Page 60 of Three, Two, One [321]

“Where the fuck are you going?” I ask, annoyed.

“Get some chow. You got a request?” He pulls a t-shirt over his head and then pulls a clean flannel off the hanger in his closet.

“We can all go together.”

He shakes his head. “Nope. Blue said she’s not leaving the apartment.”

“What? Like today?”

“No, like ever. She says she has some phobia about going outside.”

“What? This has gone on long enough. That’s bullshit—”

“Hey,” he says, putting his hands up. “I’m just telling you what she told me. So I’m gonna go out and grab some food and I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“Let’s make food.”

He stops, his foot halfway inside his boot, and shoots me a wink. “You mean like a family?”

“Fuck off.”

JD resumes putting his boots on and then works on buckling his belt before looking back to me. “I’m fine, OK?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well”—he tucks his wallet into his back pocket—“who cares? I don’t need your permission to go out and get breakfast. I don’t need your permission to go out and do shit you think I’m doing when I’m not.” He stops again, looking me in the eyes. “I’m not doing that. So if that’s what you think, fuck you.”

And then he walks out of the bedroom and I listen to his boots clunk along on the floor until he opens the front door and slams it closed behind him.

I walk back to my room and get back in bed with Blue.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing,” I say, pulling her close to me again. I like the way she smells right now. It’s a mixture of the three of us. “I need to take you to the clinic today. Get some pills.”

“No,” she says, very firmly.

“What do you mean no? I came inside you. You’re not on any birth control. We need to be more careful, so that involves a trip to the clinic.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Hmmm. So it is true. She’s confining herself inside. “Why not?”

She turns in bed so she’s facing me. “I panic when I have to go outside. That’s why when you found me, I was all shaky and out of breath. I was trying to hide under that awning, to make the space close in on me. I need closed spaces.”

Well, that’s interesting. “How am I supposed to take you out to dinner?”

She laughs. “What?”

“Dinner. I have those clothes for you, remember? We were gonna go to dinner the other night and we got sidetracked. So if you don’t leave the house, I can’t take you out.”

She studies my face intently. Like she’s trying to decide if I’m serious.

I am. So she’s convinced. “I can cook.”

OK, that’s all I needed. She’s not unreasonable. She’s scared of something. I highly doubt she has agoraphobia, but I do believe she has a good reason for wanting to stay in.

She doesn’t have a fear of leaving the house. She has a fear of getting caught. It’s just, I can’t figure out what she’s afraid of getting caught for. Was she raped? It seems possible with all the marks on her. They are beginning to fade now, which tells me they probably happened that morning we found her.