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Not like the lock is gonna stop him anyway.
She unlocked it. Turned toward the bathroom.
Stopped. Turned back. Locked it again.
Then went into the bathroom.
SAGE
“Oh!” she said from the bathroom doorway, voice cracking. “You…”, Sage paused as she looked around with disbelief. “…you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…”
The bathroom was huge—bigger than the entire studio she’d shared with Felicity, probably almost as big as the first two places she’d ever lived.
A deep claw-footed tub sat against the far wall like something out of an old movie, white porcelain gleaming under the soft morning light. Next to it was a glass-walled shower tiled in cool slate gray, with a rainfall showerhead the size of a dinner plate overhead and half a dozen other mysterious fixtures she didn’t even have names for. Thick white robes hung on a hook by the door. Towels were folded on what seemed to be a heated rack—she reached out and brushed one, and the fabric was actually warm, plush and ridiculously soft against her fingertips.
A mirror framed in gnarled, polished pine branches dominated the wall, clearly handmade. She stepped closer.
Her reflection stared back at her.
Smudged black mascara from days ago ringed her eyes like a raccoon that had lost a fight.
Her face was pinched and pale, cheekbones too sharp, lips cracked and colorless from fever and weeks of not enough food. The body she knew too well and never quite liked stared back too—the soft, heavy curves she’d spent years trying to hide under baggy hoodies, full breasts that always drew eyes she didn’t want, the wide flare of her hips, the thickness of her thighs that rubbed together when she walked. Ink stood out against her too-pale skin, black roses climbing her forearm, the careful script of “survive” on the inside of her wrist, the little “fuckoff” tucked behind her ear. Piercings all over. Everything about her looked… used. Run down. Like a girl who’d been left out in the cold too long.
She stared for one long, flat second.
Sage Thompson, everyone, she thought sarcastically, closing her eyes for a moment.
“Whatever,” she muttered, and turned away.
She twisted the shower lever and stepped back as water exploded from the big rainfall head like a sudden waterfall, steam billowing up thick, carrying the clean scent of expensive soap.
“Ooooh…” she breathed, stunned.
She stepped in slowly.
The sound she made was completely involuntary—a low, broken exhale that trembled out of her chest.
Hot water hit her shoulders, her back, the nape of her neck where four weeks of tension had knotted itself into iron. It poured down over her heavy breasts, traced the soft curve of her belly, cascaded over the wide flare of her hips and her thighs. The heat reached deep and she felt those frozen places release, one by one, like a fist slowly, carefully opening. Steam curled around her, carrying the faint clean scent of whatever expensive soap lived in here. Her muscles unclenched. Her scalp tingled. For the first time in weeks, she began to feel human.
She might have stood there five full minutes before she remembered soap existed.
The bottles lined up on the shelf were the kind that cost more than her monthly food budget. She didn’t look at them too closely. She took the shampoo and conditioner and washed her hair twice, watching the purple-gray streaks run in long violet rivers down the drain. She rinsed the conditioner, then noticed the other levers.
There were four of them, set into the tile at different heights. She looked at them, then looked at the rainfall still pouring overhead. Bit her lip.
She pulled one.
“Oh my God—” She lurched back as a second showerhead erupted from the wall. She pulled another. A third. Water came from every direction—overhead, both sides, low near her knees—and she stood in the center of it like something being baptized by an extremely committed storm. She pulled the fourth lever and a sharp spray hit across her inner thighs—“hooooold on…” she squeaked, shifting quickly out of the direct line.
She laughed.
Not the ghost of a laugh. Not an almost-laugh. An actual, surprised laugh that echoed off the tile and bounced back at her—loud, disused, entirely hers. It felt so strange in her chest that it made her laugh harder, alone in this ridiculous shower in this ridiculous cabin in Montana, being pummeled by water from six directions at once.
So this is how the other half live, she thought, and let herself laugh until the steam softened it back into something quieter, warmer, almost hopeful.
The toothbrush was new. Still in the packaging — a good one, not the cheap gas station kind. Toothpaste beside it, also unopened.
She brushed her teeth for three minutes straight and tried not to feel anything about the fact that someone had thought to put a new toothbrush out before she'd woken up.
