“So,” he said, halfway to my house. “Who was the girl?”
“Kate Turner,” I said. “We work together. She thought I could use the night out.” I stretched, felt light-headed, liked the way the stars looked when I squinted. “She was right. You? Those your friends?”
He nodded. “Yeah, some.”
“Cops?”
He smiled again. “Some.”
* * *
THE HEADLIGHTS REFLECTED OFF the sliding glass doors of my house in the dark. Kyle turned off the car, so the only noise was from the night: the crickets and the wind through the valley.
He stood in my driveway, turned in a small circle. “I guess I pictured more streetlights,” he said, grinning. He looked at the stars, pointed at a slightly brighter speck. “So, that’s north . . .”
I started to laugh, wanted to reach for him. “Actually, I think that’s Venus.”
“Good thing I was in the Boy Scouts.” But he was looking at me, not the road, not the stars, and the air crackled around us.
“You don’t have to go,” I said.
He pressed his lips together. Didn’t raise his hands to me, didn’t come any closer.
“Unless you want to,” I said.
He shook his head, the corner of his lips tipping up. “I don’t.” But he still wouldn’t close the distance.
I thought of Emmy, and I went to him instead. “It’s not a crime,” I said to him.
I pulled him by the hand, led him up the porch steps, used the two separate keys to let us in while he leaned against the glass. There were a thousand chances to turn around, to stop this, and I paused, waiting for one of us to change our mind. I opened the door for him, waited for him to follow me inside, locked up behind us. Opted against the light, which might tip things too far into reality. Walked slowly down the hall and felt him behind me, dragging his fingers along the wall as he followed.
CHAPTER 16
I woke before Kyle, who slept with the sheets kicked off, an arm thrown over his head. The light was streaming through the gap in my bedroom curtains, cutting a path across his chest, and I smiled, my fingers just an inch from his stomach, wondering whether I should wake him. The scar on his forehead looked rougher close up, and he had another on his ribs that I hadn’t seen the night before. I touched my fingers gently to it now, his chest rising and falling, thinking that Kyle himself was a story; something to uncover.
In the end, I decided to leave him be. His clothes were in my doorway. I tiptoed over them, left them where they were, hoping to grab a quick shower before he woke.
The light on the side table in the living room was on, and I froze. I hadn’t turned it on when we got home, I was sure.
But I’d just had the deadbolt installed, and it was currently locked. Surely it was Kyle. Kyle, up for a drink in the middle of the night or looking for the bathroom. I slept like the dead with someone beside me—the opposite of what logic would suggest.
I flicked off the living room light before heading to the shower.
* * *
BY THE TIME I got out of the bathroom, the bed was empty, the sheets pulled up and smoothed over. I pulled on some yoga pants and a long top and padded out to the living room, towel-drying my hair. Kyle looked up from the kitchen table, a box of cereal open on the table, a half-empty bowl without milk in front of him.
He grinned, raised his spoon filled with dry cornflakes to me. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said. And then he looked down, as if embarrassed.
“Not at all,” I said. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks. I’m on duty later today, so I’ve got to head back. I didn’t want to leave before saying goodbye, though.”
I smiled. “Let me grab my shoes and I’ll drive you back.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Really,” I said. “It’s fine.”
Kyle was rinsing out the bowl when I came back with my sneakers. There was an easy comfort between us as long as we kept moving. He slid the front door open while I found my purse, and I saw him bending over, reaching for something just out of sight.
He turned back around, his arm extended. “Your paper,” he said with a grin. He handed it to me, bound in a clear plastic bag.
“I don’t—” And then I stopped. Caught a glimpse of the headline as I turned it over.
The top of a B, cut in half. My spine stiffened, and I cleared my throat. “Thanks.” I dropped the paper on the countertop like it was nothing. Grabbed my keys, tried to keep them from shaking in my hand. “Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” he said.
I locked up after us, and he walked slowly by my side, his arm occasionally brushing against mine. But all I could think of was the paper and what it was doing there. If maybe it was nothing but the local paper, a trial service or a misplaced delivery. If I was letting my imagination run away with me and there was absolutely nothing to be worried about.
“So,” he said, standing beside my car, letting the thought trail.
“So . . .” I said, distracted. This sounded like the start of any number of interchangeable excuses. I was drinking. It was the night. The bar. You. It’s not you. It’s just not me. I didn’t need to hear it. “How about we skip the awkward part, huh?”
He smiled then, laughed to himself. “Sure thing, Leah.”
We drove in silence to the parking lot, where there was a single car remaining. A black midsize SUV in the middle of the second row, mud streaking the wheels. “Guess that’s you?”
“That would be me.” He sat for a moment, decided better of it, left the car. As I shifted into gear, ready to drive away, there was a tap on the driver’s-side window. I lowered it, and Kyle leaned his forearms on the base of the open window, his head almost on my level. He leaned in through the gap to kiss me, one hand on my chin, his thumb on the side of my jaw—I had just barely caught on, and then he was gone.
* * *
IT WAS WAITING ON the kitchen counter, exactly as I’d left it. A paper inside a plastic sleeve, rolled up and bound by a dirty rubber band. Print circulation had fallen off in Boston, but I imagined here it was still going strong.
I preferred the hard copy, like this. There was a logic to the layout. There was a predetermined hierarchy, and you always knew where you were in relation to everything else, in a designated order of importance. Not a list of clicks you’d forgotten you’d made. There were no automatic-playing videos (a personal hatred), or pop-up ads, or a computer history of your reading habits curated to provide you only like-minded news in the future—your worldview shrinking and morphing without your knowledge.
The paper smelled of morning dew, the edges curved and brittle.