Sadie
The bell over the door jingles when I push through it, and the cold hits me like a slap.
I walk fast. I don't know where I'm going exactly, I just know I'm going, and my feet have picked a direction before my head has caught up. Left on Chandler. The sidewalk is wet from a shower of rain I don’t remember. My flats make a small sticky sound on the concrete. I shove my hands in my coat pockets and keep my chin down.
The bell jingles again behind me.
I don't turn around. I know it's him. I know the weight of his step without having ever heard it before, which is a stupid thing to know, but I know it. He falls into pace about six feet behind me. He doesn't call my name or speed up. He just walks.
I make it two blocks before I stop.
I turn around in front of a closed dry cleaner with a cat sleeping in the window. He's there. Hands in his jean pockets. No coat, just the black sweater, and he should be cold but he isn't acting like he is.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Walking you home."
I stare at him. My breath makes a pale cloud between us. A car passes on Chandler, tires hissing on the wet, and the light of its headlights slides across his face and doesn't change it at all.
“Why?” I ask, but it sounds stupid enough that I have to fight the urge to cringe at myself.
"Because it's dark, and your apartment is twelve blocks away. I'm not going to stand in a diner and watch you disappear when the least I can do is make sure you’re safe."
I look at him for a long time. His face is the same as it was in the booth. Patient. Steady. A little tired around the eyes in a way I didn't see under the fluorescents.
I turn back around and start walking. He keeps his six feet. I can feel him the way I felt him in the sedan, a pressure on my skin without any actual touch. I hate it. I don't hate it. I don't know which one I hate more.
We pass a bar with its door propped open. A man inside is laughing at something on a television. The sound is warm and ordinary and it pulls something loose in my chest that I didn't know was wound so tight to begin with.
"I had a boyfriend," I say.
I don't mean to say it. It comes out the way glucose tabs come out of my pocket. Automatically. A thing I reach for when my numbers are low.
Nick doesn't answer. He closes the distance between us and stands beside me.
"For almost four years," I continue, my eyes fixed on the sidewalk. "Jason."
"I know," Nick says with a tone that would almost sound like pity if it wasn’t for the clipped anger beneath it.
"Of course you do." I sigh, remembering the conversation in the diner as I keep walking. I watch my flats in the streetlight. Left, right, left, right. The air is sharp in my throat and I focus on that.
"He was charming at first. They always are, right? That's what the articles say. That's what my mother would have said if she'd been alive. He had a laugh that made you want to make him laugh again. He paid for dinner. He opened doors."
"Sadie," he says quietly.
"I'm talking,” I snap. “Just let me talk."
He goes quiet beside me.
A gust of wind pushes my hair into my eyes and I drag it back with one cold hand dragged from my pocket. I keep my pace steady. The pace is the only thing I can control right now.
"He hit me twice," I say. "Once in the November before last. Once in June. The November one was my wrist, because I fell down the stairs, according to the ER. The June one was my eye socket, because I walked into a door frame. I don't need you to say anything about either of those. I've said everything there is to say about them to myself already, and I don't need another round of it from a man I barely know on a sidewalk."
His breath changes. It's small. It's almost nothing.
"I looked the other way," I say. "Both times. I want you to know that. I'm not going to stand here and tell you I fought back, because I didn't. I told myself the stories women tell themselves. He was stressed. He'd been drinking. It was an accident. He was sorry. He cried after. He brought me flowers. He slept on the couch for a week. All of it. I told myself all of it and I stayed."
"Okay."
