23. “She’s watching us.”
“SHE’S WATCHING US.”
HALE
Isurfaced slow, dragged up by dawn leaking through the curtains and the uneasy feeling of being awake before I meant to be.
The room felt different before I opened my eyes, cooler and quieter than it should’ve been. I reached across the sheets on instinct.
Empty.
The hollow hit quick, familiar enough to settle in my chest before I could shake it.
The last time I’d spent the night in a bed with Yasmine, she’d snuck out before I woke up. I’d told myself it didn’t matter.
I was wrong about that.
Irritation flared—a tight, ugly spike of it.
Because what the fuck.
I stared at the ceiling, jaw tight.
I knew this drill. Lie there. Feel stupid. Tell myself it was fine because nobody had said anything different. I could run that sequence in my sleep.
But last night hadn’t felt like that.
The memory came back without my permission. Not the sex, the part before that. Watching her work, lying there while she put me where she wanted and liking that she felt she could. Her behind that camera, catching things I hadn’t meant to show.
Then after, her cheek on my chest and her weight across my ribs. The way she’d said she didn’t want me going on any more blind dates like she meant it. The way I said okay because I meant it too.
So again, what the fuck.
I rolled, grabbed my phone off the nightstand. 6:52 a.m. No messages.
I’m a light sleeper. Always have been. The mattress lifts, I wake. Same for a zipper, a phone screen lighting up, a door eased shut by somebody trying not to get caught leaving.
So what did it mean that I hadn’t woken this time?
We weren’t doing this again. I started a text. Got three words in and deleted it. Whatever I had to say to her needed to be said to her face.
I got up. Sweatpants. Keys off the nightstand out of habit. Down the stairs to the side door. My hand was on the handle when I stopped.
Her camera bag was on the kitchen counter, zipper half open, the Nikon still inside. I didn’t see her shoes, but Yasmine wouldn’t have left her camera behind.
So she was coming back. Or she’d left in a hurry. Or… I didn’t know what it meant.
Movement caught my eye through the kitchen window.
She was out in the yard, wearing my shirt, her hair caught up in chaotic spirals, swimming in my rain boots in a full standoff with my chickens.
It took me a second to make sense of the scene.
Dolores was puffed to full capacity, planted three feet in front of her, offended by something only Dolores understood. It was always Dolores.
Yasmine had a small metal bowl in one hand and was gesturing with the other like she was negotiating terms.
“I’m trying to be respectful,” she was saying. “But you’re being a bitch. No offense.”
Dolores was unmoved. She advanced a step.
Yasmine took one back.
“Easy. It’s not like I’m trying to cook you for dinner,” she informed the hen. “It’s just eggs. Or are you… attached to your babies?”
Yasmine looked horrified. “Of course you are.”
Dolores puffed up bigger.
“Okay,” Yasmine said, backing up again. “Okay, fine. You’re right. No eggs.”
I leaned against the counter and watched Yasmine lose an argument with a chicken in my rain boots in my yard at seven in the morning.
She turned toward the house and stopped when she saw me. Straightened up. Lifted her chin. “Your chickens hate me.”
“Need to get to know you, is all.”
She glanced back at Dolores, then at me. “Honestly, she might have good reason.”
I didn’t argue that point.
A few minutes later, she came inside, boots thudding through the mudroom, and set the bowl on the counter.
Empty.
“I was going to make breakfast,” she said. “We used all the eggs last night, so I tried to get more.” She shot an irritated look toward the coop through the window. “We’re having Nutella sticks and coffee. Sorry.”
I took her in. My shirt hanging off one shoulder. A bit of straw stuck to her shin. Standing in my kitchen after throwing down with a chicken on my behalf.
“Okay,” I said.
She nodded once like that settled it.
We drank coffee at the kitchen table. The quiet was the comfortable kind. Steam off the mugs. Neither of us in any hurry to do anything with the day.
She was here. At my table. In my shirt. She’d tried to make me breakfast. Dolores had shut that down, but still.
I didn’t ask about last night, and she didn’t explain anything.
I got up eventually, grabbed the Nutella sticks and the Oreos from the gas station bag we’d left on the counter, and set them between us.
She took one and ate it.
Outside, Dolores hovered by the back step, waiting for round two.
“She’s watching us,” Yasmine said.
“She does that.”
“It’s unsettling.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
She didn’t look up from her mug when she asked, “Will I?”
“Hope so.”
Her mouth tipped up.
The coffee cooled. The Oreos disappeared. The door stayed closed.
The hollow was gone. I couldn’t have told you exactly when it left.