The dark holds. I’ve got six jokes lined up. I don’t reach for any of them.
“Yeah.”
A long pause.
“Linwood.”
“What.”
“One question.”
“What?”
“Did you love him?”
“No.”
I close my eyes.
Chapter 12
Aspen
I wake up before the alarm, and I know why before I’m all the way awake.
There is a man breathing on my floor.
I stare at the ceiling and listen to the rhythm of his breathing. I turn my head toward the side of the bed.
He’s on his side, knees drawn up, curled around the green linen-closet pillow like it’s something he loves. His hoodie’s bunched under one shoulder. The grin is gone. He looks different when he’s asleep. Softer, almost. I watch him for thirty seconds.
I tell myself that this is the only time we’re doing this.
I tell myself the small ache under my sternum is the cold getting in around the window.
I tell myself a number of things in those thirty seconds, not one of which I would repeat to a living soul, and at the end of them I make myself look back at the ceiling, because watching Stanley Ermington sleep on my floor for one more second is athing I cannot afford. Not now. Not before coffee. Not while my entire nervous system is standing in the open with no coat on.
I check the time. 5:52.
He has another five minutes.
At six on the dot, I sit up.
“Ermington.”
He wakes up in three pieces. Torso, shoulders, head, and drags a hand down his face. He looks up at me and grins.
Two seconds, start to finish, and I find that I am almost disappointed to watch the grin slip into place.
“Linwood. Pleasure,” he says, pleased.
I mutter, “It’s six.”
“It is the agreed-upon hour. Yes.”
He stands and stretches, and something in his back pops loud enough to hear, and he groans like a man of eighty.
“Your floor hates me.”
