Page 31

We rush back inside and I do my usual ritual.

The editing is scattered. Vyne's novel is on screen but my eyes slide across the sentences without catching. A paragraph about the vineyard's first harvest needs restructuring, the chronology tangled, the protagonist's motivation buried under three clauses of description. Normally I'd see the fix in seconds. Today I read it four times and the clauses stay tangled, and I want to throw the fucking laptop across the room.

My body keeps pulling my attention downward. Away from the screen, away from the work, into the low persistent ache that sits in my hips and won't quiet. Whenever I shift in the chair the soreness reminds me it's there. Whenever I stand and walk to the kitchen for water the ache in my ass intensifies.

The fuck did I do?

I eat lunch at the counter. Half a sandwich. The other half goes in the fridge to die, like always. Bean gets a piece of turkey from the deli drawer and takes it to her spot on the couch.

The afternoon light comes through the second-floor window and my thoughts go to the man at the coffee shop. Bean's tail going. The book in his hands, a paperback, the cover soft from use. The two seconds of eye contact that I've been replaying the way I replay Brantley's voice, on a loop, the image getting worn at the edges from handling.

Noor's candle burns. The cedar fills the apartment. The light outside goes from afternoon to evening and the evening walk is the longer route, the one that passes Groundwork on Birch and Elm.

The outdoor table is empty. A woman inside is reading a newspaper. The barista with the septum ring is wiping down the espresso machine. No man with a book. Just the empty chair and the afternoon light.

The disappointment is physical, which is pathetic, because I don't even know his name. Just something about the way he sat so freely… so calmly among the chaos of Halloween. It made me jealous and that jealousy translated into wanting to see him again, just to live precariously through him for a moment.

Bean sniffs the leg of the outdoor table. Her tail goes. Whatever scent she's tracking is still there from yesterday, or two days ago, or whenever the man with the book was last sitting here. Dogs don't get time the way people do. Scent is scent. Present or absent.

The hours between dusk and midnight are the long ones. I edit. I make progress on Vyne's chapter, the chronology finally clicking loose, the protagonist's motivation surfacing from under the description. The work gets quiet in the way good editing gets quiet. My hands do what they know how to do. The rest of me waits.

11:45. Floor. Back against the couch. Phone on my thigh. Bean above me, her paw near my shoulder. The position. The geography. The sameness that makes it safe.

My body is still sore. The shower helped. The walk helped. But the ache is still there, low-grade, a residual hum in my hips and my back and the muscles that line the insides of my thighs. Sitting on the floor with my knees up makes it worse. I shift. Stretch my legs out. The ache settles into something manageable.

Fifteen minutes past, I dial.

I don’t want to seem too eager.

"Hey." His voice. The single syllable that has become the most important sound of my day.

"Hey."

"How was your day?"

"I slept like a billion hours." The sentence comes out with a weight I didn't expect. The gratitude underneath it is for him, for the trazodone suggestion, for the way he cared enough to tell me to take it. "You were right about the trazodone."

"Yeah?" The interest. The real kind, the pitch lifting. "How do you feel?"

"Rested. Actually rested. First time since September."

"Good." The word is simple. The satisfaction behind it isn't. He sounds pleased in a way that goes past professional concern, past the operator checking on the caller's sleep hygiene.

I liked that.

A lot.

"Brantley."

"Yeah?"

"Something happened. Last night. I think." The words are forming before I've decided to say them. My hand tightens on the phone. The ache in my hips flares.

The silence is two seconds. "Tell me."

"I had a dream. I think it was a dream. The trazodone was supposed to knock me out and it did, I don't remember anything, but I woke up sore. My hips. My back. My..." The sentence stalls. The word I need is specific and saying it to a man I've only known through phone calls feels like handing him a piece of my body through the speaker. "My thighs. The insides."

His breathing doesn't change.