Chapter 4 Ethan #2
“It’s nothing,” She takes a few steps forward, trying to herd me away from whatever upset her. My feet stay planted firmly in place.
“Is he back there? Did he hurt you?”
“No, he’s gone. He just ruined some of my things on his way out,” she says, adding, “It’s not a big deal.”
But it’s too late. I’m already striding off towards the room. When I step inside, I stop dead in my tracks, taken aback by the mess. The room is mostly empty. No bed, no dresser, no nightstands. Just one empty bookshelf on the far wall and a huge pile of… well, I’m not really sure what.
“What is all this?” I ask Margot, who’s standing right behind me.
“My books,” she answers quietly. “He tore them all up.”
Taking another step inside, I survey the mess.
Book pages are torn from their spines and scattered in heaps on the ground.
Amidst all the white pages and black text, an occasional dash of color sticks out.
Those are the mangled covers. Some are aliens, others are pastel flowers or couples.
She must’ve had over a hundred books, and they’re all ruined.
“Why would he do this?” I turn to ask her.
“He was angry that I wouldn’t talk to him or tell him where I was this weekend.”
Running a hand through my hair, I look around the room. “What about the rest of it? Where’s all the furniture?”
She shrugs, looking tired and defeated. “He took it all.”
I open my mouth to speak again, but Margot cuts me off. “It’s fine, Ethan. I don’t care about any of the furniture. I can buy new stuff. Jeremy knew the only possession I really cared about was my books. I guess that’s why he took his anger out on them.”
“We should call the police. This is destruction of property.”
Margot just shakes her head. “I don’t want to do that. I just want to move on from this whole situation.”
“Okay,” I grit out, tempted to call them anyway. Jeremy shouldn’t get away with this. I can tell Margot is destroyed by it, even if she isn’t willing to admit it. “Can we at least take some photos, in case you change your mind?”
“I guess,” she says with another small shrug.
Margot disappears for a minute while I snap some pictures of the wreckage on my phone. She returns with a trash bag in one hand and starts shoving handfuls of paper inside.
I’ve never seen her like this. She seems broken. Hollow. A shell of the smartass woman I’ve come to know over the past two years.
She plucks one paper out of the carnage, stiffening as she reads it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
Without a word or so much as a glance in my direction, she passes it to me. Scrawled across the page in thick, black marker are the words Have fun sleeping with your book boyfriends tonight, bitch.
A quiet sniffle echoes through the room, but she doesn’t stop grabbing fistfuls of pages and cramming them inside the bag.
“Margot,” I say softly.
“It’s fine,” she insists, sniffling again.
“It’s not fine. This is seriously fucked up.”
Her head whips in my direction. “You think I don’t know that, Ethan?” she snaps.
Without thinking, I march forward and pull her into a tight hug against my chest. A sob breaks free from her chest, making her whole body heave against mine.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, stroking a hand over her back. “It’ll be okay.”
We stand there like that for several minutes. Her crying, and me doing my best to comfort her. Is it the right thing to do with my employee? Who knows. But right now, Margot needs someone to lean on, and as far as I can tell, there’s no one else.
Eventually, she starts to calm down and pull away. I release her, and we both take a step backward.
“It’s not the books,” she says, wiping the wetness from her cheeks. “I mean, I loved the books, but I can replace them. I just can’t believe he did this.”
We silently work our way around the room, shoving pages and pages of destroyed books into the trash bag until it’s overflowing. When we’re done, I tie it off and set it by the door.
“You can’t sleep here tonight,” I say. “You can stay at my place until you get this straightened out.”
“Ethan…” she starts to object, but I cut her off.
“There isn’t even a bed here, Margot.”
“I can sleep in the chair in the living room.”
“You’re not sleeping in that chair,” I say firmly. “What if he comes back? If he was angry enough to do this, he might be angry enough to try something else stupid.”
Margot’s teeth clamp down on her bottom lip. She releases it with a sigh and declares, “I can get a hotel room for the night. The building manager should be able to change the locks tomorrow while I’m at work.”
“Stop being so stubborn. You’ve seen my house. I have more than enough room to spare. It wouldn’t be any imposition at all.”
“Okay,” she mumbles eventually. “Thank you.”
I can’t help but shake my head and bite back a laugh at her unwillingness to let someone help her. I’ve always known she’s stubborn, but this is a whole other level.
There’s a door to my right, presumably her closet. I walk over and flick on the light, relieved to find it still half full. At least he didn’t shred all of her clothes, too.
“Do you have a suitcase somewhere?” I ask, turning back to Margot.
She walks over and takes inventory of the closet. “Jeremy must have used it to pack up his stuff.”
So he stole that too. Perfect.
I don’t know if I’d rather punch the guy in the face or call the police and let them handle this. Right now, I’m leaning toward the first option.
Margot walks out of the bedroom and returns with another trash bag.
She starts plucking items off hangers and stuffing them inside.
It must kill her. Margot is the most methodical person I’ve ever met.
She probably packs her suitcase like the TSA might randomly assign her a letter grade at the security checkpoint.
She most fucking certainly is not the type of person who shoves their belongings in a trash bag and calls it a day.
There’s not much I can do to help, so I stand there holding the trash bag open for her. It’s a job the floor could do just as well.
After she’s placed a week’s worth of clothing in the bag, she glances around like she’s looking for something.
When she looks down, she finds the answer to her unspoken question.
Lying in a heap under all of her clothes is a pile of bras and underwear.
Her ex just dumped them all onto the ground when he stole the dresser.
Margot and I have had our share of awkward moments this weekend.
She’s seen my porn history, for god’s sake.
Somehow, none of it feels as awkward as standing quietly in her closet while Margot picks lacy bras and panties off the floor and places them inside the trash bag I’m holding.
Maybe because I know that these are the panties she’ll be wearing to work this week.
Presumably, they’re the same panties she always wears to work.
For some reason, my dick has a completely inappropriate reaction to this. Suddenly, I’m very happy that I have a garbage bag to hold in front of my crotch.
I’ve never thought about Margot that way.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Margot.
She’s funny, smart, and pretty. There’s something mysterious—maybe even alluring—about the contrast of her sharp, sarcastic mouth and her reserved disposition.
But we aren’t looking for the same thing, and more importantly, she’s always been taken.
Now that she’s not, I guess my dick got the memo and went rogue.
Chill, buddy. This woman is not for us.
“Okay, I think that’s it,” she says, topping off the bag with a pajama set with cats all over it.
I clear my throat and nod.
Without another word, we make our way out of the apartment.
Margot locks the door behind her, even though there isn’t much left to steal.
On the way to the parking lot, I toss the bag of shredded books into the nearby dumpster.
Part of me worries about Margot driving herself over to my house.
Who knows if Jeremy is angry or stupid enough to mess with her car somehow.
But when I breach the topic with Margot, she quickly shuts it down.
“He wouldn’t do that.”
She didn’t think he would tear up all her books either…
I can tell she isn’t going to budge on this, so I watch with bated breath as she starts up her little gray car and backs out of the parking spot.
When we get home, she doesn’t want dinner. She doesn’t want to talk. She doesn’t even want help carrying that sad bag of clothing to the guest room.
So, I watch her disappear up the stairs, hoping that a good night’s sleep might fix whatever’s broken inside of her.