A moment of silence rang out afterward, too loud in her own ears. A sign she had perhaps knocked tooaggressively this time, her nerves flipping a switch and overcompensating.
But it had worked. Because this time, only one more short second went by before the glass door was yanked open so fast and hard that she jumped, worried Dell had thrown it right off the rails.
And then Dell himself appeared, and Mae jumped back again, the look on his face throwing every alarm in her brain before he even opened his mouth.
But then he did.
“Get. Out. Of my house!”
Mae clutched the champagne bottle harder, opening her mouth to stutter a reply.
Dell’s entire body was a storm, unlike anything she’d ever seen before. His eyes were wide but strangely unfocused, cheeks red, a wall of empty rage. His chest heaved.
“I just?—”
“Get out!” The yell was so deep, so guttural, as if Dell had put every ounce of his diaphragm into it, that Mae felt an odd, terrified desire to laugh. It was as if he was playing a part in a historical action movie, a Viking preparing his troops for battle.
Except Dell didn’t act. Normally hardly betrayed any emotions at all. Other than quiet disgruntlement. Bemused acceptance.
They were both large people. She had never felt small in his presence, until now. Suddenly, every bit of her size felt too soft, every bit of his too hard.
“Get out of my house!”
He raised an arm, and?—
Something crashed onto the deck beside her. In a daze, she saw shards of a ceramic mug scattered around her feet. They looked similar, she thought, to the mugs in her own cabinets back in the ADU. The mugs she’d been using to drink her tea.
But no. They weren’t actually her cabinets. They weren’t her mugs.
This wasn’t her safe space at all.
She realized she couldn’t breathe. Dark spots blinked into the corners of her vision.
She ran.
She ran until she reached the door to the ADU. She realized she was still clutching the bottle of champagne, the wire cage covering the cork digging into her palms. She deposited it on the kitchen counter and grabbed her bag, yanked her keys from the hook next to the door.
Her fingers shook as she opened her car, as she struggled to insert the key into the ignition. Her eyes kept darting out the dash, waiting for Dell to appear around the corner. To crush his fists into her hood. One day, she thought, another half-delirious giggle fighting to make its way out of her throat, she’d get a new fancy car where you simply had to press a button to go. Where it could practically drive for you.
Honey, Jesus drawled in her ear.Why haven’t you bought yourself one of those already? My inheritance islanguishingover here.
With an actual, startled laugh, Mae reversed out of her spot, hands gripping the wheel as she navigated away from Dell’s house in the hills. It was only when she reached 101 again that she realized she had no idea where she was going.
Glancing in her mirrors to ensure no one was behind her, she shifted to park. And finally, just for a second, she closed her eyes.
What thefuckhad just happened?
Mae had been threatened before. At the height of Trump’s campaign to demonize Portland, when the Proud Boys had terrorized the streets, there had been some protests outside the community center. For a while, it had been a bit scary going to work. Even without white nationalists, though, there were occasionally folks who actually needed the center, who were in the midst of a mental health breakdown, traumatized and stuck in crisis mode, who lashed out instead of retreating.
The more Mae’s heart rate calmed, the more her own brain returned to stasis, she realized Dell’s face had looked almost exactly like that. Like someone stuck in crisis.
But as with every other time Mae had felt fear, that knowledge—that maybe something was wrong, something that had nothing to do with Mae—didn’t make her own hummingbird heartbeat any less frightened. Hadn’t made the moment any less disorienting in her memory.
Flexing her fingers away from the wheel, she opened her eyes and reached for her phone.
Her first instinct was to call Vik. But she took another breath, and scrolled to a different number instead.
“Hey. Hey Liv, I know you might be working, or busy, and this is random but…” Mae glanced at the time on the dash. “Could you maybe meet me for brunch?”
