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My apartment had never been big. I was only me. I didn’t need a ton of space. So I opted for smaller because it was the smartest investment of my money, not to spend more than I needed to. Like my mother taught me.
It was well-loved, though, filled with things I had given careful thought to, pieces I had saved up for so I could invest in nice things, not just what was cheapest.
The walls, which I wasn’t supposed to paint at all, were the lightest shade of gray, a warm, yet also – at least to my new eyes – sterile color.
My couch was a sectional – a deeper gray with a long chaise at the end where I spent most of my time, as evidenced by the way all the throw pillows in creams and robin’s egg blue were piled there along with the king-sized cream blanket folded over the top.
My TV was ostentatiously large, or so it seemed now, taking up the whole wall across from the sectional.
To the side of the living room was the kitchen, separated by the island.
The kitchen had always been something I wasn’t hugely fond of, but didn’t have any right to change anything. The appliances were black, the cabinets a dark wood, the door pulls a fake brass, the counters, backsplash, and floor a cream color. The overhead light was fluorescent, overly bright to the eyes.
I set down the bags, immediately fetching the picture out of the bag, setting it in its old place as I looked around the space, finding everything in place.
Well, no.
Something was different.
My sponge was gone.
I always had the pink ones with the purple scrubby side. Always.
And yet in the holder, all I found was a weird piece of beige material. It almost looked like a loofa. Like you use in a shower.
And, well, I knew I hadn’t put it there.
Someone had been in my apartment.
But before I could get myself too worked up, I remembered Finn had been here, had taken the picture for me.
And, judging by the foreign smell in the space, something strong and industrial almost, I realized he must have cleaned.
And, apparently, left the loofa.
Weird, but okay.
On that idea, I went to my fridge, expecting it to be emptied out. He wouldn’t have scrubbed my apartment and left food rotting in the fridge.
But when I opened the door, there was food. The shelves had clearly been scrubbed mercilessly clean, so clean, in fact, it was almost a wonder that there wasn’t blood from his fingertips leftover.
But the food itself, it was all fresh.
New.
Like maybe when he had gotten word that Miller was coming to get me, he had driven up to fill my fridge back up.
Curiously, I moved to the cabinet where I stored my pantry items, pulling the door open.
There was no denying the smile that pulled at my lips at finding it completely loaded with spaghetti and boxes of macaroni and cheese.
Or the way everything seemed to hit me right in that moment. All the pain I had been denying on the walk, on the ride, it all came charging back, crippling in its intensity.
I crumbled down there, right on my immaculate, loathed kitchen floor, curling up on my side, letting the pain well up and pour out, not even trying to keep the sounds of my sobs quiet.
No one who might have heard would have even cared.
Not in this world where very few people even knew their neighbors.
Eventually, I fell asleep there, the crying, the walk, the way Ranger had woken me up in the middle of the night all joined up together to take me down.
I woke up with a numb arm, a crick in my neck, my eyelids swollen nearly shut from crying, and so cold that my teeth chattered.
I pushed myself upward, sitting back against the counter, a headache starting behind my eyes, spreading to my temples until my whole brain felt like it was in an ever-tightening vise grip.
On a grumble, I pulled myself up off the floor, walked myself into the bathroom, turned on the shower, nearly scalding myself as I got in, forgetting how much faster the water heated up here than in the woods.
I stayed there until the water ran cold, crying anew when I washed my hair and my body in soaps that smelled like the old me. I knew Miller had grabbed some of Ranger’s soap, but, oddly, I figured that if I had to be the old me again, then I had to smell like her. And as I dressed, I decided I had to look like her as well, putting on my old clothes, drying my hair the old way, going through my nightly beauty routine the old way.
Maybe it would be easier that way.
A clean break, as the saying went.
