Sadie
I stay sitting on the bed after the door clicks shut behind him, mostly so I can take stock of what’s h appended this evening.
A man I helped in a wreck almost two weeks ago just made me feel like I was the only woman in the world. He took the things I hated most about my past, and made me forget about them, even just for a few minutes. And he did it all without wanting anything back.
I stand up, letting the blanket fall away as I grab my panties off the floor and I put them on. I find my tank top inside out and I right it before pulling it over my head. I fold my jeans and cream sweater and put them in the plastic drawers, because I'm not getting dressed again tonight.
My hair is a disaster. I don't fix it. I go to the small sink in the bathroom and run the water cold, splashing it on my face.
I check my sugar. One forty. Fine.
I check my phone. No missed calls. No texts. It's ten forty-seven and I’m on a late shift at the clinic tomorrow, so I can have a lie in.
I sit at my kitchen counter on the one stool I own and I put my hands flat on the laminate and breathe.
I don't know what to do with myself. I’m still full from the grilled cheese sandwich. I don’t feel tired. I would put clean sheets on the bed, only I don't have a second set. I stand up and fold the blanket.
I snag my book from beneath the lamp and open it to my marked page, then put the kettle on because I read the same paragraph several times before giving up.
That's when I hear footsteps in the hall.
Someone is on my floor. I know the sound of my neighbors now, the woman in 4A who walks with a shuffle, the man in 4D who's always on his phone. These footsteps are neither. They're even. Measured. They stop outside my door.
My stomach does a little flip, and this time it doesn’t make me angry.
Nick came back.
That's the first thing I think. He came back.
Whatever it was with his father, he handled it, he came back, and I am going to open the door and he's going to be standing there in his black sweater looking impossible unbothered and handsome all at once, and I'm going to let him in and we’re going to spend the rest of the night together doing sinful things that make me feel alive.
Three knocks. Even spacing. Not hard.
I go to the door and pull it open without looking through the peephole.
My stomach fills with butterflies and my brain is saying Nick Nick Nick in time with my pulse.
The door swings open with the blanket's warmth still on my skin and my mother's cardigan wrapped around me, and I say, "You're back already, I didn't think—"
Jason is standing in my hall.
He's in a brown jacket I bought him two Christmases ago. His hair is longer than it was. He's looking at me with the expression he always used when he'd been waiting for me to come home and I was late. Angry and accusatory and belligerent.
My hand is still on the door.
My mouth is still open around the last word of a sentence I didn't finish.
My lungs have stopped mid breath and now I’m not sure if they need to inflate or deflate first.
"Sadie," he says.
I can't speak.
"Who was that man leaving your apartment?"
His foot is already in the door.
He pushes.
The door swings wide, my hand slipping off the edge of it and I stumble back a step.
He's coming in and I haven't told him he can.
His hand is on my chest pushing me farther into my own apartment until my back hits the edge of the kitchen counter, and the last thing I see before the door swings shut behind him is the empty hallway.