Page 91 of How To Not Need You

Liv

My phone flashes red at the edge of my vision and I ignore it. The author branding is close, the client wants warm but professional, which apparently means I’ve spent the last forty minutes staring at a font that is neither. I adjust the spacing. The phone flashes again. I move it facedown on the desk.

Three seconds later, it vibrates. Violently. Like it’s having some kind of seizure.

I pick it up. The battery icon is a thin red line, pulsing, which is the technological equivalent of someone screaming I TOLD YOU SO directly into my face.. I have maybe six minutes before this thing turns into a paperweight.

My desk drawer yields nothing but loose paperclips and a receipt from two months ago. My bag, dumped on the chair beside me, gets upended. Wallet, lip balm, the spare key to Harper’s place that I still carry despite having used it maybe once, a dog-eared parking ticket I should probably pay before it triples. No charger though.

I check the bedroom, then the dresser before the drawer where I keep cables because I’m an adult who occasionally acts like one. Nothing.

I stand in the middle of my apartment with my dying phone in my hand and a sudden, crystal-clear memory of plugging it into the outlet at the far end of Jake’s kitchen bench last night. The one beside the toaster. I remember doing it while he was putting Tilly to bed, my fingers finding the socket without looking because I’ve done it enough times now that his kitchen has become a place my body knows.

Fantastic.

I could leave it. It’s just a charger. I have another one somewhere, probably buried under the mountain of adapters in the bottom of my wardrobe, the technological graveyard where good intentions go to die. I could find it. I could make do. I could wait until Sunday when Jake gets back from his shift and ask him to bring it over.

But then again, Hades is home alone. And I did promise to check on him.

Hades is the strangest cat that I have ever met. A creature who views home furnishings as personal enemies and Jake’s absence as an opportunity for unchecked anarchy. I promised I’d check on him. Feed him. Make sure he hasn’t destroyed anything structural.

Plus, I have a key now.

A key I vaguely agreed to use.

Look at me. Healthy relationship behaviour everywhere.

I pull my keys from my bag. They land in my palm with a soft metallic jingle, and there it is: Jake’s brass key, right beside mine. Less than twelve hours on my key ring and it already looks annoyingly at home beside my apartment key.

I laugh. A small, private sound that bounces off the walls of my empty apartment.

I text Jake: Left my charger at yours. Going to grab it and make sure your demon hasn’t eaten anything expensive.

No immediate response. He’s probably now at the station, or on a call, or doing whatever firefighters do.

Weirdly, it doesn’t bother me.

There was a time when silence after a text could send my brain into full forensic mode. Where is he? Who is he with? Why hasn't he answered?

Now I just assume Jake is working.

Growth. Disgusting.

Instead of overthinking, I grab my jacket and my bag and head for the door.

The drive to his street takes just a few minutes. I could walk it in twenty, but walking means thinking, and thinking means examining the fact that I am driving to a man’s house that isn’t mine, using a key he gave me only last night, to retrieve a phone charger and feed a cat that actively dislikes most people but seems to have a tolerance for my presence.

My apartment recedes in the rearview. The morning is clear, the kind of crisp autumn day that makes Seabrook look like it’s been lightly edited to look charming. I pass Page & Grounds, the windows glowing warm even from a distance, and resist the urge to pull over for coffee. Work is waiting. The client wants warm but professional by end of day, and right now I am neither.

Jake’s house comes into view, and my stupid brain immediately registers it as familiar.

Comfortable, even.

Absolutely not unpacking that before coffee.

I park on the street and sit there for a moment. The house looks exactly as it did last night. The same crooked mailbox. The same gum tree casting dappled shadow across the front yard. The same sense of quiet belonging that has nothing to do with architecture and everything to do with the people who live inside it.

People who aren’t here right now. Which is why I’m here.