"I'm tired," he says. "I've been living out of my car for three days. I'm gonna crash here tonight. We'll talk in the morning."
"No. You can't stay here."Not here,I think.Not the place that was supposed to be my safe landing after four years of him.
"Sadie." That warning tone again. The one you would use on a child who is pushing their luck and misbehaving.
"Jason, no. You're not staying here."
"Where am I supposed to go?" He doesn't soften the anger now. Lets it sit in the way he stares at me. Challenging. Daring me to fight him on this.
And for some reason, I do.
"A motel. Your car. Home. I don't care."
"You don't care." He nods, slow. "That's nice. That's a real nice thing to say to someone who drove all this way because he was worried about you."
I look at him, sitting on my bed in his brown jacket with my mother's blanket folded on the pillow behind him, and I think, with a clarity that feels almost like peace,I don't know you.
I don't know the man I lived with for four years. I look at him and I don't see anything I recognize, and more than that, I don't understand what I ever saw. Not the first night he bought me a drink at the bar on Fourth Street. Not any of the Christmases or birthdays we shared. I look at him and I see a man who messedwith my insulin pen, put it back in the fridge, and whistled as he walked out of the kitchen.
A mechanic from Millbrook in a brown jacket I paid for.
That's all he is.
And I let him carve four years out of me.
"You're not staying here."
"Try and stop me, babe." He says it casually. Light. Like it's a joke.
And something in me flips.
