AllFreeNovel
Share Us
You around tonight?
Through the window, I watch him peek at his phone and then slip it back in his pocket.
Clearly he is so busy running errands that he cannot reply.
Next he goes to a café in Capitol Hill. I can’t find a parking spot that lets me see inside, so I have to pay for street parking five blocks away. I pull my hood up as I approach the café’s window. Arjun is sitting at a table toward the back. Across from a woman.
My guts twist into pretzels, tighter and tighter until I think I might collapse in the middle of the sidewalk. The woman has delicate features and a blond bob that skims her shirt collar. She’s thin, entirely curveless, and I wonder if the way Arjun pinches the curves of my body and buries his lips in my hip bones is because I am the type of woman he prefers. But she is older than I am, probably in her midtwenties. Closer to his age.
She crosses her carrot-stick legs beneath the table and leans over it. Arjun is tilted slightly away from her. They each have their own cup of coffee, and while she’s nibbling on a muffin, he’s not eating anything. When she reaches out to stroke Arjun’s forearm, he pulls back.
What the hell is going on?
I stand outside the coffee shop watching their conversation I cannot hear for ten, twenty, thirty minutes. By the time Arjun heads for the door, I have to race out of sight, but I lose my balance and slip on a square of wet pavement. I go down hard. When I get back to my car, there’s a pressure behind my eyes and my knees are burning, probably beginning to bruise and bleed beneath my torn-up tights.
I tune the radio to Seattle’s classical station, which is playing Dvorak, and I circle the blocks again and again until I find his car and follow him all the way back to his apartment.
I key in the access code: one-
nine-four-five. No patience for the elevator, I take the stairs two, three at a time. The stairwell smells like wet dog. I don’t know how Tovah runs for fun because this is torture, four flights of stairs. When I reach the third flight, I’m huffing and puffing and have to hold my hand against the wall to ground myself.
On the fourth floor, before I can make it across the hall, the door to 403 swings opens. There he is, holding a basket of laundry, which he nearly drops when he sees me.
“Adina! Shit, you scared me.” He sets the basket down as I draw nearer. Inside I see his collared shirts, his burgundy sweater, his underwear, black and gray and one pair that’s plaid. “What are you—how did you get in?”
He didn’t ask me that the last time I got in. He didn’t ask how.
“I need to talk to you.”
Picking up the basket, he heads to the elevator and presses the down button. “I’m busy. Can this wait?”
I wedge myself inside the elevator with him. “No. It can’t. Who is she?”
“Who is who?”
“The blond woman!” I sputter, breath ragged. Who the fuck else would I be talking about? “The blond woman I saw you with in Capitol Hill today.”
“You were there?”
“You weren’t answering any of my messages or calls. I’ve been back for three days and I haven’t seen you.” My voice trembles and cracks. My stupid, young, eighteen-year-old voice. “What were you so busy with today that you couldn’t take two seconds to reply to me? Going to Bartell’s and the music shop and meeting her?”
A couple measures of silence pass between us.
“Were you following me?”
I open my mouth to either defend myself or confess, I’m not sure which.
Then, with a screech, the elevator stops.
“Fuck,” he mutters, shoving his palm into the wall. “It’s always doing this. It should start back up again soon.”
Pushing my back against the wall, I say, “How long does it usually take?” I wonder if we will suck up all the oxygen before it begins descending again.
“A few minutes. This building’s ancient. They really need to fix it up.” There’s something unfamiliar in Arjun’s eyes, and they won’t meet mine.
That look makes something inside me snap. I want this to be a relationship. And in relationships, I think, you are supposed to talk about things that upset you.
“Who is she?” I demand again, inching closer to him. Heat radiates off his body. I soften my voice. “Please. I deserve to know.”
