Chapter Sixteen Soraya
Chapter Sixteen
Soraya
Life will be hard whether you dance or not. So dance anyway.
—Rules for Witches
As they brought the last of the boxes into her apartment, Soraya was overwhelmed by gratitude. She’d been overwhelmed by the feeling that she had lost her entire safety net, her whole network, in one fell swoop, and here other people had rallied to help her.
It was humbling, honestly. Particularly because she had spent so many years being insular and not reaching out to anyone outside of the church.
Not that Nora had been nice to her back then, it was just . . . it was just she hadn’t been any better.
Daisy was always nice to everybody. If anybody deserved to hook up with Zach Woods, it was Daisy.
For some reason, that thought made Soraya’s heart beat faster.
Daisy was free to do what she wanted.
Soraya had never been free in that same way.
It’s wrong anyway.
That thought, desperate and coming from deep within her, was the old version of herself clawing its way into her consciousness to try to find a foothold.
But it didn’t have the impact it used to.
Well, life was complicated, which was something she had never given much credit to before, and people made the best choices they could in the middle of all of it. Maybe she would hook up with somebody. Maybe.
What would that be like? It was a weird thought to have, standing in this new apartment that had some of the pieces from her old life but also felt entirely new.
Much like her.
There were still a lot of old pieces inside her. Old feelings, old fears.
Yet there was this desperate need for something new. For something that felt good. Better. At least this felt powerful.
She’d been sad earlier, packing up all her things, but now that she thought about David coming into the house and finding half the stuff gone, she felt empowered.
She had taken control of a bad situation. He had been trying to force her hand, and she hadn’t allowed it. So there was that.
“Dinner should be here soon,” Nora said, popping in from the kitchen. They had decided to get delivery and christen the new apartment. Sam and Zach had helped move everything in, and then Nora had shooed them along, telling both of them not to worry, because they would find a way to get home.
“I’ll just take an Uber,” Nora had said.
Which was how they were getting food too.
Soraya never ordered delivery. Ever. She always did the cooking.
It was part of her job, part of David’s expectations.
She couldn’t retrofit it now and say that she hadn’t wanted to do it, or that she’d found it unfair; she hadn’t.
She’d enjoyed her life as his wife, and she’d enjoyed keeping their house and cooking their meals.
It was only she’d never realized that with the way their life was arranged, he was essentially her boss.
He could let her go and rescind every benefit she’d had from her job. Leave her with nothing, which was what he’d done.
She’d kept everything clean, and she’d done it for him in a way she hadn’t fully realized. Because the house had always been his, when she’d thought it had been theirs.
This place would be hers. At least for a while. She could put what she wanted in it; she could leave it untidy if she felt like it.
She could order takeout.
It certainly wouldn’t be anyone else’s decision. That sent a thrill through her. She hadn’t expected to get a thrill out of this.
She’d gone straight from her dad’s house to her husband’s house. No place had ever been hers. She had always lived according to the standards of the people around her.
This was about her.
The little space looked cute too. The couch and love seat fit, even if just barely, around the coffee table that had been there when she’d arrived.
The mantel had the candles with all their wedding rings on it, and she had brought a hand-tatted rug that her grandmother had made, which made the space look cozy.
The kitchen was full to the brim with all her baking paraphernalia, and it was just hers.
Hers.
“Oh, the delivery’s here,” Nora said, looking at her phone.
“I’ll get it,” Soraya said.
Because this was her new place. It felt good to get delivery that she’d ordered just for herself. It was such a small, silly thing.
But she had been denied a whole lot of small, silly things in her life.
She had jumped into adulthood with both feet and had never really done the young-adult thing.
She wouldn’t have chosen this. But here she was.
She felt like the carefree early-twenties woman she had never been.
Just for a moment. Just for a moment, totally unencumbered by anything.
She swept out the door and walked down the narrow hall, going down the staircase and opening the door. There was a person getting out of their car, who held up a bag of food. “Nora?”
“Yep,” she said.
She didn’t even feel the need to explain. It wasn’t a lie, it was Nora’s order. But in the past, she might’ve felt like she had to add a big, long description so it could all be strictly honest. But not now. Just not right now.
She took the bag of food and started back up the stairs, when she heard the door open a few feet away and stopped.
It was the apartment across from hers. Probably the footsteps she had heard last night.
A man stepped out, taller than she was by quite a bit, his dark hair pushed back off his forehead.
His eyes were a startling blue, his jaw square, shoulders broad.
He was maybe five years older than she was and . . . beautiful.
Stunning.
Yes, she had been around Zach Woods all day, who was Hollywood beautiful if ever that archetype existed.
This guy was real-world glorious. That made him feel slightly more dangerous.
Because Zach felt like he was on the other side of the silver screen even when he was standing right in front of you.
This guy was like . . . there. There and gorgeous and . . .
“You must be the person who just moved in today?”
She blinked. He was talking to her.
“Yes.” She was suddenly very aware of the fact that her left hand was bare. “Yes, I am. My name is . . . Soraya. Soraya Nichols. I work at Lady’s Mantle.”
“Nice,” he said. “I’m Declan. I own Dice and Dragons, just downstairs.”
“Oh. I’ve never . . . I’ve never been in there.
” That was a weird thing to say. Tell the guy she had never been to his business.
“What kind of things do you have in the store?” She tightened her hold on the brown paper bag.
She was practicing talking to him. Practicing talking to a new person.
That was all. Was she flirting? No. She didn’t even know how to flirt.
She couldn’t muster up any guilt over finding him hot even though she was still married. Not given all the issues with David.
David might not have been physically unfaithful to you . . .
No. Maybe not. But this wasn’t being physically unfaithful either. She was just talking to her neighbor. The neighbor next to her place that was just hers. Part of her new life that was just hers.
“Board games,” he said. “Tabletop.”
“Tabletop?”
“Like Dungeons & Dragons. That’s where the name of the store comes from.”
She blinked. It was on the tip of her tongue to say she’d heard Dungeons & Dragons was demonic. Then she didn’t.
She worked at Lady’s Mantle, after all.
She’d also possibly put a hex on her husband.
Maybe, just maybe, she needed to stop labeling things when she didn’t actually know anything about them, only knew what other people had said.
“I don’t really know anything about that,” she said.
“Come into the store sometime. I can tell you about it.”
“Oh. My . . . my kids would probably like that.”
Why had she brought her kids up? He didn’t seem put off by it. “Kids do like the store.”
“Well, they’re teenagers.”
His smile slipped just slightly, a line creasing between his brows. “You don’t look old enough to have teenagers.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I regret to inform you that I am. I’m . . . Sorry, you didn’t ask for my biography, and I need to bring my takeout inside. But I’m getting divorced. So I’m here now. Maybe Dungeons & Dragons would get my kids to speak to me again.”
He frowned. “Oh. That sounds . . . not great.”
“It’s not. I’m the bad guy in this scenario, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t look like the bad guy either.”
“What if I am?” she asked.
“Somehow I doubt it. I’m pretty sure you didn’t move into an apartment above a store you don’t even own for fun. Or make your kids mad at you just for laughs. We just met, but I kind of get that vibe.”
He was a stranger and giving her more credit, seeing her more clearly, than people who’d known her for years.
People who could only see in black and white, in sets of rules.
She’d been that person until she’d been shoved so firmly out of the black-and-white space she’d been forced to wade in the gray.
It felt good to have someone see her.
“Enjoy your dinner,” he said.
She felt sorry to see him go.
“Thanks. I will. I’ll definitely come into the store.” She turned away from him, maybe a little bit too quickly. Then she walked into the apartment and closed the door behind her, putting her hand on her chest.
“What?” Nora asked.
“My across-the-hall neighbor is . . . handsome.” That seemed insipid, but also safer than what she wanted to say.
“Oooh.” Nora’s eyes went round. “Handsome across-the-hall neighbor. How convenient.”
“Well, I don’t . . . I would have no idea what to . . . I don’t . . . I can’t think about that. I had a good conversation with him. I maybe even flirted with him a little bit. But that’s all it’s going to be.”
“Oh, but you deserve to scratch that itch,” Nora said.
“I didn’t say I had an itch. Sex is fine.” She sniffed.
“Sex is fine?” Daisy asked.
“Yeah,” Soraya countered. “It’s fine. I like it. Mostly. But this is part of what offends me, honestly. It’s not good enough to go breaking a family up over.”