Chapter 8
Mary
Iwake up to the sound of my upstairs neighbor’s toilet flushing. Twice.
“Ugh.”
A quiet sigh slips out of me as I let my arm flop back onto the mattress, phone still in hand.
The ceiling fan clicks somewhere above my head.
I groan and roll over, face-first into a pillow that smells of drugstore lavender spray.
My left foot is sticking out from under the sheet. My right thigh is cold.
I tug the hem of my T-shirt down over my ass without opening my eyes, more out of habit than modesty.
It’s already ridden halfway up my hips, same as it’s been all night.
My usual sleepwear: an oversized, worn-out shirt that says Property of No One and a pair of high-waisted underwear I’ve had since college.
Not cute, but comfortable. And more importantly, it cuts down on laundry.
Which means lower water bills. Which means maybe next month I can afford real mascara instead of crying in the Walgreens aisle.
Right. Focus. I have things to do. Call the utilities company.
Pick up Grandma’s meds. Figure out how to stretch thirty-two dollars across three days without resorting to instant noodles or selling plasma.
Email Dave. Pretend to care about Dave. Shave my legs if I have the energy.
Possibly start building a new personality from scratch.
And then—bam—he’s there.
Not literally. But in that annoying, high-definition way your brain decides to replay the most mortifying scenes of your life, unprompted.
Green Eyes. Like danger had a face and decided it should also have perfect bone structure and abs sculpted by emotional damage.
Some unholy strangled wheeze escapes me, half muffled by pillow, half choked by shame. I turn onto my back and fling one arm over my face, covering my eyes.
“Okay,” I mutter into the void. “Let’s not do the mental spiral thing again.”
But of course, my brain doesn’t listen.
I twist under the sheets like a human croissant, legs curling and uncurling, trying to fold the frustration out of my body. The duvet gets halfway wrapped around one ankle. I keep going. Let the bed swallow me whole.
That’s fine.
Because. Oh God.
Evan dumping me was bad enough. Six years down the drain like old bathwater, no warning, no fight. Then came the wine. Then the apartment mistake.
Him.
I touched the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in real life. And not like “accidental graze on the arm in a grocery store” kind of touched. No. I grabbed him. Full hand. Firm grip. No hesitation. Like I was trying to test the tensile strength of high-end, gym-sculpted stranger dick.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper, dragging my hand down my face. “I’m the problem. It’s me. Hi.”
My fingers drift toward my lips like traitors. Because yeah. I kissed him, too. Full-on kissed him like I had nothing to lose.
Which, to be fair… I kind of didn’t.
I slap my cheek lightly. Then again. “Nope. We’re not doing this. Not today, Satan.”
But just as I start to shake off the shame-spiral, my stomach knots.
That man outside the bank.
The shadow. The stare. The sound of the bang against the glass. God, I can still feel it, like it hit bone.
I exhale too fast, too loud. My heart thumps, slow and hard in my ears.
“It was nothing,” I mumble into the ceiling. “You’re not the lead in a Netflix thriller. You’re a bank associate with a caffeine addiction and mild wine trauma. Calm down.”
Still… I glance toward the window. Just for a second.
Nothing there.
I pick up my phone and check the time again. 6:29 AM.
Alright. Five minutes lost to emotional damage, but the day’s still salvageable.
Because despite everything—despite Evan, and the hot stranger, and the mini existential meltdown—I still have work.
Which means I still have a paycheck. Which means I can still buy Grandma’s meds, pay rent, and maybe—maybe—a pint of overpriced ice cream, if it’s on sale.
I take a deep breath. “Alright. We rise.”
My full-size bed creaks as I stretch like a starfish, arms hitting both sides of my shoebox bedroom. The mattress is decent, though; three years of payment plans well spent when sleeping on a medieval torture device became unbearable.
I kick off the tangled sheet and shuffle barefoot toward my window. The air feels nice. Warm but not desert-hot yet.
When I finally sit up, my knee knocks the corner of the bookshelf. Again. It’s been there for eight years. You’d think I’d learn.
The place is tiny—450 square feet, to be exact—but it’s mine. Rented on my paycheck, not Dad’s guilt money or anyone else’s. Not New York tiny, but definitely “don’t try to cartwheel” tiny. You can cross from bed to stove in six steps. Seven if you’re dragging your feet like I am.
I step down and immediately wince. The ache shoots up from my heel like my foot’s filing a complaint.
My work shoes—the sensible black flats with the serial killer grip—have been squeezing the life out of my feet for years.
I’ve resoled them twice. I think the leather’s just trauma-bonded to me at this point.
The floor’s cold under my toes as I walk into the kitchen.
Sunlight’s pouring in from the big east-facing windows. The good kind. The kind that makes everything look cleaner than it is.
The yellow tile backsplash catches it first, glowing like it’s been scrubbed recently. It has. I stress-cleaned last weekend when my credit card bill made a guest appearance in my inbox.
I run my hand along the edge of the counter as I pass.
It’s smooth—warm from the sun—and still slightly crooked if you squint, but a massive upgrade from what was here before.
Dolly, my landlord, helped me replace it a few years ago after the old laminate started peeling like sunburn and threatening to slice open my forearm every time I reached for the toaster.
She didn’t even warn me. Just showed up one Saturday with a trunk full of clearance tile, a bucket of grout, and a can of Diet Dr. Pepper wedged under her armpit, yelling up from the sidewalk, “If I break something, it’s still technically an improvement!”
Apparently, my banana bread had impressed her. I made it once. Brought her a still-warm loaf when I dropped off rent, figuring it might soften the blow of my late payment. She called it “a reason to install real countertops,” and then refused to raise the rent the following year “on principle.”
“If I’m gonna keep charging you less than a parking space, you should at least have counters that don’t scream sad single man.”
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth before I can stop it. I open the cabinet beneath the sink and grab the dented stainless-steel kettle, the one with a melted handle from the time I forgot it was on and nearly set the kitchen on fire.
I fill it and set it on the stove, flicking the burner on with my knuckle. Gas clicks, catches.
The apartment hums. Quiet fridge buzz. Pipes murmuring in the walls.
I pull my favorite mug down from the open shelf, the one Grandma gave me when I got the bank job. Bright pink letters: I drink coffee for your protection. It wobbles slightly when I set it down. Still works. Still mine.
While the water heats, I pop open the sliding balcony door. It sticks like always. I lean into it with my hip until it gives with a soft clunk, then I step out.
My herb garden on the old metal shelf I salvaged from a yard sale last summer is actually thriving for once.
It’s wedged into the far corner of the balcony where the sun hits hardest in the mornings.
Half a dozen mismatched pots and repurposed takeout containers lined up like little green soldiers.
The basil smells like summer memories I don’t entirely trust, the rosemary like Grandma’s Sunday dinners, back when she still cooked with both feet planted and not from a stool.
I crouch down and pinch a few dead leaves from the thyme, then water the spinach I planted on a whim last month.
It’s coming in lopsided but stubborn, like me.
The cherry tomato plant’s already grown past the little trellis I zip-tied to the railing, and the cilantro is doing that dramatic thing where it bolts overnight like it’s in some kind of race.
A low, judgmental grunt pulls my attention to the left.
Gordo, the fat orange tabby from 2A, has somehow wedged himself onto the ledge beside my basil like he owns the lease. His tail flicks once, slow and unimpressed. He doesn’t move when I wave my hand in front of his face.
“You’re not supposed to be up here, you know,” I tell him, reaching over to nudge his belly. He allows it, but only because he’s too round to resist. “Essie’s gonna think I’m feeding you again. And I’m not. Last time you yacked under my chair, I almost slipped and died.”
Gordo blinks, deeply unbothered.
I sigh and sink onto the faded plastic chair I dragged home two years ago and never replaced. “Fine. You can stay. But only if you promise not to poop in the thyme again.”
He yawns, turns a full quarter-inch to face away from me, and resumes judging the world.
There’s a faint thud behind me—someone walking upstairs—and a door closing. The usual sounds. The kind that used to annoy me when I first moved in, before I realized they were the closest thing to comfort. Signs of life. Of other people dragging themselves through it.
The kettle whistles inside.
I glance back through the open door, then lean over to pluck a sprig of mint from the pot near my foot.
“Guess I’ll make coffee,” I mutter, mostly to Gordo. “Pretend I have it all together for the next hour.”
I push to my feet and step back inside, letting the sliding door half-close behind me. The kettle’s still whistling. I kill the burner, pour the water over instant coffee—because life is too short for French press and too long for plain tea—and drop in the mint like that fixes everything.
But before I can take a sip, something pulls me back toward the window. A flicker. Movement.
Across the street, the Desert Palms complex sits in its usual state of sun-bleached disrepair.
Stucco peeling in long strips, paint flaking like the whole building’s just giving up.
It’s a three-story eyesore that’s supposed to be empty—or mostly.
The kind of place that used to be affordable until someone tried to “revitalize the neighborhood,” then forgot halfway through.
But something’s different this morning.
My eyes snag on one of the third-floor balconies. The railing’s rusted out, the glass door behind it covered in grime thick enough to fingerprint with a crowbar. Nothing unusual there.
Except… I could’ve sworn I saw a shadow move. Not a curtain. Not light. A person. Just there and then gone.
I blink, stare harder. The balcony is still.
A faded sheet is duct-taped over the glass from the inside, same as it’s been for months. Nobody’s ever out there. No plants. No laundry. No life. Most of the units over there are just shells now—vacant, echoing.
I tell myself I imagined it. Probably just the wind catching something loose. A trick of light. Heat haze.
But the back of my neck prickles.
I step closer to the door, press my fingers to the warm glass. Gordo lets out a disgruntled huff behind me, then thuds to the floor and disappears under the chair.
I don’t see anyone. No movement. Nothing. But that doesn’t mean there’s no one there.
The mint in my coffee is wilting now, curling inward like it knows something I don’t.
I take a slow breath, step back from the door.
Then I lock it. Just in case.