Page 50 of Shattered

“He asked me to dinner,” she said finally. Her voice was quiet. “Just for us to talk more.”

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. The leather creaked under my grip. “Are you going?”

“I don’t know.” She turned to look at me. “Should I go?”

“It’s your choice,” I said, even if it’s the last thing I wanted. I was probably the dumbest fool on earth.

“That’s not an answer.” She paused, looking at me. “Why won’t you just tell me what you think?”

“Because what I want shouldn’t influence what you choose.” I said, my voice coming hard through clenched teeth.

We drove the rest of the way in silence that felt less like quiet and more like all the things we weren’t saying.

At her apartment, we went through our evening routine. She disappeared to her bedroom while I poured myself scotch.

I was on my second glass when I heard the scream.

My body moved before my brain caught up. I was across the apartment and through her bedroom door in seconds, my heart hammering against my ribs because that scream had sounded terrified and all I could think was something was wrong, something had happened, she needed help.

Delia stood in the middle of her room dripping wet from the shower. A towel wrapped around her body. Wet dark hair plastered to her neck and shoulders. She was pointing at the wall with genuine horror on her face.

“There! Right there!”

I followed her finger and saw it. A cockroach. Maybe two inches long, sitting on the wall next to her dresser.

The relief that she wasn’t hurt mixed with disbelief. “Are you serious right now?”

“Kill it!”

“Delia, it’s a cockroach.”

“Exactly! Kill it!”

I moved toward the wall. The cockroach, clearly sensing danger or just being a cockroach, spread its wings.

“Oh god.” Delia’s voice went high and panicked. “It flies. Why does it fly? Nothing that ugly should be allowed to fly.”

The thing launched itself off the wall. Delia screamed again, backing away. It flew in a drunken circle around the room whileI tried to track it, lost it behind her lamp, found it again perched on her bookshelf.

“Where is it?” Delia was pressed against her closet door now, eyes wide. “Did you get it?”

“It’s on your?—”

The cockroach took off again. This time it dive-bombed toward the floor and landed on something white and fluffy.

Her towel.

The towel that was no longer on her body.

The towel she’d apparently dropped in her panic.

Delia was standing there in red underwear—barely-there, devastating, and absolutely none of my business.

My brain froze. Just completely stopped working. Because there was Delia, and there was no towel, and I was looking directly at her before my higher functions kicked back in.

She stared at me, I could see the realization of what she had done dawn in her eyes, she let out another scream that had nothing to do with the cockroach. She grabbed the towel again, shaking it furiously before wrapping it around herself.

“I didn’t see anything,” I said. But that was a lie. The image was going to live in my head forever probably.