Chapter 16
Marin
I haven’t slept in two days.
Not because of the house, though the house deserves its share of blame—every pipe groans, every floorboard has an opinion, and something in the walls scratches at three a.m. like it’s trying to get out.
No. The reason I haven’t slept is Charles.
Charles, who is still in a heap at the bottom of the basement stairs where gravity and I left him, and who has decided that the appropriate response to this situation is to moan.
Not scream. Not yell. Moan. Low, steady, constant—like a dishwasher stuck on the rinse cycle.
Every forty-five minutes, give or take. I’ve timed it.
I’ve actually timed it, which tells you everything you need to know about where I am mentally.
I come downstairs with coffee I don’t remember making and stand over him.
My ankle throbs on every step. The gash on my shin has scabbed over into something that looks like modern art and catches on everything—jeans, blankets, the edge of the basement stairs like the house wants a second taste.
But I’m healing. Slowly. Dramatically. Much like this relationship.
“Charles.”
He groans.
“Charles, I need you to understand something. I am trying to save this relationship. But if you don’t stop making that sound, I am going to lose my mind, and then neither of us gets what we want.”
He opens one eye. Bloodshot. Accusatory. He’s got a bruise across his forehead from where he met the wall on the way down, and his left arm is cradled against his ribs like he’s holding himself together. Which, to be fair, he might be.
“I think something’s broken,” he says.
“Something is always broken, Charles. That’s why we’re here.”
He closes the eye. The moaning resumes before I reach the top of the stairs.
I pour a second coffee. Or maybe it’s a third. The mug says LIVE LAUGH LOVE, which came with the house, and which I keep using because irony is all I have left.
I sit at the kitchen table and stare at the window.
Somewhere across the road, Mrs. Mather is in her house, probably pressing a glass to the wall like a Cold War spy in a quilted vest. I thought I heard some noise last night.
Moaning. Maybe screaming? She said it like she was making conversation.
She was not making conversation. She was building a case.
That was two days ago, and I can still feel her eyes cataloging the entryway over my shoulder.
This is what I’m working with. A boyfriend who sounds like a broken radiator, a neighbor with the hearing of a bat and the discretion of a tabloid journalist, and a body that’s held together by spite and ibuprofen.
I called Luke about soundproofing. At the time, it felt proactive.
Forward-thinking. The kind of move a woman in control makes.
I need a proper workspace. Client calls.
Virtual meetings. I sounded professional.
Polished. Completely normal. Never mind that I don’t technically have clients right now.
Or an office. Or a job. But Luke doesn’t know that, and the lie came out so smoothly I almost believed it myself.
Then I said “sooner the better” and had to walk it back like an amateur.
He’s coming tomorrow. Which means tonight, Charles needs to be quiet. Which means I need more sedatives, or a miracle, or both.
From the basement, another moan rises through the floorboards. Long. Mournful. The kind of sound that carries.
The kind of sound that carries across a road to a woman with bionic hearing and no hobbies.
Less than a week. I’ve been here less than a week and I already have a neighbor building a prosecution, a boyfriend who won’t shut up, and a handyman coming tomorrow to soundproof the room where I’m keeping the boyfriend who won’t shut up.
My ankle is the size of a grapefruit, my shin looks like I lost a fight with a cheese grater, and I haven’t washed my hair since New Jersey.
This is not where we should be by now. Charles and I were supposed to be talking by now. Making progress. Having the kind of raw, honest conversations that lead to breakthroughs and eventually, ring shopping.
Instead, he moans and I drink bad coffee out of a mug that mocks me.
I rinse the mug. Set it upside down on the rack. Limp back to the basement door and listen.
Silence.
Finally.
I allow myself one breath. One moment of something that almost resembles calm.
Then the moaning starts again.
I settle for the sedatives.
But first, I have to drag him upstairs.