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The doors crash open.
Everything moves in slow motion as I turn to face the drum of feet thundering into the room.
“Hands up! You’re under arrest!” cries a voice. The overhead lights flash on and I squint, raising my hands slowly as a swarm of policemen floods through the doors, led by none other than Sheriff Mitchell, a look of victory on his face.
THEN
“Andy.” I fall into his embrace. I can feel the pen in the pocket of his shirt pressed between us.
“Sorry, I didn’t see your text until I was almost here,” he says as I welcome him into the warm house, leaving the night outside. “I brought vino, though.” He holds up a bottle of white. “Hey, where’s El Capitan?”
“Out back. And I could definitely use vino.” I know I must already smell like wine, and my mascara is smudged from crying. I nervously glance over the living room, yellow and warm in the lamplight. The pillows arranged, the brass mother-and-child figurine upright. Not a speck out of place.
“Hey.” Andy affectionately slings an arm around my back. “I’m here for you. What’s wrong? You can tell your uncle Andy all about it.”
“Things are bad with Josh.” I heave a sigh as I lead him to the kitchen to find a corkscrew. When it’s time to turn on the tears, it won’t be hard. “Josh thinks you’re in love with me or something. He...gets really angry sometimes.”
“Julia, what are you saying?” Andy seems concerned as he sets to opening the wine, but I know his empathy is fake. I want to scream in his face, call him a fucking bastard, and then throttle him, too, while I’m at it, because he was counting on Josh to hurt me all along.
Instead, we sit on the couch in the front room and drink and I spill more woes. I glance at the brass figurine more than once as I talk. Even though Eden washed it in the sink before replacing it, I’m terrified some spot of blood will ooze out, and Andy will see, and it’ll be game up.
When Andy finally agrees to text Josh about meeting tomorrow for breakfast, I take a bathroom break and pull out Josh’s phone. It’s easy to answer Andy’s texts from there.
After I emerge, I tell Andy I’m getting a headache and need to turn in for the night.
“No problem,” he says. “I’ll get out of your hair. And hey—don’t worry about me and Josh. I’ll set the record straight, man to man, okay? Get him off your case.”
“Thank you, Andy.” Then I place both hands on my cheeks in feigned horror. “Oh God, I didn’t even feed you! I feel terrible for making you drive down here. You must be starving...”
“I’ll just grab some fast food. It’s no trouble, okay? Anything for you,” he says, which ignites such a flame of rage in my stomach that I can barely conceal it with the weak smile I plaster on my face.
I follow Andy to his car, which is parked streetside. The night is cool. Our feet crunch against the gravel. His beater has deteriorated since I last saw it. The driver’s door is duct-taped closed. It would be funny under different circumstances.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, crossing my arms over my middle.
“Anything.”
“What does it mean that you made me for Josh?”
Andy leans against the car door and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I guess it was an experiment in love. Like, taking two people and fitting them together so that what one person needed, the other person had.”
I tilt my head and make my tone casual. “Would you do it again if you had the chance?”
He grins, looking me over like he’s so damn pleased with what he sees. “Of course.”
I nod, even as a bitter taste fills my mouth. If there was any doubt about the justice of my plan, it’s obliterated.
As Andy crawls into his car through the passenger door, he kicks out an old Chicken McNuggets container. It’s not hard to crouch down and slip the finger into the container, then toss it back onto the floor among the other trash.
“You’re a slob,” I tease as I close the door behind him.
“And you’re perfection,” he returns, then lifts a hand in goodbye as he pulls into the street.
As I watch him drive away, I feel the object I slipped into my back pocket.
His blue pen.
NOW
