The apartment is so silent, unlike my mind, and I turn on the faucet and open the door to the dishwasher. I toss out the uneaten broccoli and put the olive oil back into the cabinet. By the time Tessa gets home, I’m still sitting in the kitchen, at the table. The dishes are clean and put away, and there’s no trace of powdered sugar anywhere to be found.
She unties her apron and lays it on the back of the chair. “Hey, what are you doing up?”
I look at the time on the stove. It’s nearly one in the morning.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
She’s having a hard enough time lately, I don’t want to burden her with my problems, especially when I don’t even understand them.
Tessa looks at me and I can see the speculation in her eyes. She glances around the room and spots the cake on the counter.
“Where’s Nora?” she asks.
My throat is dry as I explain. “She came by for a little bit, then she got called back to work.”
“Back to work? By who? I just left there and Robert and I were the last people there.”
I should be surprised by this, but I’m not.
I wave an unconcerned hand. “I must have heard her wrong. How was work?”
I change the subject, and Tessa lets me.
Chapter Twenty-eight
THE MORNING CAME faster than I expected.
When I wake up, I lie in bed for a while, just staring at my ceiling fan. I wonder who lived here before me, and why they decided to paint the fan mismatching colors. Every blade is a different color. Blue, then green, then purple, then yellow, and lastly, red. I wonder if it was a child’s room. If not, the inhabitants must have had quite the quirky side.
I don’t know what time it is when I finally push myself to get out of bed. All I know is that I’m exhausted, like I’ve been through a war in the night. When I grab my phone to check the time, it’s dead. I plug it into the charger and make my way to the living room.
The living room is dark and the television is on. Tessa’s sleeping on the couch and an episode of Cupcake Wars is playing on the screen, the volume low. I grab the remote from where it lies on her stomach and turn off the TV. She’s still wearing her work uniform. She must have been drained by the time she got home. I could tell by the way her eyes were closing while she ate the plate of food she brought from work last night. We sat at the table for less than thirty minutes and she gave me a play-by-play of her night.
A group of professors from NYU came in, twenty minutes before closing, and sat in her section. It had to have bothered her a little, even though she didn’t say, that they were from NYU, since the university hasn’t accepted her yet. I’m sure they will, just not for this semester. She doesn’t want Ken to use his position at WCU to try to help her, but I believe he’s going to if they don’t take her for the winter semester. It would be pretty cool to have her on campus with me, even though we have different majors. During our sophomore year, a few of our classes will overlap since I’m going for early childhood education and she’s going for English.
I walk into the kitchen to check the time. It’s only eight. It’s sort of weird that the stove is our only clock in the entire apartment. We rely on our phones to tell us the time; I wonder how the clock business is handling that.
It would be so strange to live in a time when you have to walk into a building or the town square to check the clock. And what if it was wrong—you wouldn’t even know. If Hardin lived back then, I could see him having the wrong time on all his clocks just to mess with people.
I really need to tell Tessa that Hardin’s coming next weekend. I’ll tell her when she wakes up.
I will.
Really this time.
The kitchen is quiet; only the soft buzzing from the fridge is audible. The undecorated cake is still sitting on the counter, covered in Saran Wrap.
I wonder if Nora’s going to come back, or if whatever took her away last night will keep her today.
I look in the fridge for something to eat before I start getting ready for work.
Fuck!
Work.
I was supposed to be there at six today to cover Posey’s shift.
I rush to my room to grab my phone to call my boss. My foot catches on something hard and I stumble over it, and try to balance on one foot. Of course that doesn’t work, and my toes smash into the leg of my desk.
Dammit, it hurts.
I grab my foot and finally reach my phone. Of course it’s still dead.
Double dammit.
I’ll have to use Tessa’s phone to call work.