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“Now who’s the one overstepping?” I answered.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “My bad. I have no right giving a shit about you and BJ. It’s not like I’m your husband.”
When the cab dropped us off at our building, I went straight to the mailbox. I unlocked it and flipped it open, my heart stuttering in my chest. The usual junk mail spilled out of it, landing at my feet. Riggs shut the door behind me, dragging my trolley along.
Among the leaflets and commercials was one white letter. I bent down to pick it up. Riggs used the opportunity to slap my ass, forever the gentleman.
I ripped the letter open with unsteady fingers, holding my breath. My eyes ran over the text, drinking it in.
“Planet Earth to Poppins, copy,” Riggs grumbled behind me. “We going up, or what?”
I turned to him, holding the unfolded letter from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Riggs’s eyes skimmed the short text. His jaw was squared and locked.
It was going to be over. Him and me. The little kingdom of takeouts and midnight giggles we’d built in my shoebox flat.
“October twenty-second, huh?” Riggs sucked his teeth in, nodding. “Not too long.” October 22 was three weeks from now.
“Yeah.” I licked my lips, feeling quite light headed.
“That’s good.” The words sounded like he’d forced them out.
“Exactly what we wanted,” I agreed, choking on every single vowel.
Riggs glanced around, running his rough palm through his angel hair. “Ah, fuck,” he groaned.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to wait until we were home?” I joked weakly.
“I need to tell you something, Poppins.” He dropped his backpack onto the floor. My suitcase went down in a thud too.
“Yes?” I angled my entire being toward him. I wanted so badly for him to say something I could hold on to. That maybe he could stay here for a while after the interview. Or perhaps I could accompany him on one of his trips and work for him. I’d even do it for free. Or ... I don’t know, even that we could try to see each other casually whenever he was in New York and see where it led.
“I—” he started. The entrance door to the building swung open with a whoosh.
A male nurse in a blue uniform breezed inside, peering down at his phone. He scratched his forehead, looking up at us. “I’m looking for apartment number twenty-four?”
Charlie’s apartment.
“Th-third floor . . . ,” I stuttered.
“Thanks.” He started climbing the stairs.
“Wait!” I called. Guilt made its way quickly and efficiently up my body, its hold tightening around my neck. Poor Charlie had been all alone in his hospital room over the weekend while Riggs and I got drunk and had filthy apple sex. “How’s he doing? Charlie?”
The man hesitated, holding on to the banister with a wince. “I ... uhm, I’m not supposed to tell.”
“You can tell us. We’re family.” I jerked my head slightly in Riggs’s direction, without him noticing.
The man took one look at Charlie’s clone, and his shoulders eased. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, he’s ... struggling.”
“Elaborate,” Riggs quipped.
The man looked straight into my husband’s eyes. The same dazzling shade of blue as Charlie’s. “You should probably pay him a visit.”
He vanished upstairs. I turned back to Riggs, looking for any sort of understanding or recognition.
Riggs shook his head. “As I was saying—”
“You need to go talk to him,” I interrupted, resolute. I wanted to hear Riggs’s confession more than I wanted my next breath, because I had a small, pathetic hope that maybe he was going to say what I wanted to hear. That maybe in all of this fakeness, something real had grown.
