Page 38 of Liquids

When I focus back in on the woman, her foot is tapping against my doormat, and she’s scanning me from head to toe, eyes running over my holey leggings and the oversized sweater I stretched by hanging it up when it was wet.

“He told me he’d be here.”

He did? Rig said only his buddy Jake knew. Part of his lying low strategy, he said. It just now occurs to me that I’ve only got his word for it that people were after him after that fight. Nobody knows I’m here, babe. Can I stay for a few days?

“When did he tell you that?”

She scowls. “Yesterday.”

He was talking to her yesterday? Ugh. Of course, Jake might not exist at all. One truth I do know, though, is that he’s probably got as many women chasing around town after him as he’s got guys who are after him for losing the fight. I open the door farther and wave at her to come in. “Come in and have a look if you like.”

Her nose wrinkles as she looks over her shoulder and down the stairwell she’s just come up.

I sigh. “Can I pass on a message?”

Her eyes go wide. “You know where he is?”

I eye her glossy hair. Maybe all the stuff he said about email and video calls was just a nicer way of letting me down than the first time he took off. I shrug.

“I’m Sadie, Rig’s girlfriend.” She sniffs. Girlfriend? My stomach cramps painfully. “I’ve been trying to track him down, but no one seemed to know where he was, and Jake kept telling me he was off on a contract. Then he said he’d be here.”

And now he’s conveniently disappeared. So maybe Jake was the only one who knew where he was originally. I study her again. So this is the infamous Sadie. Maybe I’ve got a few questions for her. She pushes a hand through her long blonde hair.

“We’ve been together for five years.” She gives me a glittering smile. “He’s already spoken for.”

He said his relationship with Sadie finished a long time ago. I lean against the doorjamb. This is the third version of the Sadie story I’ve heard. He said it was over. Marge said it was on and off. And now, according to Sadie, they’re still together.

“I heard your relationship was over,” I say.

Her laugh is brittle. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Women throw themselves at him.” She wrinkles her nose.

Acid rises up my throat, hot and sharp. I didn’t throw myself at him. “He’s not an unwilling participant,” I say.

She scowls. “All the girls in this town are sluts, and all the guys here fuck around. Rig and I have an agreement.”

Do they indeed?

“He’s going to get me out of here,” she adds.

Why does she need him? She could just get in her car and go. And I don’t appreciate being called a slut. Almost as bad as someone telling you you’re fucked up. Is she his type? I am nothing like her.

You’re not how I thought you’d be.

When her eyes come back to mine, they’re narrowed on me. “Did he clean and cook? Fix things up for you?” She nods at the apartment behind me, and her chin has a bitter jut to it as my heart sinks. “Talk about buying a house by the sea with you?” she adds.

And my heart slumps down into my feet. He did most of the cooking and cleaning over the last six days. He told me about the beach house, though I wasn’t invited to buy it with him.

“He told me he was saving for a house.”

She laughs. “Saving? He makes a ton of money on the rigs that he’s been stashing away for years. He doesn’t need to save for anything.”

Then another thought occurs to me, maybe he’s ducking and diving with all the different women he’s been sleeping with. Maybe he’s not on a rig at all, and this is his convenient way of moving on. He tells whatever woman he’s with that he’s got a contract on a rig and moves on to the next one. Maybe he moved on from Sadie, and she’s chasing him around town. Now he’s probably moved on from me. Well, I’m not turning up on doorsteps and asking where the hell he is. Anger burns up, hot and fast. All his questions about hopes and dreams. Buttering me up. If any of this is true, then he’s a great actor. Fuck.

“He’s gone off on a job; he went yesterday,” I tell her, and her face screws up as she looks away.

“If you do hear from him, tell him I have to talk to him about our apartment,” she says.

What? I stare at her, but all that comes out of my mouth is “Our apartment?”