23. Zyran
ZYRAN
The bathroom is small in the way that everything in her apartment is small—like the whole place was built just slightly too compact for a person to comfortably exist in, which means it’s about four sizes too small for me.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way—I’d live here just so I could be with her.
I run the water cold, splashing some over my face before bracing both hands on the sink, finally taking a look at myself in the mirror for a moment.
I look like a man who has no business being here.
Which is accurate, one hundred percent true.
I’ve broken into houses before and sat in cars outside buildings for weeks without feeling a single thing. I walked into rooms where I knew exactly what was going to happen and felt nothing but the particular quiet that comes before I end them.
And yet, I’m standing in the bathroom, the size of a closet, in a woman’s apartment in the middle of a snowstorm, and my chest feels like something is sitting on it.
I look at my hands on the sink, the knuckles still slightly off-color from a week ago, and the scar running across my left palm.
These are not hands that belong in a place like this—small and warm and smelling like whatever soap she uses, something clean and soft that has no business being in my lungs.
My entire life has been careful about the line between what I do and everything else. You keep them separate; never bring one into the other, it’s the only way things don’t get messy.
And then I saw her in the coffee shop. I don’t know what took over, but it was like I needed to know her. I needed to know what made her mad or sad. I wanted to know every single thought that crossed her mind.
I wanted to know the girl living inside that very high and tightly stitched wall she has up.
I turn the faucet off and roll my shoulders back, cracking my neck.
The face in the mirror looks back at me like it’s waiting for me to talk myself out of something. It’s a look I’ve seen before, usually right before I do something stupid.
Biting my cheek, I dry my hands off and open the door before I can start talking myself into just taking a nap in the tub.
What I hadn’t expected was to find her standing right outside the door.
My chest drops to my ass, and it takes everything in me not to scream like a little child.
She stands there, holding a pillow against her chest like a shield and a folded sheet balanced on top of it, with a blanket tucked under her arm.
Esperr’s hair is down now in small waves, and she’s changed into sweatpants and a loose shirt.
I take a step closer, watching her breath hatch just a bit, and something about that sends a little boost to my ego.
She thrust the pillow towards me.
“Sorry, I only have one extra pillow,” she says; her voice has that clipped quality it gets when she’s trying to be practical and not anything else. “And the sheet is clean, I just—it might be a little thin, so uh… I grabbed the blanket off the chair in my room; it’s not much but?—”
“Esperr.”
She stops babbling and finally looks up.
“It’s fine.”
Her gaze holds me, like she’s deciding whether to believe me or not, and she holds the stuff out again. Part of me thinks about being an asshole and refusing, but knowing her, she’d probably drop it at my feet, stomp on it, and then walk away.
Taking the bedding, it takes her less than a second to pull her hand back. I pretend not to notice, loving that she’s also pretending that she hasn’t noticed.
“Okay, well, good,” she takes a small step back into the doorway of her bedroom. “The heat kicks off around two so it gets cold, just so you know. And the lamp in the corner does that flickering thing, but it doesn’t actually go out, so don’t—you don’t need to mess with it.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay…”
She doesn’t move and neither do I.
The hallway is too narrow for the both of us, and the space between us is doing something neither of us is acknowledging. It feels like the whole world has gone still and is waiting to see what happens next.
Esperr’s eyes come up to mine and stay there for a beat too long. I’m seconds away from reaching forward and yanking her mouth to mine.
But then she’s taking a breath and stepping back. “Goodnight, Zyran.”
“Goodnight,” I find myself muttering. All when I don’t want this to be over. I don’t want her to go to bed; I don’t want to go to the couch, knowing that she’s less than twenty feet away.
But I don’t push.
I watch her move back into her room and close the door softly, leaving me in the hallway for a second holding the bedding and thinking about the way her fingers felt under mine for half a second.
Before I talk myself into doing anything reckless, I head back out to the living room and drop onto the couch.
It’s too short.
I knew that it would be before I even sat down. It’s worn down, especially in the center, and the left side of it creaks every single time you move. But I fold myself onto it anyway, one arm behind my head, feet hanging off the end, and I stare up at the ceiling.
The lamp in the corner flickers, just like she said it would, and to my surprise it doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.
And her door is closed, though I know she’s not asleep.
I can’t explain how I know that, granted it’s been a total of five minutes that she’s closed it on me.
But that’s besides the point. All I can think about is the way she looked at me at dinner when she thought I wasn’t watching—like she was trying to solve something and kept coming up with an answer that she didn't quite believe.
I shift onto my side, pulling the blanket up closer to my face.
It smells like her; it’s clean but smells like that cactus blossom I’m learning is my favorite—something I’ve been trying not to notice since she handed it over and our fingers touched.
Though it was only for half a second in the hallway, I hated how fast she pulled back, but it also tells me enough of what I need to know.
I shift again, this time onto my back and an arm over my eyes.
She’s scared, and she doesn’t want me or anyone to know.
Thinking about all the questions she didn’t ask, wanted to but didn’t. I could see them all lined up behind her eyes; all through dinner, she sat across from me, asking about my favorite color. I didn’t have one.
Not until I saw her eyes, and then that bright shade of blue, the kind that’s brighter than the ocean, became my favorite.
Esperr’s careful enough in the way people get when they’ve learned that wanting things can cost them.
She just doesn’t know that I get it; she doesn’t think I would understand. And I do, more than humanly possible.
The ceiling has a crack running from one corner to the window. Outside the storm keeps going, slow and relentless, completely sealing us in.
I don’t know what time it is when my eyes finally grow heavy and I’m able to drift off to sleep.
It’s quiet, so much so that it begins to press against my ears, like something is about to happen and the world is holding its breath before it does. I know this quiet; I’ve lived in it enough times to recognize it the way you recognize a scar—it’s the feeling before you even look.
I stand outside frowning because the property looks right, but for some reason it doesn’t feel that way.
It’s like there’s this window between me and all of it, and I don’t remember it being there.
I reach forward, my hand resting against the cool surface.
No matter how hard I press, it doesn’t give, not even the tiniest bit.
And that’s when I see each of them—Raiden first. Standing in the kitchen the way he always stands, weight back and his arms crossed. He says something to my twin that makes Cyran’s mouth pull up at the corners.
It’s normal, completely how they’ve always acted.
I hit the glass again, harder than before, but the sound makes it all wrong; it’s muffled almost like I’m under water.
Raiden doesn’t look up, and neither does Cyran; they just keep existing on the other side of it.
They’re completely unaware, all while I stand out there knowing what’s coming and unable to make my voice work right, unable to make anything work right.
And then the light changes.
It always changes here; that’s how I know we’ve crossed from one memory into something else—the quality of the light shifts, going flat and gray, the shapes inside the window stop being my brothers and become something I can’t quite focus on no matter how hard I try.
I hear the first shot.
I don’t see it, not like Cyran is with guns. He knows them better than anyone else.
But I can hear it, and that's when I see Slater, my brother who’s mute, who kept his silence so long that it became part of him—he makes a sound I’ve never heard him make. I slam both palms against the glass screaming words that have no sound and?—
The second shot, and then there’s a third.
Everyone’s face changes, becoming something I can’t see, just blurriness and that horrible sickening feeling I get when I fail. When I’m on the other side of the pain and I can’t do anything.
My knuckles cracks on impact, blood smearing across the glass?—
She’s there.
It takes me a second to recognize her because she doesn’t belong here; she has never been part of this, but it’s her.
I know it’s her because of the way I feel in my bones, above all else.
Esperr swings at a guy, someone I can’t see clearly, a shape, a man whose face keeps sliding away every time I try to find it.
She’s not losing. But that's the thing about her; even here, in this, she’s not losing. She is fighting with everything she has, using her body like a weapon—the way people do when they’ve had to before.
I run toward her, or at least I try to.
My legs run as hard as I can, carrying me across the lawn, but it doesn’t appear that I’m doing anything at all. It’s like the ground has this pull at me, keeping me running in the same place.