin and her knees tucked into her sweatshirt. He blinked away the image, scrubbing his hand over his face.
He really did need more sleep.
Reaching for a blanket, he shook it out, preparing to drape it over her. As he did, her phone lit up. He didn’t mean to do it. To snoop. But he recognized the name that cropped up: Reed.
The message was short. Simple.
Reed
Talked to Grayson. You’re welcome. He says he’s in.
Another came in as he was trying to decipher the first. This one stopped his heart cold.
Reed
Are you ready to die?
The nights without a moon were the hardest.
It was always difficult for Vivienne to hold on to herself once the sun set, but at least the moon provided some small amount of light—its silver pinnacle a compass for her to follow through the dark and into dawn.
During the new moon, she became unmoored.
The day had passed by uneventfully enough. She’d put in her requisite hours at the studio, piecing together the choreography for her summer showcase. She’d moved across the floor in a graceful relevé—chin raised, arms extended—and done her best not to think about Philip’s dinner party or the feel of Bryce Donahue’s hand on the small of her back, his mouth at her ear, breath stung with scotch:“I like that dress on you.”
On the drive home, Thomas listened to a podcast and she sipped at her tea, slurping loud enough to drown out the audio so that he was forced to rewind every other sentence in order to hear. Neither of them said a word to the other.
