I collect my bag and make my way toward the exit as a five-minute warning to the rest of the shoppers sounds.
“You have five minutes, Beau,” he whispers.
“Five minutes for what?”
“To decide whether you can bring yourself to be in my company again.” He hangs up, and I stare down at my cell, stunned. Five minutes.
I glance around me, as if the empty store can help me. No one can . . . help me. I walk out a little dazed and perch on a wall under a streetlight. The next five minutes feel like the longest of my life, my head overcrowded, leaving no space for me to actually decide whether I will take his offer, and only room to relive the last time I was in his apartment. And I admit to myself for the first time, I wanted to be that woman. Not so much because I want James to fuck me with that kind of ferocity, but because I want to feel as lost as she looked.
Light. Free. Immune to thinking, immune to everything, except for the pleasure.
I startle when my cell rings in my hand, and I stare at the screen for a few seconds before answering. I don’t greet him. He doesn’t greet me. We just breathe down the line at each other.
Lonely?
Always.
“See you Monday,” he finally says.
Then he hangs up again.
The house is quiet when I get home, and I flick on every light as I make my way to the kitchen at the very back of the house. I unpack my few items. Wash my hands as I stare out into the dark yard. Go up to my room, flicking on every light switch I pass. I drop my bag on my bed and wander to Mom’s special bottle of Krug on my nightstand, brushing across the top of the box delicately. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Mom,” I whisper, stripping out of my clothes and leaving them in a pile by my bed.
I go to my bathroom and turn on the shower before putting myself in front of the mirror, forcing my eyes to look at myself. At my arm. At my shoulder.
The scars look especially red today. Angry.
Ugly.
Alive.
I draw a line down the length of my arm to my wrist, my lips twisting, the pain raw. Dead flesh. Dead skin.
A dead soul.
Condensation starts to creep up the mirror, fogging it, until I disappear.
Invisible.
And yet when James Kelly looked at me, I felt seen.
Completely bared.
9
BEAU
The next morning, the kitchen is silent as I go through the motions of making a morning coffee, Uncle Lawrence and Dexter quiet at the table behind me, no doubt tossing each other worried looks every now and then. I slowly stir half a sugar into my caffeine as I stare out of the window at the sun trying its hardest to push through the dense clouds. The front yard has trees and bushes that place shadows across the front of the house, but the backyard is bathed in natural light from the sun. Warm. Light.
“How was your show last night?” I ask the pane of glass, my tone lacking the interest I hoped to find. I drop the spoon and turn, leaning against the counter and bringing my coffee to my lips. Lawrence’s face is nothing short of insulted. I force a smile around the rim of my cup as Dexter nudges him under the table with his knee.
The eye roll performed by my uncle is award worthy. “Good. It was good.”
“Good,” I mimic, heading out of the kitchen. I feel their eyes follow me until I’m in the hallway.
“What are you doing today?” Lawrence calls.
“I was going to meet Nath for coffee,” I reply, taking the stairs. “But the case he’s working has had a few developments he needs to look into.” Truth be told, I suspect he simply doesn’t want to face me and my probing about the appeal again.
“So what are you going to do?”
Probably be consumed by thoughts of James Kelly. “Chill out,” I call, closing my bedroom door and setting my coffee on the nightstand. “And drive myself insane,” I whisper to myself, moving the details of a thousand apartments I’m not going to buy and collapsing on the bed. Tomorrow is Monday.
I’ll see you on Monday.
Something deep and sensible is telling me that I absolutely shouldn’t see him on Monday. And yet something deeper and more relentless is telling me I should.
But what if you can’t, Beau?
I sink my teeth into my bottom lip and pull up the message from Reg that’s telling me he can’t get my car back to me as soon as he hoped. So it’ll be more cabs in the day and more walking by night. Many of my tools are in my car—tools I haven’t a hope of transporting without a vehicle. Sensibility grabs me for a moment and controls my movements, making me pull up my texts and send a message.