Later…later…later…
My phone bleeped.
And, like a fool, I scrabbled for it. Wrecked with hope with fear with hope.
It was Nik: I MOVED MY FOOT!!!!!
* * *
I slept and didn’t sleep and the hours sped and sluggished by.
And, finally, I rang home.
Hazel picked up. “What’s wrong?” she said, before I even had a chance to speak.
I took a deep breath, then another. Terrified of saying it. Of making it real. Of breaking the strange, still twilight of my grief. “He left me.”
It was all I managed before I started crying again.
The line crackled as Hazel shouted: “Rabbie, get the car.” And then to me, “You sit tight, Ardy. We’re on our way.”
I didn’t tell them they didn’t need to come.
Because they did.
They really, really did.
* * *
The next day, I took a shower. The water hardly touched me. It just ran over my body.
Afterward, I put clothes on.
Because I vaguely remembered that was the sort of thing people did.
* * *
Text from Rabbie: nearly there! They must have driven for twelve hours straight.
It didn’t take me long to pack. I briefly considered breaking everything in the apartment. But then I didn’t.
I rang Bellerose. “I’m moving out.”
“Arden…”
“I’ll leave the phone and the credit cards and everything on the table.” I sounded weird, even to me. Like one of those Star Trek episodes where a crew member gets taken over by an alien brain parasite.
“All right.”
“And thanks for…y’know.”
“I was simply doing my job. You don’t have to thank me.”
“Well, I just did, motherfucker.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m not the most socially adept of people.”
“You don’t come across as socially inept. You come across as really mean.”
