CHAPTER 33
I was alone.
Alone with this life and this apartment that seemed so foreign to me. Noah had walked out the door only ten minutes ago, and already I missed him more than I could fathom. I had searched my apartment for a handbag and a cell phone, but had found nothing. And now I wondered if it had been stolen or lost somehow in the elevator accident.
I walked over to the TV, picked up one of the remotes and turned it on. I was greeted by a menu that I scrolled through. Netflix, Showmax, Hulu, DSTV . . . the list went on. It looked like I’d subscribed to every single streaming platform possible. I went into Netflix and explored it, and then Showmax and then others. I had watched a lot of TV. I mean,a lot. In fact, it looked like that might be all I did. Sat here and watch TV. I dropped the remote on the couch and then turned my attention to the books on the side table.
The Massive Book of Random Facts.
10,000 Amazing Facts.
Know it All.
So, this was Zenobia Small. Who watched TV and read books about facts. Something about that picture felt so depressing and bleak, and it made me miss Noah even more. I walked through to my bedroom again and into the bathroom. I opened the mirrored cabinet and looked inside. A bottle of hair-removal cream, a bottle of natural tranquilizer pills, and then I found myself reaching into the cupboard automatically and picking up a pair of tweezers and then closing the mirrored cabinet behind me and raising the tweezers to my eyebrows. I did this. I plucked my eyebrows often and obsessively because . . .
Did you know, thousands of insects are secretly living in your eyebrows.They’re eating, mating and laying eggs all over our faces.
I leaned in and looked closely at my eyebrows, trying to see if I could find any. I couldn’t. And then I remembered something else as I looked at the razor blade and hair-removal cream.
Did you know, mites can live in your underarm and pubic hair?
A sudden sense of rising panic flooded me as I thought about germs and mites that could infect and infest your body and stay there without your permission. I opened another drawer and saw a white box there and pulled it out. Tampons!
“Wrong again, Andi!” I guess pink is not my spiritual color after all.
I walked back into the bedroom and sat at the foot of the bed, staring into the open wardrobe of clothes in front of me, and the more I stared, the more they felt familiar to me.
I walked up to the full-length mirror and stared at myself. The tie-dye clothes and bright colors all seemed so silly now, ridiculous in this new environment. They didn’t belong here.I didn’t belong in them.I pulled the dress off and tossed it to the floor, reaching for the first thing I could find in the cupboard.
Beige pants, a white button-up top and a gray cardigan. I slipped the clothes on and stood back to look at myself. My short hair no longer looked cool and pixie-ish in this outfit, it looked old and boring. It looked like I didn’t care. Like I didn’t even have a hairstyle. I bent down to get a pair of shoes to complete the outfit, but just as I reached in something caught my attention. I pulled the old-looking shoebox out, sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it. It took me a few moments to register what I was seeing. The firstrealbursts of color, other than the disinfectant bottles, since I’d walked into this apartment.
I ran my eyes over the brightly colored crayons and pencils and pieces of paper. I turned the pieces of paper over in my hands. None of them had been drawn on, but the crayons and pencils had definitely been used. Their varying sizes told me so. Some had been sharpened much smaller than the others. The ones that were the shortest were the bright colors; the ones that looked like they’d never been used were the brown and dull colors. I put everything back into the box and pushed it into the wardrobe again. Why was that there? Stashed away like it was a secret. And what was it?
I tried to reach into my mind again, to force a memory to come forward . . .nothing came.I had no idea what these pencils were for, and if I was even the one who used them. I gave up on the shoes and stood up again, pulling the clothes off as I went. I wanted out of them. I stood there in my underwear for a while, surveying my surroundings, trying to decide what to do next. I walked over to the bed and sat down. I looked at my side table. A charging device lay there as well and I instinctively took my watch off and placed it in the holder. The watch lit up as I did and its name flashed across the screen. I’d never seen its name before—ULTRAGO Watch. Ultrasonic Mosquito Repellent.
Was I so afraid of insects that I had a watch that repelled them too? I opened the bedside-table drawer and a brochure for the watch greeted me. I picked it up and started reading.
This ultrasonic mosquito repellent repels mosquitos and other pests by emitting a high-frequency sound too high for humans to hear. . .
I scanned the words on the page until I came to the tiny print at the bottom, so small that I had to lean in to read it.
Warning: The ultrasonic waves might also affect other animals, including bats, birds, small reptiles, dogs and cats.
Waaaiiiit . . . I put the pamphlet down and stared at the watch. Was this the reason animals hated me? It was my watch, and not me? The thought made the tiniest flicker of a smile grace my lips. I would have to try my theory out in the morning. I closed this drawer and opened the one beneath it. There were two things in it.
The first was a book that looked like it had been read a million times over. I picked it up. The cover was torn and barely clinging onto the spine. The pages were brown with age and the corners were soft and bent. I turned it over again and stared at the cover. I flicked my bedside lamp on and the full picture came into view.
A Windsor and Swoon Royal Romance.
A woman lying tussled in red and gold sheets in a Bedouin tent in the middle of the desert, a man with a big, bare chest and long, flowing black hair cradling her with big, bulging, masculine arms.
Heat of the Desert, Heart of the Sheik.
Why would I have this next to my bed, and why would I have read it so many times? I opened the front cover and read the blurb.
When intrepid archaeologist Amanda Stone goes fossil hunting in the Arabian Desert, little does she know that a sandstorm will change the course of her life. The last thing Sheik Khalifa needs is to be forced to rescue a damsel in distress and have her stay at his Desert Palace oasis. But when the two are trapped inside by the sandstorm, a storm of another kind rages inside both of them, as they succumb to lust and love in each other’s arms.
I held the book in my hands and it fell open at the place that looked like it had been read the most. My eyes drifted over the pages and instinctively honed in on a specific part, as if they’d gone there a million times before.
