This is the bargain I’ve struck. I could’ve spent eternity in search of the impossible with Ethan, but, hey, if I stick it out here long enough, I might earn an executive parking spot. Maybe they could bury me in it.
—
Stacy recommends I work from home and I heed her advice, bringing my laptop into my bed with my Crisp & Green salad like I do every night. I’m a bed person now.
Hours go by. I’m cozy in my patent-drafting flow state. Nothing can disrupt me until something clatter-clatter-crashes at the other end of the house. Then I hear something that makes my blood run cold: a man’s voice.
Every cell in my body tenses, as if I’m trapped in one of those dreams where I’m soundlessly screaming. A shriek is perched at the roof of my mouth. I lift my phone to call 911, but the device in my hand is a dead black brick. Darting my eyes around the room in search of a baseball bat or a particularly angular lamp, I find nothing in my sparsely furnished bedroom that could save me from an attacker. Nothing but a bed, a minifridge, and a bar cart topped with that damn penis straw.
Ethan’s face flashes in my mind, and god help me, I want to grab the straw, if for no other reason than he’ll know I died thinking of him when my body is found clutching it. Resisting the dramatics, I reach for the deceptively heavy mortar and pestle from myMad Menbar cart and head for the stairs.
Every creaky step makes me wince. I could run out the front door and flee the scene, but I can’t be certain the guy won’t spot me making a break for it, and my system is coursing with too much adrenaline to think clearly anyway. Instead, I follow the voice, the rustling, the squeak of the rubber sneaker soles against the tile floor in my sunroom. There’s nothing left to take and still I’m determined not to lose another thing without a fight.
My back is pressed against the wall beside the French double doors facing the empty great room. I breathe in deep. In. Out. In. Out. I swear to god, if I die alone in this house before I’ve even settled on a living room couch…
A woman’s voice tells her coconspirator, “You’re going to have to suck in your butt, babe.”
Instantly, my stomach unwinds at the sight of my sister and her fiancé mid–B&E. “Holy—”
“Charlie Brown!” Petey’s butt says. He’s nothing but a pair of familiar legs dangling through my open window as Laurel fails to yank him by his tree-trunk thighs through the too-small opening. “Hey! Hi. How’ve you been?”
“What are you doing?” I lower my weapon and my entire body slouches in relief. “I almost killed you.”
Laurel scoffs, shucking off soil from the plant she knocked over while making her entrance. “With that? Were you going to guacamole us to death? The Ring doorbell wasn’t working, and you weren’t answering your phone.”
“And then Laurel got attached to the idea of breaking in.” Petey grunts and squirms, fighting with the window until his feet find the floor. “Can you believe she’s never done it before?”
“And you have?” Now that I’ve decided not to clock them on the heads, I set my muddling tools on the newly empty plant stand. My poor monstera.
“Just for team hazing. The fun kind of break-ins. Like this one.”
“This”—I wave my arms around the room between the busted window lock and spilled potting soil—“isn’t fun.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” Laurel breezes past me toward the stairs. “Wehad lots of fun.”
“I’ll clean it up, Char. Don’t worry.” Petey looks around the room. “Where’s all your stuff?”
Laurel answers for me, heading to the master without invitation. “Everything’s in her bedroom.”
“Like a dorm? Very cool,” Petey says brightly. “You guys go talk. I’ll take care of this window.”
Laurel leaves Petey behind, trudging up into my room, whereshe flops onto the bed. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” she asks.
“It’s dead,” I answer, hovering at the door.
“Dead?” Her eyes widen. “You let it go dead? This is much worse than I thought.”
Laurel skates through her life with a perpetually broken phone. What right does she have to judge me? “So what?”
She tucks and rolls off the bed to rummage through my dresser. “You get physically anxious whenIlet my phone go below thirty percent. I can’t count the number of times you’ve responded to a screenshot with one of those grimacing emojis.”
“Because you do it all the time and the last twenty always goes faster than you think!”
“Ethan didn’t make it sound ‘cut yourself off from society’ bad. What happened with him? Spill,” she demands.
Hearing Ethan’s name uttered so casually burns like lemon juice on a paper cut. Saying it might shatter me into so many pieces, I’ll be trapped in my duvet for the rest of time. “He talked to you?”
“He asked me to check on you. Why do you think I’m here?” God, why does his unrelenting kindness hurt so much more than anyone else’s cruelty? “I’m still mad at you, by the way,” she says haughtily, wandering over to the minifridge. “Did you dredge up ancient history with him, or is that, like, an exclusively ‘me’ thing? Aha!” she yells, slamming the fridge door shut. “Halo Top. I knew it.”
