"You know what I can't figure out," he says.
I wait.
"You walk in here with Cole's key. You sit on Cole's couch in Cole's sweatshirt. Your charger's been plugged in by the couch for two weeks. Your jacket was on the hook last Thursday. You've got a toothbrush in the upstairs bathroom. You've been rotating through his sweatshirts since October, and I can tell which one you took by which one's missing from the closet."
Every artifact I've left in this house has been seen.
"And the name." His voice drops. "Maddox. His family's name. On your badge. On your byline. On the press credential that gets you into every room in this building."
Cold moves through my chest, sharp enough to make my fingers tighten around the mug.
He doesn't know. To him, the name on my badge is Cole's name pinned to me, and he's looking at me like it proves something about what I am.
He has no idea what that name cost me, what I left behind to carry it, or what it replaced.
"Say what you're trying to say, Dante."
"I'm saying you're everywhere. You're in the press box. You're in my kitchen. You're in my house when I come home. You're in Cole's clothes. You're in—"
He stops. The sentence dies in his mouth.
"I'm in what, Dante."
His jaw works. "You're in my head," he says. "And I didn't invite you there."
The refrigerator hums too loud into the space between us.
"So this is my fault," I say. "I'm in your head and that's an invasion. A strategy. Something I engineered."
"I didn't say—"
"You bought my tea. You fixed the printer. You stood in that office two weeks ago and stopped an inch from my face. You gave me editorial feedback on my own piece. You said goodnight using my first name."
I set the mug down on the table before I throw it at him.
"You built half of this and now you're standing in the wreckage calling me the architect."
His chest rises once. Falls. His jaw shifts. The muscle along the hinge tightens and releases and tightens again. He doesn't speak.
"It's still true that you're everywhere," he says.
"I know that too."
I stop. I swallow once before the word comes out, and when it does, the argument falls away from my voice.
"And you're scared of the word for what that makes me."
"What word?"
"Equal."
It comes out quiet, almost hoarse, and the refrigerator hums into the silence after it.
"You should stop leaving things here," he says, quieter now. "Your charger. Your jacket. The toothbrush."
He pauses.
"Every time you leave something behind, it's still here when you're gone. The house holds it. I walk past your jacket on the hook and I know you were here."
