“What man?”
“The person I told you survived the wreck.” I shrugged. “Your cousin—G5.”
“G5?” she repeated, almost under her breath, as tears spilled down her cheeks.
She looked away from me, but not before I caught the grief written across her face.
“Yeah.”
She swallowed hard, her eyes flicking away from mine for a second.
“And he talked?” she asked carefully.
“Oh, eventually.” I smiled again. “Everybody talks eventually.”
The room fell silent after that, and I slowly looked around the apartment again while Giani sat there trying not to react too hard to anything coming out of my mouth.
That was when my attention shifted away from Giani and landed on the living room around us.
The mirrored coffee table. The cream-colored throw folded neatly across the couch. The glittering rhinestone coasters that sat beneath candles that smelled faintly sweet.
Vanilla.
My brows pulled together, and a strange feeling crept over me as my eyes moved slowly across the apartment again. The soft colors. The glass decor. The oversized wall art.
Something about it felt too familiar.
Then my mind drifted back to the first night I came there.
The bedroom. The piles of clothes tossed across the bed. The heels lined neatly against the wall. The perfume bottles spread across the dresser.
Vanilla again.
“That used to be your favorite.”
I looked down at the bottle in my hand. “For real?”
“Girl, yes,” Giani nodded. “You used to wear vanilla everything.”
I stared down at the bottle for a second longer before setting it back in its place. “Sounds like I had good taste then too,” I joked lightly.
“You definitely did,” Giani replied, tossing another dress onto the bed before finally settling on the black one she’d handed me first.
I remembered the things she’d said to me that night, and my stomach dropped. Then, another memory slammed into me so suddenly it nearly snatched the air from my lungs.
My bedroom in my old house. The mirrored furniture. The cream bedding. My heels lined up against the wall the exact same way. The perfume bottles covering my dresser.
Vanilla.
I slowly looked around Giani’s apartment again, but this time, I wasn’t seeing her in it anymore. I was seeing myself.
My breath caught in my throat as the realization settled over me like ice water. Everything in this apartment, the colors, the aesthetic, the whole damn vibe, was mine.
“Giani,” I said slowly, my voice dripping with ice. “When exactly did you move into this place?”
She blinked, caught off guard by the shift in my tone. “Almost two years ago. Why?”
Right around the time of my accident.
