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He returns them to the kitchen, where he promptly washes them in the sink.

I take back all my earlier negative thoughts.

He disappears into his bedroom and emerges a moment later with his guitar case in hand.

“I was wondering how you’d manage with a tuba on the subway.” I nod at his case, and he laughs.

“It gets pretty cold at night,” I tell him, eyeing the T-shirt, which I’ve now decided isn’t too tight but simply fitted. “You might want to take a sweater.”

He sets his case down next to the door and disappears into his room again.

When he emerges for the second time, he’s not in his T-shirt.

He’s not wearing a sweater, either.

Goose bumps cover my body from toes to fingers as I realize what he has put on.

It’s a black leather jacket.

5

Causes of temporary hallucinations.

I type the search into Dr. Google, which spits back a long list of possibilities. None of them are reassuring.

Drugs and Alcohol. Nope.

Lack of sleep. I sleep well enough—thank you, magnesium. Besides, my hallucination happened after a full night of rest.

Extreme hunger. I stare at the now empty plate of Harmony’s cookies I’ve been stress eating. Not my issue. Never my issue.

Urinary tract infections. Huh…who knew?

I let my phone drop between the couch cushions in frustration. None of these options explain why a jacket triggers my memories. Nor does it narrow the odds that the exact same jacket is now wandering around Toronto on the back of my new roommate.

Maybe it’s not the same one?

It’s a black leather biker jacket. There must be thousands of them in the city. I can’t say for certain it was the same one I tried on at Koko’s. My memories from yesterday are fuzzy, and I was so shocked I didn’t really get a good look at Mackenzie’s jacket on his way out the door.

This could be a classic case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. My brain is simply paying more attention to Mackenzie’s jacket because of yesterday’s changing room incident. I bet I’ve seen a dozen people walking around Toronto in similar jackets this week; I just didn’t take notice.

This theory begins to calm my nerves. God, I love science: providing very logical explanations as soon as you sort through the facts.

I sink into my couch and flick on the television, feeling my tension ease as I search for something to watch.

When I started my job in the lab at CAMH: Toronto’s Center for Addiction and Mental Health, they sat us down on the very first day and told us that in order to be successful in our jobs we each needed an outlet to help us de-stress. Although lab work isn’t quite as hands-on as the medical or counseling positions, the subject matter can get heavy at times. The orientation leader posted a list of suggested activities, from tae kwon do classes to pottery throwing. Each option made my introverted stomach churn until the woman sitting next to me raised her hand and asked, “Can watching TV count?” And the leader smiled and replied, “Absolutely.”

So TV has become my go-to coping mechanism when it comes to stress relief. My preferences lean toward unrealistic holiday rom-coms where all of the world’s problems can be solved with a cup of candy cane hot chocolate, but on occasion I’ll swing in the complete opposite direction and turn on an overdramatized crime show with well-timed melodramatic soundtracks and effortless forensic pathology.

Tonight, I’m feeling murder more than meet-cutes, so I settle on the first episode of Mindhunter.

Manson, Kemper, Rissell. The episodes blur together with a glamorized take on behavioral science sexed up for television.

I fall asleep somewhere between the fourth and fifth episodes.

• • •

I awaken again sometime later. A siren blaring from the street below startles me back to consciousness.