I stare at my screen, thinking of a hundred answers that sound good and mean nothing.
“I’m going to breathe, I’m going to let myself feel okay for five minutes without worrying.
“Good,” she says. “Keep it small. Keep it real. And Brooke, when the urge to punish yourself shows up, name it. Don’t feed it.”
I swallow. “I’ll try.”
“I know. We’ll talk again soon.”
The call ends.
The screen goes dark, and for a second I just sit there with my phone in my hand. I set the phone down on the couch and stare at the blank television screen.
Footsteps come down the hall.
Seth appears in the doorway, shirt sleeves pushed up, hair a mess, eyes locked on me in a way that says he has been listening for my tone since the call started.
“You done?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
He comes closer and stops in front of me. He doesn’t touch me yet. He studies my face first.
“How bad?”
“Not bad,” I say. “It was good. Annoyingly good.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s my girl.”
He shifts his weight and looks me over again, like he’s trying to decide what will keep me from spiraling tonight.
“What do you want?” he asks, voice low. “Tea, a shower…my dick?”
I snort once, because of course he would say that.
“Something else actually.”
Seth’s brows lift slightly. “Talk to me.”
I stare at him for a second, and I can feel my pulse pick up. A need that won’t settle.
“You wanna know something fucked up?”
His eyes narrow just a little. “Always.”
“What if we go dig him up,” I look up at Seth. “Grant. I keep seeing his face in my dreams. I keep thinking about him under the dirt. I want to look at him and know how really dead he is.”
Seth holds my gaze for a beat, then nods once like it’s a simple plan.
“Okay…I’ll get the shovel.”
That should scare me, how fast he agrees. It doesn’t, it calms me.
He turns toward the back closet and pulls it out, the one we kept for practical reasons and never talked about. He slings it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing. I grab my jacket and my boots without thinking.
Outside, the night air is cold and clean. Gravel crunches under our steps. My thoughts won’t stop replaying it, the way we buried him fast that night, adrenaline in our veins, hands shaking, blood drying on our skin. We dug. We dropped him in. We covered him up. We left.
Tonight we come back.
