Page 137 of What We Become

Icheck the time on my phone while I wait outside the door leading to Amy’s apartment above the funeral home. 12:34 p.m. I knock again. I’ve got the day off work, and we agreed to have lunch. I’m certain we also agreed I’d bring it to her—I even have her favorite burger and a cookie dough milkshake from that place just off Main. “Amy?”

I’m about to call her when the door jerks open and an out-of-breath Dean answers, looking like he just ran a marathon in his own hallway.

“Oh. Hey,” I say, taking in this version of him—shirtless. Sweating. Breathing hard. Holding the door at a very deliberate angle that hides everything below his waist. Oh. Oh shit. Did I interrupt something?

“Can I help you?” he says.

“Uh.” I look at him. Look at the house number. Look at Knox who’s waiting for me in the truck. Then look back at Dean. “I’m here to see Amy? She’s expecting me.”

“Oh.” He blinks. “Give me a sec.”

He closes the door. In my face.

I stand on the porch. Fast food in hand. Staring at the wood grain.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” I mutter, looking up at the upstairs window. Dean knows who I am. Dean has disposed of bodies for me. Dean once handed me a cup of coffee over a corpse and asked if I wanted cream. But he looked at me like I was selling Girl Scout cookies. What. The. Hell.

My phone buzzes.

Knox:

Everything ok?

I immediately turn and look at him, giving him a thumbs up.

Shadows cross the upstairs window, and a curtain twitches. I lean closer to the door and hear the unmistakable sound of thumping feet. Voices—low, urgent, overlapping. Something that sounds like a drawer slamming. More thumping.

Me:

I think Amy and Dean lost track of time.

I watch Knox look at his phone and nod once when he reads the message.

Knox:

They fucking?

Shaking my head, I can’t help but smile.

The door opens again.

Dean is back, fully dressed now. T-shirt, jeans, boots. Hair combed. But he still looks right through me.

“Sorry about that. Amy’s upstairs.”

“Are you . . . okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” He steps out onto the porch and gives me a cordial nod, heading toward the crematorium entrance like a man with very important furnace business at twelve thirty on a Saturday.

I watch him go. Whatever he and Amy were doing must have been so utterly mind-blowing that he’s lost his ability to human.

Go, Ames.

I step inside.

The house smells like coffee and laundry detergent and the faint, industrial undertone that never fully leaves a building connected to a crematorium. I’ve been here enough times now that it doesn’t register as sinister anymore. It smells like Dean’s place. Which is its own kind of unsettling, but whatever.

I take the stairs. Amy’s apartment door is open. When I step inside, she’s leaning against the kitchen counter in her robe, face flushed, hair a mess, tea in hand, looking like a woman who’s been doing something athletic that does not involve exercise equipment.