She averts her eyes. “Listen, James—”
“And maybe no one’s told you this, but he hasn’t so much as looked at another woman since the day you left.”
She recoils, as if struck, just as the front door opens with abang.
18
James
“Hey,” he shouts. “Can I get a little help over here?”
I hear Kenji’s voice before I see him, walking in sideways with groceries. “J said you wanted to learn how to cook, and I said it was about damn time—”
Kenji sees Nazeera and absorbs the sight of her like a shock wave. He physically glitches, his visibility coming in and out like a shuddering breath. Groceries loosen in his grip with a rush of sound. A strange look crosses his face, a spasm of pain so acute it makes me fear the power of the human heart.
He looks at her like he’s lost all peripheral vision.
“Hi,” he says breathlessly.
Nazeera shoots to her feet. “Juliette is sleeping,” she says, answering a question she wasn’t asked. “I was upstairs, earlier. But I thought I’d give her some space.”
Kenji nods aggressively, like that was a normal thing to say. “Good. Okay.” He drops the groceries to the ground, where they land with unintentional violence. Something shatters. “That’s nice.”
This is a tragedy.
Nazeera bites her lip, the action drawing attention to her tiny diamond piercing. She used to have more, but she’sphased them out over the last few years. Now she stuffs her hands into her hoodie pocket, looking uncomfortable.
“How—um, how are you?” she asks, searching his face. “I saw you the other day. At the coffee shop? I tried to say hi, but I think maybe you didn’t see me.”
Kenji just looks at her then.
Pure silence.
Watching this play out is not only painful, it’s making me feel retroactively mortified. If I act anything like this when I’m around Rosabelle, I can understand why Warner shot me.
Maybe I should shoot Kenji.
Two infinitely long seconds pass before Kenji even notices me sitting here, and the unwelcome sight of my face makes him flinch.
“Yeah, hi,” I say, my smile grim. I try to tell him with my eyes to be cool, to pull himself together—
He shakes his head at me.
I shake my head back harder.
“I have to—” Kenji looks away, searching around himself blindly. “I’m just going to—I’ll be right back—”
And he walks out the house without a word. He doesn’t even close the door behind him.
In his wake, Nazeera sinks down heavily in her seat.
I notice the slight tremble in her hands before she pulls the drawcords of her sweatshirt, tightening the hood around her head like a turtle retracting into its shell. She tugs her sleeves over her fists before tucking them into the singlepocket, and then slowly lowers herself to the table, her eyes pinched as she rests her forehead against the wood.
I can’t take it anymore.
“All right, what the hell is going on with you two?” I ask. “It’s disgustingly obvious you still love each other.”
She startles upright. “What? No it’s not—”
