Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
He walks back to his chair, sits, and picks up the glass. He doesn’t look at me again.
“Go home, Andie,” he says. The words are so quiet I almost miss them. “You don’t belong here.”
I try to speak, try to argue, but nothing works. Instead, I just stand there, tears slipping down my face, making cold streaks on my cheeks.
I press my hand to my mouth, holding the sound in. I want to say something that will fix it, but there isn’t anything.
So I turn to go.
At the door, I stop, turn back. My voice is a whisper, shredded and helpless.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. He just stares out at the city, and I realize he’s already left, in every way that matters.
I let the door close behind me. The sound of it, soft and final, echoes down the empty hall.
I ride the elevator to the ground floor, face wet and raw, and I don’t look in the mirror. I don’t look anywhere. The city on the other side of the glass doors is cold and bright, and when I step outside, the wind cuts through me like a judgment.
I walk for a long time before I even realize where I’m going, the rhythm of my boots on the sidewalk the only thing that keeps me upright.
I left the key on the counter. I left my heart. I left everything.
But the words he said to me—the ones he didn’t even say—are a weight I can never put down.
All I can think is: it’s over.
And maybe I deserve that.
Maybe I always did.
18
AT THE FACULTY CLUB AGAIN. REALLY?
Andie
The first sound is always the fridge, coughing from its corner like a dying animal. It’s followed, a few seconds later, by the click and hum of the bathroom fan, set on a faulty timer that’s supposed to save electricity but instead just blinks on and off at random intervals. There’s a leak in the kitchen sink—has been since day one—but the landlord says that’s “normal” and not to worry. Every time it ticks, like a second hand, I count my own pulse. Sometimes it matches, sometimes not.
The blinds in my bedroom are pulled tight, the slats bent and yellowed, slicing the late afternoon sun into a series of narrow, slanting stripes. The light never lands where it should. I keep thinking I’ll get around to replacing the blinds, but I don’t. Instead I live in the perpetual dusk, the day never quite arriving, the night always hanging around the edges.
Two months in this apartment and my room is still filled with boxes. They’re stacked in the corner, with the top one crushed from when Mary Kate sat on it during the first week, trying to impress us all by shotgunning a La Croix. Half of what’s in them I don’t need, but I keep telling myself that unpacking means something is permanent, and I’m not ready for that. Not even close.
The walls are as thin as every cliché ever written about college apartments, but today the place is silent. I don’t even have music on. The only sign that Stella exists is the smell of her perfume—something citrusy, too bright, it never settles—and the fact that she’s not home yet. That’s the only time I ever relax: when her shoes aren’t at the door, when I can cross the common space barefoot, unobserved, and not worry about the shape of my face or the way I move.
I’m in uniform, the polyester catering outfit cut to fit an army of mannequins, not a real body. The apron ties at the back, and the top button is missing. I should sew it, but I use a tiny silver safety pin instead. I like the way the pin feels when I run my thumb over it, a hard point under all that softness. It reminds me to stay alert. It reminds me I can fix things, if I have to.
I sit on the edge of the bed, feet on the bare wood floor, hair down my back. It’s gotten long again, a soft gold tangle that catches on my elbows and wants to float. I pin it up, twist by twist, the way my mother showed me: tight at the nape, anchored with two bobby pins, never more than two or it looks like you’re trying too hard. My hands move by memory, not thought.
The mirror above the dresser has a crack running through the top right corner. I avoid looking at it, mostly, but sometimes I catch the edge of my own reflection as I move. The girl in the glass looks older than I remember. She has blue shadows under her eyes—nothing some concealer can’t handle, but still—and her jaw is always clenched, as if she’s bracing for something. I practice my neutral face every morning: lips straight, eyes level, nothing showing. Today, the neutral face is almost perfect.