Chapter 4 #2
He blinked. “It’s been almost three months.”
Her shoulders shrugged as she toed off her ankle boots, each one flopping to its side in opposite directions. AJ bent down and set them neatly on an open shelf in the getabako.
“I just realized I was missing it. You know how I zone out sometimes.” She called out, already halfway down the hallway.
He didn’t follow her immediately. He closed the front door, locked it out of habit, then went to the kitchen and poured water into a glass.
He just needed to hear the sound of water running to calm the anxiety spike he felt.
By the time he reached his bedroom, Emory was on all fours, sweeping her hand beneath the bedframe, an errant coil of her braid dangling like a rope in search of a rescue target.
He cleared his throat. “Are you sure it’s here?”
“Positive. The last time I spent the night, I fell asleep listening to a true crime podcast, and when I got up, it was gone. Your room is more sterile than an autopsy table, so it’s not like it’s lost forever.”
AJ wasn’t sure autopsy tables were known for their sterility.
She looked up at him, her face a study in impatience. “Are you going somewhere?”
He set the glass down on his bedside table, which was cleared of his chargers in preparation for his trip. “Yes.”
She stood up, brushed invisible dust from her knees, and gave a pointed glance at his open suitcase on the bed. “Deployment again? Already? Is that why you haven’t called me?”
“No.”
She folded her arms, and her eyes narrowed. “No to what?”
“Your questions.”
“You’re not being deployed, and that is not why you haven’t called me.”
“Yes.”
AJ noted her breathing was beginning to grow shallow and her nostrils flared slightly. “Where are you going?”
“California.”
The tone in her voice held a forced casual quality as she tilted her head to the right. “Why?”
“My mom’s getting married.”
Emory’s face rearranged itself into a combination of shock and anger. “Your mom’s wedding? You never told me your mom was engaged.” The accusation held the weight of a missed anniversary or birthday.
Interpersonal talks were out of AJ’s depth.
He didn’t understand them. He didn’t want to have this conversation.
He didn’t want to have any relationship conversation, but especially not the one that required an elaborate emotional performance playing a role he had never auditioned for. “It’s recent.”
“How recent?!” she demanded.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, typed in her iCloud credentials, which he still had from when she’d lost her phone six months ago and made him set up her new one, and navigated to the “Find My” app.
Two green dots, side by side, pulsed on the map about twenty feet from where they stood.
He held out the screen. “Your AirPods are both outside, probably in your car.”
Emory’s expression curdled, going from confusion to embarrassment to a sharp, defensive anger in under three seconds. “Did you just track me without my permission?!”
He considered the question. “I tracked your AirPods. You asked me to help you find them.”
“That’s not the point!” she said, her voice rising in volume. “You can’t just go into people’s data!”
“I set up your password,” he said, flatly. “I told you to change it, you said you wanted to keep it because you always forget your passwords.”
“Fuck you, AJ. Can you hear yourself? I come over here because I lost something, and you violate my privacy.” She clapped her hands together in mock applause. “Bravo. You really know how to make a girl feel special.”
This was the part of the script where he was supposed to apologize or at least scramble together some kind of emotional auto-reply, but AJ had never been fluent in that dialect. He stood silent, letting her fill the void with her own fury. She didn’t disappoint.
“You know, for almost a year, I thought I could get you to open up. I thought I could be the one who made you…” She trailed off, searching for a word, then spat it out with disgust, “Normal.”
He didn’t take offense. He couldn’t. It would be the equivalent of being offended at unexpected data set—surprising, but ultimately just information.
She took a step toward him, her jaw clenched.
“You’ve been home for two weeks, and you haven’t even texted me!
And then, you didn’t even invite me to your mom’s wedding.
Who does that? Who just...doesn’t even mention it?
If you don’t take me to California, to your mom’s wedding with you, then we’re done. I’m serious. That’s it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?” A tiny spark of hope flickered in her eye.
“Okay. We’re done.”
Her jaw dropped. “Are you fucking serious?! Just like that?!”
“You gave me an ultimatum.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of compromise? That’s what people do in relationships.”
“We’re not in a relationship,” he clarified for the record. “We never were.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“How can you say that?”
“You’ve been seeing other men the entire time we’ve seen each other.”
Her jaw dropped, then closed, then dropped again. Maybe she didn’t know that he knew she’d been seeing other people. He didn’t care because they weren’t in a relationship.
For a moment, she stared at him, really stared, as if trying to see a soul through layers of cloudy glass. “Is that it? After everything…that’s all you have to say to me?”
He nodded.
She shook her head, a furious laugh escaping her lips. “Unbelievable. You’re a robot, you know that? An actual fucking robot.”
He didn’t argue. He’d been called worse.
She spun on her heel, stomped down the hallway, and snatched her boots by the door. Her parting shot echoed with the satisfaction of a judge banging a gavel. “You’re going to die alone, AJ. I hope you know that.”
He didn’t flinch. If anything, the thought brought a muted relief. Alone was easy. Alone was predictable.
He waited until she’d slammed the door, then thumbed the lock on his phone, sealing the house with a satisfyingly mechanical click. He listened to her car engine rev, then fade into the distance.
Without even thinking about it, his finger tapped over the Instagram icon and brought up Poppy’s page.
In the past, when things had ended with women he’d been involved with, he’d taken a few months to himself to reset.
To get back to a baseline of well-being and center himself.
Typically, he was drained and exhausted from the energy it had taken from him to maintain even the baseline of what he’d had to be just to have any companionship.
But he had no desire for any self-reflection or isolation.
It was the opposite. He wanted to immerse himself in Poppy.
He wanted to find out everything about the woman.
What she smelled like, what her mannerisms were, was she right-handed or left-handed, did she have a security blanket growing up, what was her biggest fear or insecurity, what were the gestures and idiosyncrasies that made her uniquely her.
The pattern of her breathing, the gait of her walk, the cadence of her speech.
When she told stories, did she talk with her hands?
When she ate something that tasted bad, did she ask other people to taste it?
When she watched scary movies, did she close her eyes at the scary parts?
He wanted to know everything that made her who she was.
Alone time was the last thing he wanted. He wanted Poppy time, and a lot of it.