Page 14 of Solar Eclipse of the Heart

I’m on my couch. I am somehow covered in a blanket. Did I get up and grab it? The TV is off. Did I turn it off?

I reach between the cushions for my phone. The time reads just after six in the morning.

Now fully conscious, I feel the lumpiness of the couch on my outstretched body and long for the cozy, soft mattress of my bed. On my third attempt, I will myself up and back to my room, where I tunnel under the covers like a hibernating hedgehog.

Despite wanting to, I can’t fall back asleep. I try counting back from one thousand, then clearing my mind completely, but all I do is toss and turn.

I used to have trouble sleeping when I was a kid. It was usually timed to the beginning of one of my mom’s relationships. She’d start dating someone new and become obsessed. It would be Chris. Chris. Chris. Or Wayne. Wayne. Wayne for weeks on end. Although she’d physically still be there, sleeping in the bedroom across the hall, it would feel like she had disappeared, and my anxious brain would worry all night that I’d never get her back.

My mom loved to fall in love. “Best drug you’ll ever try, kiddo,” she’d tell me. She’d describe it as a rush. A lovesick high only to follow with the low that would inevitably come when things didn’t work out.

I started sleeping normally again by my teen years as my prefrontal cortex developed further, and I depended less on my mom to fill my days as I became busy with school and studying. However, my sleepless nights returned with a vengeance after she died and I moved in with Larry.

Unlike my mother, Larry always seemed to sense when I couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t even have to tell him. He’d just take one look at my face and put a pot on the stove. He’d melt real chocolate into milk and make the richest, most luxurious hot chocolate.

“The secret to good hot chocolate is that you need to heat the milk slowly,” he’d say. “Don’t cheap out on the chocolate, and add a pinch of salt.” I’d roll my eyes, and he’d cross his arms. “Someone needs to carry on my legacy,” he’d tease. “This is a secret recipe. When I’m an old man living in your spare bedroom, Beans, I’ll expect you to be able to make it for me when I forget how.”

He’d wink like it was all a big joke, but I liked that image. Old man Larry living in my spare bedroom. What I wouldn’t give to see that now.

Eventually, I give up on sleep completely and climb out of bed to head to the kitchen. There is a half bar of random dark chocolate in my cupboard, so I make my cup of hot chocolate just like he showed me. I know I follow all the steps correctly—even the salt—but it doesn’t taste quite right.

I return to the couch and the discarded blanket I abandoned. Picking it up, I fold it and place it back in its spot on the back of the couch, and as I do, I notice the door to Mackenzie’s room is half open.

It’s probably because the apartment gets hot at night, but there’s a nice breeze that comes off the lake through the window. I often do the same thing.

I know I shouldn’t, but I find myself gazing into his space. I can see his things. His chair. His bed. Even the outline of his sleeping body under his sheet.

All of a sudden it’s all too intimate. I’m about to turn away, but something catches my eye.

The jacket.

It’s tossed over the back of his chair, next to his discarded jeans. It’s just an arm’s reach from the doorframe. I could lean in and grab it without setting foot in his room—technically.

And that would be totally and completely creepy, Annalise, I chastise myself. Not to mention an invasion of his privacy.

If the roles were reversed and I woke up to his upper torso in my space, I’d throw him out. It would be unforgivable.

My rational brain knows what I’m thinking is so wrong on so many levels, but I begin to walk toward his room as if the jacket itself is a siren, calling to me, luring me toward rocky shores.