Chapter 9
chapter
nine
SHAY
“You look tired,” Eames said when I got to work the next day. “Do you have insomnia again?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Just binge-reading too much.” It wasn’t technically a lie. He didn’t need to know I was binge-reading the same text, over and over again, strung out on a self-professed criminal.
Eames nodded and I shrugged into my seat, trying to use the universe as a distraction.
Failing.
Criminal.
What did that mean? Crimes ranged from jaywalking to mass murder.
Maybe he was a serial killer.
Once again, I knew I should block him. Instead, I opened the app and stared at the photo he’d sent.
The longer I looked at it, the more I discovered.
Like his fingers were long and thick, and veins spiraled on the back of his hand.
I could somewhat make out he had tattoos, but shadow hid the definition.
The blood on his knuckles was bright. Fresh.
Maybe I should stay away from him. Maybe he was right.
I chewed my bottom lip.
What was wrong with me that I liked it?
I worked up until about lunch, when my computer stalled again. I opened the task manager to force restart it, when I noticed an unknown program running in the background.
It wasn’t unusual to have something running in the background. We have some of the most powerful computers in the country for that reason. We have to run multiple models at a time, and some of them take weeks to finish.
But this was taking up at least fifty percent of my computing power.
“Are any of you running a model titled GCS?” I asked.
A chorus of nos rang out from Eames and Olly.
Weird.
I force quit, and then the rest of the day passed without event.
Eames and Olly gave me a ride home, and, since Lithie would be heading to the club tonight, I turned down an offer to hate-watch some reality show in favor of a night alone with my thoughts—my thoughts, definitely not the come-covered photo a certain stalker sent me.
“Honey, I’m home,” I called out.
I set my keys down on the counter next to a vase of fresh flowers, probably for Lithie. There must have been two dozen red roses, but I wasn’t a huge roses fan. I preferred wildflowers.
“My love, my heart, I haven’t seen you in ages,” she called back, coming into the living room, arms wide.
“Whose heart are you breaking this week?” I asked, gesturing to the flowers.
She shrugged. “They’re not for me. You have a secret admirer.”
My stomach did a somersault. Butterflies flapped and zinged in my gut. No way he’d found where I lived, right? But then, he’d managed to find my social media…
I pulled the soft white card stock note from between the velvety flowers.
Thinking of you, darling.
The butterflies in my stomach petrified into rocks. The room grew smaller. I read the words over and over again. Only one person had ever called me darling. My ex, Graham.
“Who are they from?”
“My doctor,” I lied.
I wasn’t sure why I lied. It wasn’t like Graham was a secret. But then, she would ask why he was sending flowers.
And I didn’t know.
Lithie whistled. “Wow, good doctor.”
“Yeah, well…I’ve spent enough time there. Probably paid for a few mortgages.”
She reached behind me, opening the front closet door to grab her coat.
“Good point,” she said, shrugging into a long black trench.
While Lithie hadn’t explicitly forbidden me from going to the club, she heavily implied I should stay away. All I knew was she would be out until the morning, and whatever clothing she wore—or didn’t—was at the club.
“See you tomorrow, sis,” Lithie said, giving me a hug. I returned the hug, locking the door after her. I walked back to the flowers, fiddling with the rose, rubbing the velvet petals between my fingertips until they bruised and broke apart in my hand.
The walls of my apartment felt too small. Shrinking in on me.
So I changed into a Spider-Man pajama set with matching shorts, took a sleeping pill, and watched a trashy reality television show.
Graham screamed until his voice gave out, spit flying, face red.
“I fucking hate you. You’re a goddamn leech. You’re lucky someone like me even looked at you. Broken. Sick. A fucking worthless burden. Do you know how difficult you are to live with? I regret ever meeting you.”
I woke with a jolt.
It took me a moment to get my bearings. The memory of the last time I’d seen Graham ricocheted inside my body. My heart slammed choppy and erratic in my ears. Nightmare, some distant, rational part of my brain whispered.
My neck hurt and the TV asked if I was still watching.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch.
Nightmare.
It wasn’t real. It was over. I never had to see him again.
I could still feel it, though. Feel the memory etched inside me. I was a blobfish out of deep water. An oyster’s insides. Slippery and wrong and unsettling.
I named what I could see in the living room. A snake plant in a bubbly vase. A much too crowded bookshelf. Vintage lilac curtains.
My heart hammered.
Fuck, it wasn’t working.
This one was harder to shake. Even though I knew I was safe, I didn’t feel it.
I sighed and got off the couch and closed the short distance to our open kitchen. The neon glowing clock on the oven read 1:34. I opened the fridge, yellow light drenching the black enough for me to grab a snack.
I reached in for the premade tea we had, then paused, grabbing the chilled vodka instead. Vodka and cookie in hand, I shut the fridge and went back to the living room.
On my way out, I grabbed the vase and dumped the roses into the sink, turning on the garbage disposal. Rusty, cacophonous grinding filled the apartment and drowned out my brain.
I sat on the couch and turned the TV back on low. Thump. Thump. I tried to focus over my beating heart to the women arguing on the screen. They blurred into nothing.
The day I left Graham, I’d caught him cheating.
The texts went back years and years. Graham told her things he’d never told me, like that she didn’t need to shave—Graham always complained when I was “prickly.” Or that he couldn’t wait to eat her out—Graham had told me he “just wasn’t into it.”
The weirdest part about that day was that Graham hadn’t flipped out when I ended the relationship. He flipped when I told him we couldn’t go to my office to fetch his book. That I’d mail it. It was like he’d cared more about that fucking book than our years-long relationship.
It wasn’t even the cheating that hurt. Well, it was, but mostly it was the how. Things I’d begged from him, he gave freely to someone else.
I could feel tears piling up at the memory.
I swallowed them. They went down like thorns in my throat, scraping and getting stuck.
My heart wouldn’t slow down.
The cookie tasted like sand.
When I was first diagnosed, I found comfort in reading scholarly papers about my condition.
It somehow made it less scary and more…approachable.
It was what led to my love of academia. There was a cold comfort in seeing my daily hell reduced to numbers and statistics.
I wasn’t alone. I was part of the one point three percent.
So now I did what I hadn’t done in years, I googled my symptoms. It led me to a bunch of articles and papers on the effects of C-PTSD, which led me down a rabbit hole of the somatic effect of interpersonal violence and psychological abuse.
Abuse? I wasn’t abused.
But then I was googling it. With a morbid kind of curiosity, the kind I’d reserved only for opening up doctor’s office test results, I clicked a quiz.
Signs you’re being emotionally abused.
I set my phone down and rubbed the center of my palm with one hand, reading the questions on the screen.
This person ridicules or belittles me.
I was at his place, doing laundry, and it broke. When I went to inform him, he immediately accused me of doing something wrong. So I walked through every step, genuinely trying to see if I was wrong.
I do everything for you. No one else could put up with you like I do. You’re so broken you can’t even do the fucking laundry.
I shook his voice out of my head and continued reading.
I feel like I have to shrink around this person.
I feel like this person ignores or dismisses my feelings.
As I went one by one through the questions, old memories surfaced with a new perspective. It wasn’t just the last time that was bad—it was all bad. It wasn’t okay the way he treated me.
Add this to the list of reasons I couldn’t date someone.
How had I just let this happen?
This person threatens me physically.
I paused on that question. Graham might be mean, but he’d never hit me. Though there was one time in the beginning of our relationship. He punched a wall and I tried to help him, but he shoved me off. I fell to the ground and sprained my wrist. It was my fault, though. I should have left him alone.
I finished the quiz.
It is highly likely you are in an abusive environment. Please seek help—
Lithie’s cat dashed into the room with a case of midnight zoomies, knocking a book off an end table.
“Jesus Christ, Stroop!”
Stroop ran under my legs, then threw himself against the couch, clawing his way up the side like Mulan on the giant pole.
“I’m doing serious things here, Stroop,” I said. “Making important self-discoveries. This vibe is not it.”
Stroop reached the top, then jumped off, running down the hall.
I grabbed the bottle of vodka and took a drink, then found another quiz, and another, and then it was three in the morning. I was no less clear on anything. I knew Graham was mean, but abusive? I think I would have known if I was in an abusive relationship, right?
Panic crawled up my legs and arms, and the corners of my eyes grew fuzzy. I was tipsy, but still too sober for whatever the fuck this was. I took a giant gulp of vodka, then sent a message.
What kind of criminal are you? Outside of stalking, of course.
The black letters of my response seemed to bleed in the white pixel. I felt exposed. Stupid. I was a grown woman with nightmares, who couldn’t get back to sleep because of it.
My brain startled at the three undulating dots that appeared on the screen.
Void was awake.