She swallows, putting the juice box down on the step beside her. She folds her hands in her lap, and looks up at me with the blue eyes I have thought about every single night since the accident.
"How long have you been watching me?" she asks.
"Sadie."
"Just answer me," she sounds resigned, tired, and I instantly regret the way I went about this.
I take one step closer.
"Since the accident," I confess.
"The elevator?"
I nod, unable to take my eyes from her. Somehow, she is so much more beautiful than I remembered.
"The groceries?"
I nod again.
Her breath catches on that one, and I understand with a precision that goes all the way through me that the groceries are the one that hurt her. Scared her, even.
"The blueberries," she says.
"You looked at them for a long time,” I say it with a shrug, try to minimize it.
"How could you know that? How could you possibly know that unless you were there?"
"I wasn't," I say. "But I have people."
She laughs.
It’s not a real laugh. It’s a laugh that’s trying to keep her from crying, and it sits in the air between us for a second, thin and bright.
"You have people," she repeats. "You have people who follow a woman through a grocery store."
"I have people who watched you through a grocery store one time, because my people are thorough and I asked them to be."
"Mr. Zhirinovsky."
I wonder if she uses my full name in a bid to gain some kind of control.
"Nick," I say in response.
"I'm not calling you Nick." She stands up.
It’s such a small, quick movement. She is a foot shorter than me and she takes up the alley anyway. Her hands are fists at her sides. Her pulse is still visible in her throat.
"I don't know what you think this is," she says. Her voice is low and even, the same voice she used in the sedan. "I don't know what you think I am. I helped at a car wreck and that’sall. You don’t get to follow me to a new city and fix my elevator and buy me groceries and show up at my clinic pretending you need stitches checking. That’s not normal. I don’t deserve to be frightened in my own home."
That’s the crux of it. It tracks, when taking her ex into consideration. I should have been more mindful of that.
"It wasn’t my intention to frighten you," I offer, but it sounds weak even to my ears.
"Then what was your intention?"
"I wanted to help you. Like you helped me. I wanted to see the woman who didn’t flinch when she was threatened."
Her mouth is half open ready to whip out a retort, but whatever she was going to say next falls away from her. I can see her trying to get it back and not being able to.
