28.
I woke up sometime after eleven with one arm stretched across the empty side of Grant's bed.
For the first few seconds, I didn't open my eyes.
The room was quiet in a way it hadn't been for most of the last two weeks, without Grant moving around downstairs or the shower running in the bathroom or the occasional sound of him taking a call in his office.
Even when he tried to give me space, I'd always been vaguely aware that he was somewhere in the house.
This morning, I'd practically forced him out of it.
He'd been dressed for work before seven, standing near the foot of the bed in his slacks and an undershirt while trying to convince me that canceling another day wouldn't matter.
Apparently, Grant thought owning the practice meant he could simply decide not to show up indefinitely, and apparently, I was supposed to ignore the number of times I'd heard him on the phone rescheduling appointments over the last two weeks.
I'd finally told him that if he didn't go to work, I was going to start feeling guilty on top of everything else I already felt, which wasn't particularly fair but had accomplished what asking nicely hadn't.
He'd reluctantly finished getting dressed, made me promise to call if I felt sick, dizzy, nauseous, unusually tired, or "anything that doesn't feel right," then repeated himself downstairs as though the instructions might've changed during the walk from his bedroom to the front door.
Two weeks.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.
I'd missed two weeks of law school.
That thought had become one of the first things waiting for me every time I woke up.
Somewhere across the city, Professor Bennett had continued teaching whether I was sitting in her classroom or not.
Assignments had been given. Readings had piled up.
Everyone who'd started alongside me had spent ten more days learning how to be law students while I'd spent most of them sleeping in Grant's bed with the curtains closed.
I'd emailed my professors vague explanations about a medical emergency and received extensions I was already anxious about using, but every additional day made returning feel more impossible.
It had taken me long enough to convince myself that I belonged there in the first place. Now I was going to walk back into those classrooms already behind.
My phone was facedown on the nightstand. I reached for it and immediately saw two messages from Grant waiting beneath the time.
The second had come twenty minutes later.
Of course he could.
I imagined him abandoning his office in the middle of the day, driving all the way home, making sure I ate and then rushing back to see whichever patients hadn't already been moved around because of me. The thought made guilt settle heavily in my stomach.
My body had changed more noticeably than the bruise.
I'd stepped on Grant's scale yesterday after realizing how loose one of my shirts felt and discovered I'd lost ten pounds since the night Rodney attacked me.
Ten pounds in two weeks. A few months ago, I would've stared at that number with something dangerously close to pride.
I would've turned sideways in the mirror to see whether my stomach looked flatter, tried on something tight to see how differently it fit and probably spent the rest of the day feeling accomplished over a smaller number.
Now I understood exactly where those ten pounds had gone.
There were days when Grant could convince me to eat because he sat beside me long enough that refusing became more exhausting than chewing.
Other days, food made my stomach turn before I even tasted it.
Yesterday I'd eaten half a piece of toast sometime after noon and several bites of the chicken Grant made for dinner before telling him I was full.
He hadn't argued with me. He'd only looked at what remained on my plate for a little too long before clearing it away.
I caught my reflection as I crossed toward the bathroom and stopped.
There was nothing satisfying about looking smaller right now.
I just felt ugly.
Actually, I felt worse than ugly. Ugly was something I could fix with concealer and a decent outfit. This felt like something underneath my skin.
I'd avoided giving it a name because naming things made them harder to dismiss, but standing in Grant's bathroom with absolutely nowhere I needed to be and no desire to do anything with the day ahead of me, I couldn't think of a more accurate word than depressed.
I turned the shower on.
Steam began gathering against the glass while I stripped off the shirt and underwear I'd slept in, leaving them in a pile near the vanity instead of putting them into the hamper less than three feet away.
I noticed that too. Lately I noticed all the little things I wasn't doing and still couldn't make myself care enough to do them.
The water was hotter than I expected when I stepped beneath it.
I adjusted the temperature and stood there for a while, letting it hit the top of my head and run down my face. My hair reverting back curly beneath the water, heavy against my shoulders, and I closed my eyes as droplets traveled over the tender skin near my forehead.
Eventually, standing became tiring.
There were bottles lined along the built-in shelf beside me. Grant's body wash. Mine. Shampoo. Conditioner. Everything I needed to actually shower was within reach, but I couldn't convince myself to lift my arm.
So I stood there.
Water gathered around my feet before disappearing through the drain, and I watched it until I lost track of how long I'd been there.
My thoughts didn't disappear the way I'd hoped they would.
They simply became quieter beneath the steady rush of water.
Georgetown came and went. My mother came and stayed longer.
Rodney's voice surfaced whenever I let my attention wander too far.
Reese followed him. Sometimes Grant slipped into the spaces between everything else, usually accompanied by the uncomfortable awareness that I had somehow turned his entire life upside down without ever meaning to.
Mostly, though, I was tired.
My body felt weak in a way sleep wasn't fixing. My mouth was dry despite the water running over practically every inch of me, and I knew I probably hadn't been drinking enough. There was a glass on the nightstand from last night that I'd barely touched.
I should wash my hair.
I should eat.
I should check my school email.
I should figure out when I was going back to class.
There were so many things I knew I should be doing that eventually I stopped trying to decide which one came first.
I stayed beneath the water until my fingers wrinkled.
When I finally reached up and turned the shower off, the sudden silence made the bathroom feel enormous. I stood there for another minute before I stepped onto the bath mat and wrapped a towel around my body.
It wasn't until I was halfway into the closet that I realized I hadn't washed anything.
I stopped and looked back toward the bathroom.
I'd gotten into the shower, stood beneath running water for however long, and gotten back out without touching the soap.
"That's disgusting," I muttered.
Normally, that would've been enough to send me straight back in.
Today I couldn't make myself care.
I tightened the towel around my chest and walked farther into Grant's closet, opening the drawer where I'd gradually started keeping some of my things.
It had never officially become mine. There hadn't been a conversation about drawer space or closet space or any of the other small domestic decisions we'd somehow made without speaking about them.
My clothes had simply started appearing here until one drawer became two, then a section of his closet became mine.
Both drawers were empty.
I opened the second one anyway.
Nothing.
My laundry basket in the corner was overflowing with everything I'd worn over the last week, which meant the rest of my clothes were still exactly where they'd been before Rodney attacked me.
At the White House.
The thought landed with enough force that I stood there staring into an empty drawer.
I needed clothes.
That should've been an easy problem to solve.
People needed clothes every day without having an emotional crisis about it.
I could buy more. I could ask someone to retrieve mine.
Vivian could probably arrange it. There were dozens of solutions, and somehow my brain rejected every one of them before I'd finished considering it.
Because asking Vivian meant explaining where to send them.
Going myself wasn't an option.
Having Grant go wasn't an option either, and the thought of him anywhere near Rodney again made my stomach tighten.
Nearly everything I owned was sitting inside a building where I couldn't go.
My clothes, shoes, jewelry, books, photographs, things I'd collected before I'd ever met Rodney and things I'd accumulated during our marriage.
Even the stupid little objects nobody else would understand mattered to me were somewhere behind those walls, and retrieving any of them now felt like a negotiation I didn't have the energy to begin.
My eyes started burning.
"No."
I shook my head hard, as if the movement could physically dislodge the thoughts before they turned into something worse.
I was not going to cry over laundry.
I grabbed one of Grant's shirts from a hanger instead. It was black, soft and large enough that the hem fell well past my thighs. Good enough.
Getting dressed took less than a minute.
I walked back into the bedroom and immediately went to the windows.
Sunlight had filled the room while I was showering, bright enough that I had to squint as I reached for the blackout curtains. I pulled one across, then the other, watching daylight disappear until only a thin line remained between them. I adjusted the fabric until that disappeared too.
The bedroom became dark enough that I could barely make out the bed.
I climbed beneath the duvet with damp hair and curled onto my side.