Chapter 7 #2
But right now, standing in this tomb with my blonde hair and my empty kitchen and Saul Bennett six feet away looking at me like I’m something worth saving, all I feel is erased.
“Thank you,” I say. “For staying. During all of it.”
“Get some sleep,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And then he’s gone.
The door clicks shut.
I stand there staring at it like maybe if I stare hard enough he’ll come back.
He doesn’t.
I remember to lock it. Deadbolt. Chain. The sounds of safety that don’t feel safe at all.
I’m alone.
For the first time since this started, I’m completely, utterly alone.
The silence has weight. Texture. Like the beige is actively swallowing me whole.
I walk to the fridge. Open it. There’s milk, butter, eggs. Bread on the counter. Basic things. Survival things.
Not baking things.
And taped to the fridge door, a piece of paper with phone numbers.
Saul’s is first. His name in neat slanted handwriting. A cell number and below it, a local number for the hotel where he’s staying.
Two ways to reach him. In case one doesn’t work.
I peel the paper off. Hold it in my hands.
This is it. My lifeline. One piece of paper with one man’s phone number and the promise that he’s ten minutes away.
I put it back. Smooth the tape down carefully.
Then I walk to the bathroom.
I don’t mean to look in the mirror again, but I’m me. I specialize in self-inflicted emotional wounds and poor impulse control.
Blonde hair. Shorter than I’ve ever worn it. My mother’s color, gone.
The thought breaks me.
I sink down onto the bathroom floor, back against the tub, knees pulled to my chest. The tiles are cold through my jeans. The light’s too bright. Everything’s wrong.
And finally, finally, I let myself cry.
Not pretty crying. Not cinematic crying. The ugly kind. Snot and hiccups and sounds that come from somewhere deep and feral.
I cry for my apartment. For the empty chocolate box and the cookie containers and the kitchen that smelled like butter and sugar and obsession.
I cry for my name. For Stevie Reeves who noticed too much and loved too hard and couldn’t stop watching a man eat pasta even though she absolutely should have looked away.
I cry for Dario.
For his dark eyes and his careful hands and the way he smiled at me in that courtroom like I was doing something brave instead of something that destroyed us both.
I try to remember his eyes. Almost black. The kind that made you forget survival instincts and credit scores. The kind that made you think yes, destroy my life, I’m flexible about career paths.
But it’s already fuzzy. Already fading at the edges.
I’m losing him and that’s bullshit because I cataloged everything. I could describe his napkin folds, his wine-holding technique, the exact angle of his jaw when annoyed, but his eyes are going soft in my memory?
My brain is a broken filing cabinet that only works when it’s inappropriate.
“Please,” I whisper to no one. To the beige tiles and the florescent lighting and the universe that keeps taking things from me. “Please don’t let me forget.”
But there’s no answer.
Just Beth Taylor, alone in a bathroom that smells like industrial cleaner, crying for a man she barely knew and a life she’ll never get back.
Eventually the crying slows. Quiets into something smaller.
I notice things because that’s what I do. The grout is surprisingly clean. The toilet paper is the cheap kind that disintegrates if you look at it wrong. There’s a water stain on the ceiling shaped like Florida.
I pull myself up. Splash water on my face. My eyes are red and swollen and the blonde stranger in the mirror looks like she’s been through some shit.
She has.
I walk back to the living room. Stand in the middle of this beige nowhere and try to figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to do now.
My body knows.
My body has ideas.
I’m wired and exhausted and my skin feels too tight and there’s this buzzing under my ribs that needs out.
I walk to the bedroom.
The bed is unfamiliar but it’s horizontal and that’s all that matters right now.
I lie down. Stare at the ceiling. Count to ten.
My hand slides under my waistband before I consciously decide.
This is healthy coping, I tell myself. Very therapeutic. Processing trauma through physical release. My therapist would...
Actually, my therapist would have so many questions. So many forms to fill out. Possibly a direct line to a psychiatric facility.
I touch myself anyway.
Think about Dario first. His eyes across the courtroom. The way he nodded at me.
Do what you need to do. I’ll be okay.
His hands on my arm that night. Steady. Warm. The way he stayed when he should have run.
What those hands would feel like everywhere else.
My breath hitches.
Then Saul. Because apparently I’m an equal-opportunity disaster.
His voice saying my real name. Stevie. Like it mattered. Like I mattered.
The way he stood against that wall watching me lose my hair, my name, my entire self, and didn’t look away.
Those forearms. Those hands with their specific calluses. The way he’d grip a steering wheel, a jaw, a throat, an ass.
Then my mind drifts to Enzo’s perfect ass. The way he looked as he ate my cookies. His mouth.
I come hard and fast and absolutely silently because the walls are thin and Beth Taylor probably doesn’t do this.
Beth Taylor probably has a meditation app and drinks herbal tea and processes emotions in healthy, socially acceptable ways.
But I’m not Beth Taylor yet.
Right now, in this moment, I’m still Stevie Reeves. Still the woman who gets off thinking about men she shouldn’t want. Still incapable of making good choices or being anyone other than exactly who I am.
I lie there in the dark, breathing hard, my hand still between my legs.
“Hi, I’m Beth Taylor,” I whisper to the ceiling. “I definitely don’t masturbate thinking about mobsters and marshals. I’m extremely normal and very well-adjusted.”
The ceiling doesn’t believe me.
I don’t believe me either.
I get up. Finally change into the soft t-shirt I packed. Climb into the unfamiliar bed with its unfamiliar sheets.
In the dark, I say it again. “Beth Taylor.”
It still tastes wrong.
But tomorrow Saul will come back. Bring groceries. Help me figure out how to be whoever I’m supposed to become.
Tonight I just survived. With my hand between my legs and three men in my head and absolutely zero shame about any of it.
I close my eyes and think about Dario’s smile. And Saul’s hands. Enzo’s rough edges. And the fact that I’m supposed to be Beth Taylor but all I know how to be is Stevie Reeves with bad priorities and worse timing.
Tomorrow I’ll be Beth.
Tonight I’m still me.