I do not lie back down. I’m annoyed I’m waiting for her and she knows it. By the time the elevator opens, I’m standing in the hall outside my own door, very upright and not horizontal. I’m holding the door for her because she’s slow and struggling, both arms loaded with whatever that is — definitely not just her bag — when Erik comes out of the elevator.
He’s got grocery bags and a jacket over one arm, the green one, the one he wears when it looks like rain — and I don’t know why I know that.
“Hey, Ella.” An easy smile on his face as he nods at Ashley. “Ladies.”
“Hey,” I say. Normal. Extremely normal.
“Big night?”
“We’re—” I gesture, which explains nothing. “Out. Going. It’s a Friday.”
“It is.” The corner of his mouth tips up. He shifts the bags to get his key, says something about the rain coming in, and have fun. And then he’s gone. It took all of nine seconds and I know I’m still staring at his door. I need to stop that. Now.
I force myself to turn around.
Ashley has not moved. Ashley is standing very still in the hallway with her bag over her shoulder and an expression I have known and feared for twenty years.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re about to.”
“Ella,” she says, and it’s not even a sentence, it’s just my name in a poor attempt at his voice. She walks past me into the apartment grinning like a woman who has found money.
“It’s a neighbor thing,” I say, following her in. “We’re neighbors. Neighbors have nicknames.”
“No they don’t.”
“This one does.”
“I have a neighbor of nine years. You know what he calls me? Nothing. He calls me nothing. He’s never once called me by name. Hell, he might not even know my name. You want to know why? Because we areneighbors.” She’s in my bedroom now, in my closet, flinging hangers along the rod with the brisk authority of a woman conducting a search warrant. “How long hasEllabeen happening?”
“It’s new.”
“How new?”
“Tuesday.”
“You know theday.”
“It was a memorable—” I stop. She’s looking at me. “It’s not a thing.”
“What color are his eyes?”
“Why would I—”
“What color are his eyes, Elara.”
“Brown,” I say, and it’s out before I’ve cleared it with myself, “but not flat brown, there’s a lighter ring around the middle, you only catch it if the light’s—” and I hear myself, I hear the whole sentence leave my body, and I shut it in the door too late.
Ashley turns around very slowly with a green dress in her hand.
“The light’swhat,Elara?”
“I notice things.” My voice has gone up half an octave and I can’t get it back. “I’m a writer. I notice everything. It’s professional. I could tell you the eye color of the mailman. I could tell you the eye color of the little kid down the hall.”
“What color are the kid's eyes then?”
