Chapter Fourteen
A week wasn’t enough time. To get over him, to forget his name, to erase his scent, a week wasn’t enough time, but a week was all I had. Tomorrow would mark seven days since I’d last seen Michael, but as I tossed my keys in their basket, it felt more like seven years. That first night, the police flooded my home. Officer Ryles dropped me off at the hospital first, and after a hushed conversation, the ER doctor’s notes erased any evidence of Michael’s stitching in my side. Then came the wave of officers, of media, of questions from my mother and my friends. Next was a week of work— a series of constant lies and forced smiles that left me so exhausted I barely survived the walk from the car. When I was home, I finally got a chance to figure out how I felt.
Sad.
I feel sad.
My entire body lightened as I slipped out of my heels and tossed my purse on the end table. In the dark, I stumbled through my house. Turning on the light would only alert my neighbor, Ms. Rainy, to the fact that I’d arrived home, and I wasn’t quite ready for that. I couldn’t go one more day with those awful questions, fighting a war Michael forced on me. All I wanted was a chance to be sad. So long as I was pretending that the two weeks I’d been missing were lost to some kind of head injury, I couldn’t even acknowledge that Michael existed. When I was questioned about him, I had to keep my expression blank, had to complain I was tired, had to pretend my heart didn’t want to crawl out of its cage.
When I was home, I didn’t have to lie.
Tired legs carried me into the dark, and needy hands groped out for my dresser. It took me only a few seconds to tug my favourite jammies out from their drawer. It tookmuchlonger to finish the crawl to the bathroom. The last thing I wanted to do was get undressed— despite the urge to scrub the thick makeup off my skin. Seeing it just reminded me of the bruises that still littered my skin, the marks I thought Michael would leave forever. I hadn’t been able to shower without remembering what it was like to have him beside me. It was easier before. Six weeks ago, all I had to do was block out one night. I could choose to remember Michael the way I wanted to remember him— as the boy who made me smile in the library. The boy who would never hurt me, whose only sin was taking the urge to protect me too far. Now, things had twisted, and it was that thought that pushed me forward.
If I just kept moving, I wouldn’t have to think of him.
If I just kept moving, I wouldn’t have to break down.
Whatever comfort I had found washing my face was gone with a single bump in the night. When the knock on the front door rattled the house, it rattled my bones, too. My body lowered on instinct, and from the dark, the knock came again. For a moment, a bruised heart let me believe— that it was Michael coming back to apologize, coming to take away the hurt, coming to make this alright. When the knock came a third time, I knew better than to hope. If Michael wanted to get in my house, he wouldn’t ask politely. Rolling my sleeves back down my arms, I made my way through the dark and back to the front of the house.
Only one person knocked this late at night.
If Ms. Rainy didn’t see a smile, she’d worry.
In the clearest sing-song voice I could manage, I cried out for her. “One second.”
My stomach knotted as I looked through the peephole. While I could have handled Ms. Rainy’s constant worrying andyet anotherplate of her famous baked goods, I couldn’t handle the visit from the youngster who waited on my porch. My body nearly collapsed when I saw Tristan on the other side of the door. I’d spent five days avoiding him at work, had blocked his number when he filled my voicemail the first time. If I had kept my mouth shut, I might have been able to pretend I wasn’t home, but now that he had heard me, hiding wasn’t really an option.
I could do this once more, couldn’t I?
I could pretend I was okay one more time.
There wasn’t an ounce of genuine joy in the smile I forced now, but as the door swung open, the boy hardly seemed to notice. Tristan’s blue eyes sparkled as his shoulders relaxed, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone look so relieved in my life. Not even my mother had looked so openly comforted at my return, and while I should have thought the act was touching, it only turned my stomach. All I wanted was to crawl back into bed.Alone.
“Christ,” he hissed. “Thought you’d gone missing again.”
The thought knotted my insides, but I wouldn’t let sickness twist my smile. “Sorry to disappoint.”
A fake, booming laugh filled the porch, and my head snapped to the side. All that awful sound reminded me of was another— Michael’s real one, of the smiles he pressed into my skin, of the warmth he made me feel.
“I couldn’t get a hold of you at work,” Tristan teased, leaning a little closer. When I couldn’t force an immediate response, the pause seemed to give him the space he needed. Tristan’s attention turned to the small bouquet he’d left on my railing. Snatching the flowers back up, he thrust them into my chest, and I tried to widen my fake smile another millimeter.
“Thanks,” I lied. “I’ve just been so busy.”
“You know, you’ll have to put those in water.”
“I’ve got a—”
The moment I gestured behind myself, Tristan took a dangerous step forward. A careless hand on my side pushed me back as the man forced his way into my house. Annoyance racked through my system, and as the man removed the flowers from my hand, another truth settled over my skin.
There’d be no rest tonight.
Not when I had another interrogation in store.
“I’ll get it for you,” he rushed. “You’ve been through enough.”
Tristan pushed past me, a skip in his step as he made his way back to the kitchen to search for a vase. As I turned to close the door, it took every muscle in my body to withhold a sigh. “Thanks, I guess.”
The light from the kitchen illuminated the path forward, but it didn’t do much to drive out the hesitancy. By the time I forced myself into the kitchen, Tristan had already made himself at home. The boy scooped the vase off the top of my fridge, annoyance washing over him as dust coated his hand. There wasn’t much point in keeping flowers anymore— not when the only ones I got were from some neighborhood prowler. Tristan took to washing the vase in my sink, and my attention turned to my seat at the kitchen table. It was only once I’d started to relax that I realized how long it had been since I properly sat down.