How could we be so good together, I thought, when it was all a lie?
As soon as she left eyeshot I grabbed my Beretta. Boots, coat, duffel bag.
I wouldn’t be coming back.
“Renard,” Tamsin called.
Reluctantly I walked to the bathroom.
She stood with a towel draped loosely over her shoulders like a stole. Naked beneath, beautiful in the soft light, tones of tobacco and clove glowing in her skin. Those large hazel eyes were full of irony and knowing.
“Are you quite sure you don’t want to join me?” she said.
For the last time.
It hurt too much.
Through a clenched jaw I said, “Save your appetite for tonight.”
“I will. And I’ll devour you.”
You are so lovely, I thought, when you’re lying to my face.
Before I ducked out, I caught the hint of hard metal peeking out from the clothes piled on the sink.
Her gun.
———
Ingrid wouldn’t answer her phone.
Days since I’d been home, but it felt like years. Out front the maple tree withered, stripped by winter to its dark skeleton, and the names on the mailbox—Ingrid Svensson & Renard Grant, a strip of Wite-Out beneath mine, where it had once read Sofiya Khoury—seemed unreal, like characters in some fiction. That white ink was my transition, the barrier between us. It had chipped away on one side, revealing the curved tail of the S, and I touched it, thinking, You’re still here, aren’t you? Just under the surface.
I rang the doorbell, waited. Nothing.
Unlike Ingrid to be completely unreachable. If they’d gotten to her—
I let myself in.
Bell wove eagerly around my feet, crying. Hungry. No one had fed her this morning.
I did a quick walkthrough of the apartment. Empty.
“Where is she?” I said, setting a food dish on the floor.
Her room was cold, the air clear. Felt like she hadn’t been here in a while. On the vanity lay the empty T packets she’d flung at me, accusing.
I sat at the mirror, crumpling them.
Why did this have to mean so fucking much to her?
She’d agreed not to put up old pics, save one: the two of us at senior prom, both in dorky tuxes. Solidarity, she’d said. They fuck with you, they’re fucking with me. The tuxes came off later in her parents’ basement, under a scratchy wool blanket. Sweat turned our skin so slick we could barely hold on. It darkened her wraith-white hair, and I gazed up at her, tucking it behind an ear. I love you, she said. I had never felt so needed by someone before. It made me want to do anything for her. Give her anything.
A year after that photo, I’d begun to take myself back, piece by piece.
My heart felt like the mauled foil in my fist.
I flung the packets into the trash beside the table. There were more in the basket, dozens. God.
I started to stand.
Then, impulsively, looked again at the tabletop.
Lined up among the vials of scent and tint were certain items that caught my eye: rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, superglue. All of which undoubtedly had cosmetic use—gluing nails on, removing polish, whatever.
As did the pair of precision scissors that stood in a jar.
And the bare razor blade.
And the unmarked bottle, filled with clear gel, sitting right there in plain sight.
I looked at the foil packets again. Pulled them out of the trash, spread them across the table. It took a minute to find what I was looking for: The botched ones. The cuts that had gone awry, the edges that couldn’t be glued back together seamlessly.
I leaned on the table, dizzy.
My phone rang. INGRID SVENSSON.
I sent the call to voice mail and pocketed the unmarked bottle.
Get out. Get out of here, get air. Think.
I staggered through the apartment, down the stairs. Wasn’t sure if I’d shut the apartment door or not. Be a good girl, Bell. Don’t run.
On the street the light was too intense, the snow blinding, a white scream in my eyes. There had to be another reason. This was just my paranoia. Nothing real, Ren. All in your broken head.
Someone was calling my name from across the street.
Someone with a voice that made me shrivel inside.
I stood fixed to the pavement as he came closer. His jeans were tight, clinging to his quads. Shoulders wide like a yacht boom. Snow salted his hair. Maybe this was it, a psychotic break of some sort. Maybe I’d OD’d on T and gone off the deep end.
He stopped a few feet away and said, “Ren?”
Adam Halverson, calling me by my right name.
I reached for the Beretta.
His hands rose, palms up. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
“All I have to say to you,” I rasped, “is in the barrel of this gun.”
“Listen to me. You’re not safe.”