Page 16 of Rhodes

"Had it," she says. "Bottle cap. Must've come off the counter when I was unloading. Wedged right against the flywheel."

"Well," I say. "Guess I'll cancel the plumber."

She huffs, not quite a laugh, and pushes her hair off her face. It's come loose from wherever she had it, damp at the edges from being crammed under the cabinet. Her sleeves are shoved to her elbows.

She sets the wrench on the counter. It clicks against the granite.

She wipes her palms down the front of her shorts. I follow the motion the whole way down, which takes about as long as it sounds like it takes. The kitchen has gotten warm. I decide that's what it is.

"I'm going to finish my chapter," I say, and I walk out of the kitchen.

After I finish reading, I head to the dining table with my laptop. The house is quiet. For a moment I think about her sleeping down the hall.

I open a Word document to make notes about the paper I have to write, half-noticing the fridge hum behind me. Then I hear footsteps come down the hall. I look up.

Tallulah crosses the front room with her jacket zipped halfway and her keys hooked over one finger. Her hair's pulled back now, clean of the pipe gunk, already reaching for the door.

"Where are you headed?" The words are out before I've thought about them. I have no right asking her that. Fuck.

Her hand stops near the knob. She turns and looks at me, says nothing, just looks, keys hanging off that one finger, held dead still.

And in the quiet I hear exactly what I just did. She doesn't respond, opens the door, and pauses.

I let my shoulders drop.

"Just meant to say, if you get locked out, text me," I say. "That deadbolt is sticky. I'll leave the porch light on."

Her face eases a little, and it's enough.

"You don't have to wait up."

"I wasn't planning to." I nod at the laptop like it proves anything. "I've got a paper to write, though, so there's a good chance I'll still be sitting here."

She almost smiles and turns back toward the door. I make myself go back to the screen.

The door opens the rest of the way, and humid air rolls across the room, stirring the papers by my elbow. Then it shuts, the latch catches, and I hear her car door, the engine, the crunch of the driveway, and she's gone. I have no idea where she is going and no right to ask. The two of those things sitting next to each other are going to make up my whole spring.

I look back at the blinking cursor and read the same sentence three times.

The sound of her V8 engine disappears down the street. I walk out to the garage and grab the WD-40 off the shelf. I've been meaning to grease that lock for months.

Once I finally sit back down, I focus. I've got to get this damn first draft finished by class tomorrow, or I'm cooked.

After a few hours, I have a decent enough paper to turn in. I close the laptop, walk back to my room to take a shower. When I get out, I hear the front door close, and then the lock engage.

My bedroom door is cracked, so I can hear her as she takes off her shoes, walks into the kitchen, fills a glass from the filtered dispenser, and then walks down the hall in her bare feet. The door to the bathroom across from her room clicks closed.

When I walk out to turn off the front porch light, my eyes catch on her jacket on the back of the couch, thrown over the cushion where I usually drop mine. The milk crate of books is shoved against the wall by the bookshelf now, spines out. I kneel down to see what she has. They are mostly water and marsh and shellfish biology.

A hair tie's looped over the arm of the chair and a phone charger snakes into the outlet I never use, the white cord running the length of my baseboard like a vein.

None of it is a mess. It’s just different than what my eyes are used to seeing every single day. Every direction I look, something interrupts a room I've had memorized for three years.

I flip the switch by the front door and the living room goes dark. The old house answers the way it always does, a tick in the wall as it cools, and the ice maker letting go of a load in the freezer with that soft avalanche sound.

I go to the kitchen for water. Her glass sits upside down in the drying rack next to mine, still wet from her recent use.

I pass her room on the way to mine. The door's closed now, and a thin line of light shines underneath.