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A bed which it's clear someone has lain in since then. There's an indent in the pillows, and the bedspread is wrinkled. This isn’t my imagination working overtime. It didn’t look like this when I left for the office.
I'm still staring at the bed on my way to the dresser, where I open a drawer to pull out clothes for bed. Somehow, they look different, too. Like somebody went through my T-shirts.
Liz?She wouldn't have any reason to, and I would think she knows me well enough by now to know I would notice a slight difference.
She'd be more careful.
Rose?What reason would she have to go through my room?
I can't take my eyes off the bed as I undress. What do I do about this? If she's truly been going through my shit, it seems like this is the sort of thing that I need to nip in the bud. It's one thing for me to obsess over her, but I want to know I can trust her. She's never once given me an inkling that she's untrustworthy, never in all these years. I trust her like I trust my daughter.
You stole her panties. All right, maybe I'm not in any position to judge. There's a world of difference between picking a pair of panties up off the floor and going into a man's bedroom to rifle through his drawers and lie on his bed.
I'm not sure exactly what carries me from my room and into the hall. This isn't the kind of thing you wake a person up for. It doesn't look like she stole anything, and we could easily talk about this in the morning.
What am I going to do? Barge into the room and start firing off questions? A one-man SWAT team? The thought makes me laugh.
Even without the intention of waking her up, something carries me down the hall just the same. Interest in her, for one thing. Who is this girl? All this time I've had a certain idea of her. Sweet and innocent, levelheaded, honest.
I'm only human. I can't help but wonder now if something was behind all that shit she put me through yesterday. I wonder now if she was deliberately turning me on. If she's capable of breaking into my room and making herself comfortable, she's capable of anything.
Which would make all of this a hell of a lot more difficult.
It's one thing to tell myself she doesn't have the first clue what she's doing or how she's affecting me. Knowing there's something behind all of it, that she has the same sort of ideas about me as I do about her, would strip away what little self-control I have left.
I'm being a fucking idiot. No way she wants me, an old man, a father figure. A girl like her could have any man she wants, any man in the world.
Beautiful and fresh-faced and with a body worth mortgaging an entire life for. This is my ego talking, that’s all.
I could even be imagining the situation with the bed.
Or that could be what I want to believe.
A way to absolve myself, pointing the blame that her for doing her best to get my attention. I need to get my ass to bed.
“No...”
At first, I'm not sure I heard it. So soft, barely a whisper. Paired with the creaking of bedsprings, though, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. The sound is coming from the other side of the closed door.Rose's room.
I'm reaching for the knob before I know it, turning it, and pushing the door open. “Rose?” I whisper.
This isn't wrong if I believe she needs help, and I do.
I can't see her, but I hear her thrashing around on the bed, breathing rapidly, whimpering like she’s in pain.
“No, please,” she gasps. “Do something! Don't let it… you have to help him!”
The anguish in her voice sends me flying for the bed, concern gripping me by the throat. “Rose,” I murmur, shaking the mattress with my leg. “Rose, wake up. You're having a nightmare.”
I can make out her shadowy form in the lights from the street. She’s shaking her head back and forth, frantic. “Don't let him die!”
“Rose.” I hate to do it, but anything is better than what it sounds like she's going through. I take her by the shoulders and give her a single, firm shake.
Thankfully, that’s enough. She wakes with a sharp gasp before falling against me. “Oh my God. Oh God.”
“You're safe. It was a dream.” She's trembling like a scared animal, giving me no choice but to sit down and wrap my arms around her. There’s nothing needy about it. I only want to help, to soothe.
“It was so real.” Her voice is muffled, her face pressed to my chest, but I can't pretend I don't hear the agony in her words.
