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And it was going well. We got along. We liked the same TV shows. The sex was normal and semi-regular. I’d met his family, and he’d met my mother, who had pulled me aside and told me in a low voice that she couldsee a future for me with a young man like that.Finally, finally, I was putting in place everything I needed: a good job, a nice boyfriend, a regular life, my mother’s approval. It was finally happening.
The call could be a fake. Maybe this guy—I had no idea who he was—was just crazy. Maybe he was a serial killer, trying to lure me to my death. But I thought about the voice I’d heard on the phone, rough and a little dangerous, and I felt that chill again. The stranger hadn’t sounded like a serial killer. He’d sounded honest and very, very pissed off.
Still, I told myself there was a mistake somewhere. The stranger’s cheating girlfriend had gone to a different address, not Josh’s. Or something. Because Josh was definitely, definitely not cheating.
Right?
I gripped the wheel and pulled up to Josh’s condo complex and thought about signs. Were there signs when a guy was cheating? What were they supposed to be? We didn’t have sex often, but then we never had. That was what happened when you were in a regular relationship, I’d told myself calmly. That was real life. No one went around having sex all the time, anyway. You did it on a schedule, when you were free and you were both in the mood. Had we been having sex even less than usual? When was the last time? I stared at the door of his building and thought back. Saturday night? No, he’d gone out with his friends. It must have been before that.
How else was I supposed to know he was cheating? We didn’t fight. He got a lot of attention from female coworkers and customers at work, but he didn’t make a big deal about that. He didn’t act furtive, and I hadn’t caught him lying. In fact, I’d been starting to think about having the Big Conversation with him. The one about Us and Our Future and Maybe Moving In. I had a schedule. Ineededa schedule. Without a schedule, I would mess everything up. I was determined not to mess up this time. I was determined to make it work.
Bring bandages, a towel, maybe a mop.
I got that chill of premonition again.
No. Just no. I was going to handle this. And everything would be fine.
It was raining, a warm June rain. We’d just come off of a cold, shitty Michigan winter, and even the rain was welcome after the months of snow. I got out of the car and walked up Josh’s driveway, letting myself get wet. Josh lived in a complex of townhouse condos, attached in a long line like one of those cutout crafts you did in public school. The complex was brand new. It was his first place, bought with his nice bank salary. In every way, my boyfriend was on the way up.
There was a second car in the driveway, parked behind Josh’s treasured Mustang. A pretty little car, as red as lipstick. And beyond that, parked on the street, was another black car I didn’t recognize, inky in the darkness.
There was no one around. This was a neighborhood of nice young professionals, tidy and brand new, unlike the rest of Millwood, Michigan. This wasn’t where the drunks and the teenagers and the pot dealers hung out. This was where people had jobs they had to get up for in the morning, and they all went to bed at ten.
There were lights on in Josh’s place. An upstairs light, and a light downstairs in the living room. More ominously, the front door was open. Just a little—it was a few inches ajar—but it was open. And something was going on inside. A man was bellowing. A woman was shouting. There was a thump, a crash of something breaking.
Oh, shit.
I ran the rest of the way up the driveway. A neighboring door opened, and a woman of about thirty-five stepped on to her porch, giving me a total bitch face that could turn you into stone from twenty feet away. “I’m about to call the cops!” she shouted at me. “See if I don’t! I can hear them straight through the connecting wall!”
“Don’t do it!” I shouted back. I ran past her to Josh’s doorway.
Inside, the living room was carnage. Josh’s nice Ikea coffee table was overturned, and one of the brand-new blinds had been ripped from the living room window—it hung crazily, making the whole room look like it was on an angle.
Josh was lying on the floor, curled up in pain, his hands over his face. Blood seeped through his fingers. He was wearing nothing but a pair of tighty whities, his gym-toned body on display. Standing next to him, shoutingStop, was a woman with long, dark curly hair. She was gorgeous and sexy, and she was wearing a t-shirt I recognized as Josh’s, and obviously nothing else. I could literally see her bare ass.
That answered the cheating question, then.
Something inside me snapped, and I went numb. I stopped seeing Josh’s nice living room, where we’d watched TV and made out with his hand down my pants. I stopped seeing the nice furniture, some of which I’d helped him pick out. I stopped seeing his nice body, that I’d had sex with on a nice regular schedule for four nice months. I stopped seeing anything at all except that woman’s bare ass, perfectly round and much smaller than mine, beneath the hem of my boyfriend’s T-shirt.
Was that feeling heartbreak? I didn’t know. Embarrassment? Pain? Maybe it was just the feeling of all of your life’s plans flushing down the toilet in a single second.
Then I noticed the man.
Standing over Josh, looking down at him, was a guy I didn’t know. He was wearing beat-up jeans, motorcycle boots—one of which was untied—and a gray T-shirt so worn that the hem had come unstitched. A brown leather jacket lay discarded on the floor at his feet. His hands were curled into fists, his arms flexed. They were impressive arms, sleek with muscle. In fact, all of him was impressive—his shoulders, his back through the thin shirt, his narrow waist. He had tousled brown hair, a scruff of stubble, a face that knocked me back. My first thought wasJesus, he’s good-looking.Everyone in this little scene was good-looking except, maybe, me. And they were all so focused that not a single one of them had noticed me.
“Hey,” I said.
Everyone turned and looked at me. It was like a crazy tableau, and for a second it hurt so sickeningly much that I felt like laughing.Evie Finds Boyfriend With Pants Down.I was breathless with pain, but I was also a little detached.Is this really happening? Why can’t I feel anything? What’s wrong with me?
Josh dropped his hands from his face, and I could see blood dripping from his nose. “Evie!” he said, in a tone of such pure horror it was almost comical. I felt like laughing again. Or maybe screaming.
The bare-assed woman took her turn. “Oh, my God!” she cried, dropping to her knees. “Josh!” She touched him gingerly, getting close to but not quite touching any blood. She looked up at the man above her. “Stop hitting him, Nick, you asshole!”
But Nick, the asshole, wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking at me.
He was still poised in his fight stance, his fists curled, but instead of looking angry or threatening, he looked… distracted. His gaze took me in, up and down, and then it rested on my face, his eyes catching mine, as if he was trying to figure something out.
I was wearing a green T-shirt and denim overalls. Okay, fine, overalls aren’t exactly fashionable, but they were the first things I pulled off the floor. The overalls, plus the gray cardigan I’d put on, hid the fact that I wore no bra, so that was a win. May in Michigan, especially in the middle of the night, is not exactly warm, and my nipples were showing the fact behind the overalls. I had flip-flops on my feet—my toes were wet and freezing—and my shoulder-length hair was a mess, my face devoid of makeup and probably creased with sleep. I wasn’t exactly Giselle, but at least my ass was covered.
