I laughed. “Sounds like a real bop.”
And he laughed too before staring down at the clasped hands in his lap. “Writing music used to be so easy. I fell asleep with a tune in my head and woke up with lyrics spilling out onto the page. But ever since... Well, she was my muse. She was my muse in every way and now that’s gone. So what else is there left to say? What song could possibly be worth singing? I’m lost.”
I opened my mouth to speak, and I almost told him about my own loss. Not because I wanted to compare notes on the stages of grief or have a pissing contest over who had the most tragic story, but because I wanted him to know that there was an after. For every tragedy we survived, there was an after. Sometimes it just takes a while to begin. But I didn’t tell him my own sob story, because I’ve been on the other side of this conversation and the stories of solidarity and the sorrys never changed how incredibly alone I felt.
Hopping off my chair, I circled around the island to stand beside him. If this were Bee or Nolan or Luca or Angel, I would hug them, but this was Isaac. I was pretty sure we probably shouldn’t fuck again, especially since we were sort of roommates now. And I knew enough to know that after last night, hugging would definitely turn into fucking.
Instead, I gently touched his hand and looked into his hollow eyes. “We can be lost together.”
Chapter Four
Isaac
Two days later, I was considering how long a studio renovation would take.
I guessed it was possible that after becoming a recluse and then buying a historic mansion in a tiny Vermont town that I was out of melodramatic procrastination tokens, but how could I possibly create art in a studio that was all wrong? Environment was half of creativity, they said. I mean, I didn’t know whichtheyhad said that, but someone on TikTok had probably said it, and I bet there were lots of comments agreeing with them. That was basically a statistically valid survey in my eyes.
I stepped past the mixing desk into the live room and glared at the space I’d had specially built earlier this year. The sound waves weren’t bouncing right, and that was probably why I hated everything I’d tried to record in here, and also—
An angry popping noise broke the silence, and I turned around, ready to face the ghosts everyone said lived in the mansion. I didn’t believe in ghosts generally—although maybe it would have been easier to lose Brooklyn if I had, because then Icould’ve pretended she was still with me, however translucently—but I wouldn’t have minded seeing some ghosts here in the mansion. I thought we’d have a lot in common, since ghosts were supposed to be lonely and preoccupied with death, and I was too!
But there were no ghosts—not even a glob of ectoplasm. Instead, a fluffy tail flicked from behind the sofa I kept in the live room and then disappeared. Once again I heard the popping noise, and when I stepped closer to the sofa, I could see that Mr.Tumnus was on his hind legs, absolutely shredding the acoustic foam lining the walls with his front claws.
Tiny foam chunks rained down on the floor as he attacked the wall, and when I said, “But I gave youbottled water,” Mr.Tumnus braced his front paws on the wall, gave an insolent stretch, and then dropped to the ground and sauntered past me, tail swishing as he went.
It felt like he was going to extra effort to make sure I saw the entirety of his butthole as he left the field of foam battle with his victory.
“I hope you like tap water,” I said to his tail.
And then my phone buzzed in the pocket of my fleece-lined joggers. I pulled it out to see a new notification from my Crime Time Discord server.
In the long months after Brooklyn’s death, I’d retreated so far into myself that I’d barely spoken to anyone, had never even left my house. My instruments had gone untouched, my slightly pretentious Smythson notebooks had been unwritten in, and my inbox had turned into a disaster so colossal that I eventually just started a new account and left the other one as a monument to my inertia. But the one thing I did to fill my newly empty days—when I wasn’t sitting on the beach or watching the new seasons of Brooklyn’s favorite shows and wondering what she wouldhave complained about—was join up with amateur detectives on the internet to solve cold cases.
The Crime Time Discord was a dedicated and intense place filled with people who had a surfeit of spare time, like retirees and creatively blocked pop stars, and as such, the Discord was always active. I scrolled through the uncountable messages I’d missed since last night, catching up on grainy photos of a harvest gold hot air balloon from the 1970s, speculation about the What Cheer ice cream parlor massacre of 1910, and then a crowd-funding link to the first ever pet-friendly Lizzie Borden walking tour.
Which gave me an idea.
I hopped over to the #random channel and posted a picture of my shredded wall.
DinoDNAToday at 12:30 p.m.
Does anyone know anything about cats? Can they be trained not to mangle walls?
GardnerSecurityGuardToday at 12:32 p.m.
Get a new cat.
DinoDNAToday at 12:32 p.m.
it’s my roommate’s cat.
GardnerSecurityGuardToday at 12:34 p.m.
get a new roommate.
My thumbs moved quickly over the screen, tapping out an irritated response about howobviouslythat was not going to be possible, and even if it was, I wouldn’t want my roommate to leave, because she had this amazing laugh and she’d let me bite her and sometimes I even found myself feeling not lonely just knowing she was under the same roof—
I stopped, realizing that the response I was typing was a smidge excessive. The commenter had no idea that Sunny was my boy-band-friend-in-law, once removed, or that we were tethered by the bond of having tasted Jack Hart’s scrotum. Or that I’d woken up the past two nights smelling coconut from Sunny’s shower down the hall, carried by steam and mysterious mansion air currents, and that both nights I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep.
