"I love you."
It is the first time she has said it.
I close my eyes.
"Simone."
"I love you. I love you. I should have said it on the porch Saturday. I should have said it in the truck. I should have said it when I saidhome.I'm saying it now. I love you."
"Say it one more time."
"I love you, Gray."
I kiss her on a sidewalk in Toronto at two in the morning.
A guy walking a dog across the street gives us a wide berth.
She laughs into my mouth.
I pick up my duffel. She takes my hand. She leads me up the stairs to the third floor apartment that I have never seen and will never sleep in more than a handful of nights, and somewhere above us a neighbor slams a door and somewhere a streetcar groans past on the rails.
I follow her home.
Home is wherever she takes me next.
14
SIMONE
The apartment is a mess because I haven't had the energy to care.
Coffee cup on the counter from yesterday. Laptop open on the couch. The Globe follow-up notes spread across my dining table like a crime scene. Yara's leftover containers in my fridge. My grandmother's cast iron on the stove because I washed it yesterday and haven't found the reason to put it away.
Gray walks in behind me and puts his duffel down by the door like he's done it a thousand times.
He looks around.
"This is where you live."
"This is where I live."
"It's you."
"It's a mess."
"It's you."
He crosses to the table. Picks up one of my source lists. Reads it. Puts it down. Runs his hand along the back of the couch. Stops at the window.
The view is nothing. A brick wall of the building next door and a slice of street between.
"You lived here six years."
"Seven."
"Okay."
He doesn't say anything else.
