He stared at me as if I was a doomed dog at the pound. The one who couldn’t get adopted because he growled whenever anyone approached his cage. I read so much in Cole’s eyes. Questions. Hurt. Betrayal. Maybe I wasn’t the dog in the pound at all. Maybe I was the one walking away from the condemned animal.
Inwardly I shrunk from the thought. No. This was about preservation. For both of us. I turned my gaze from his, but I could still feel his eyes on me for a silent moment. And then he stepped back, clearing my way to the door.
And I darted for it like a startled fawn.
“Elise—“ Mama called after me, but there was no turning back.
I caught a glimpse of Ava watching us from the front bedroom door, and then I was through the living room and outside.
I sprinted to my car, and I was glad I remembered where I’d parked because actually making it out through my tears wasn’t going to happen. It was a blessing, ultimately, that Monday afternoon traffic choked the streets. I turned onto Kaliste Saloom road and crept behind the car in front of me.
And I just drove.
* * *
The room was shadowedin slate-gray light when I awoke to the soft knock on my bedroom door. My head felt like it was stuffed with gauze. My eyelids stung.
“Elise?” Alberta called.
Blinking against the sandpaper that must have sprouted on my eyeballs, I glanced at my bedside clock. It read 6:13. I’d slept for the better part of an hour after coming home and — thankfully — finding the apartment empty. I hadn’t been ready to talk to Alberta then, and I wasn’t sure I was ready now.
“Elise… your mom called. Can I come in?”
I sniffled and winced against my cry hangover. My whole body felt completely shredded, but the triangle between my eyebrows and nose throbbed acutely.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead and ground down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Alberta didn’t respond for a moment, but I could almost see her look of worry through the closed door.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said finally. “Can I come in?”
I sighed. If she was worried, nothing would satisfy her until we talked. “Fine.” My nose was so stopped up, the word sounded like a goose honk.
I heard the knob turn, and she opened the door just enough to poke her head through. When she saw me, her cobalt eyes widened in concern. “Oh, honey—“
“Stop,” I honked, turning my palm out to her. “Or go away.”
“Hmmph,” Alberta huffed, raising a sassy brow at me. “I guess you don’t want this hot chocolate then.”
I sat up with head-splitting speed. Theonlything I wanted was hot chocolate. “Ah!” I pressed my thumbs into the hollows under each eyebrow and willed my skull and brain to stop fighting for space. “Not so fast. Hot chocolate. Please.”
Wearing a self-satisfied smirk, Alberta pushed the door open with one and carried the mug of hot chocolate — that holiest of Holy Grails — with the other.
I took it from her, and the rich whiff of cocoa reached my nostrils with its promise of dopamine and caffeine. Two things I desperately needed at the moment. Mini-marshmallows bobbed over the steaming surface, and I could tell just by the color that Alberta had made it on the stove with real cocoa powder, not in the microwave with a Swiss Miss pouch.
The loving gesture made me swallow hard. “Thank you,” I whispered and then blew over the mug.
Alberta smiled gently and lifted her shoulder with a shrug. Then she reached into the front pocket of her scrubs. “Here.” She pulled out two red and white pills. “Tylenol helps at times like this, remember?”
I remembered the article I’d read to her recently about Tylenol helping to soothe a broken heart.
I narrowed my eyes in a glower at her. “I said we’re not talking about it.”
Her look was all innocence. “You have a headache, don’t you?”
Defeated, I reached out my open palm. She dropped the pills into my hand. I had a broken heart. And a headache. Who was I to argue? Any port in a storm. I popped the capsules into my mouth and chased them with a sip of cocoa.
“Mmm,” I moaned.
