Chapter 19 We Talked about this
WE TALKED ABOUT THIS
Sasha had Wes’s Wordle journal. Well, at least one of them. She knew he had several.
Sasha had coffee with a talent agent, went to a dentist appointment, and was back home in her own kitchen, searching through her tote for some gum—when she found it.
How had his journal ended up in her purse?
Short of sprouting wings and flying, she couldn’t imagine what it was doing there.
All she knew was that she couldn’t escape Wes.
She couldn’t get him out of her mind. And, in all honesty, she wasn’t really trying.
Since the case started, she’d been trying to convince herself that her crush on Wes was a harmless, reflexive thing.
Of course, she’d developed a softness for him—this man had rescued her from a stalker.
She’d sought him out at her lowest, weakest point, and he saved her.
And now, he was saving her again, by finding her missed connection.
Her fascination with him was just misplaced gratitude, right?
Teo was her fated guy. Teo was the one who dropped out of the sky, drawing her in on one single flight.
Teo was the reason Wes was back, in the first place.
But the electricity between Sasha and Wes was too seismic to ignore. Plus, she’d realized something. Before Wes, she’d never had truly obliterating, mind-melting sex. She’d had okay sex. Like, good enough—but paint-by-numbers. Unremarkable. Unfurnished. Wes lit her ablaze.
When they were kissing in her kitchen, there was one utterly destabilizing moment when they pulled away—for air, but also to openly gaze at each other in damn near worship—and she knew that she never wanted him to leave.
Teo was a question mark, but Wes was here, flesh and blood, touchable, fuckable, lovable, and she wanted him. It was that simple.
And she’d intended to tell him as much. So, when he texted that sleeping together was a mistake, it devastated her.
When she saw his easy, lived-in chemistry with Imani, she was jealous.
And when he reconfirmed, after Imani left, that they needed to ignore their attraction and focus on the job at hand—she was shattered.
Because what she wanted, deep down, was for him to drop the case.
And after that? She wanted him to take her and run off with her into the sunset.
But Sasha couldn’t ignore the truth. Wes just didn’t feel the same way.
And why would he? Beyond him saying he didn’t want a relationship with anyone right now—Sasha hired him to find another guy!
Only a masochist would take on this situation.
But when she hired him, how was she to know that all these feelings would bloom?
In the furthest recesses of her mind, she suspected it’d always been there; she was just too traumatized in 2022 to see it.
How stupid she’d been, to seek him out. How ill-advised.
Only a woman woefully out of practice with men and relationships would make such an immature, short-sighted decision.
She was a woman askew.
And, God, a big part of her wanted to end the case. Because the possibility of Teo was no match for the reality of Wes. But there was no reality of Wes, was there? He’d told her, in several ways, that they had no future. What other choice did she have, but to hear him?
Sasha was spinning. She wanted Wes, but that was a mistake.
She also wanted to stop the case—but, given her instincts of late, this was probably the wrong call, too.
No, she’d stay the course. She didn’t want to call it off and then, for the rest of her life, wonder if she’d been too hasty.
She didn’t want to make yet another short-sighted decision.
Chewing on her bottom lip, she brought the journal into her bedroom, and set it on the bed.
She was dying to look through it. But that was a bridge too far.
Like peeking into someone’s diary. Plus, he’d expect her to do it.
She didn’t want to be predictable. With elite-level self-control, she left the journal on her bed, and took a long, hot shower.
Afterward, she slipped into a satin robe and then walked by the bed, allowing her fingertips to graze her duvet.
They trailed over the journal nonchalantly.
Nothing to see here, she told herself. Just some field notes containing information about Teo, things Wes hasn’t told me. I know there’s more. I can feel that he’s holding back. It wouldn’t hurt just to take a peek.
Looking quickly to her left and right, she picked up the book. She thumbed through the pages. Endless notes, handwritten, flew by in a blur. It wasn’t exactly reading it, if she was just flipping through! Hungrily, she tried to catch a word, a phrase, anything. Curiosity flooded her.
Am I hoping to find more details about the case, she wondered, or details about me?
Leaving the question unanswered, she lit her Coastal Cypress candle and tried to remember how good her conversation with Teo felt.
Slowly, she lowered herself back on her pillows, the journal resting on her stomach, under her hands.
Her eyes shuttered closed. And, almost immediately, Wes eclipsed Teo in her mind.
All she could think of was his journal, and that he wrote all his most important, intimate thoughts in there.
His insides spilled out over the pages. Looking in his private notebook felt too voyeuristic, like spying on his brain.
She couldn’t do that. She trusted Wes, implicitly, and it was important to Sasha that he trust her, too.
Sasha had to return it to him. Sooner rather than later.
Opening one eye, she checked the time on her phone.
It was 8:30 p.m. She texted him and waited twenty minutes for a response.
Nothing. She texted again. More crickets.
This was not ideal. Sasha absolutely couldn’t keep this notebook overnight.
Sasha didn’t trust herself not to have every word committed to memory before midnight.
Plus, once Wes realized it was gone, she didn’t want him to think she was holding on to it, on purpose—out of nosiness.
The thought crossed her mind that she could just drop it off at his house. She knew he lived next to the Foam Alone Laundromat in Fort Greene. If he wasn’t home, at least she tried. It was a risky move, showing up to his apartment, out of the clear blue. But “risky” hadn’t been stopping her lately.
In fact, nothing had been stopping her lately.
She’d left the house more times than she had in the past year.
It was empowering. Earlier this morning, she took the train for the first time in a small lifetime.
It wasn’t that she was feeling less anxious.
It’s that she wasn’t caring as much about it.
Which was the trick. Feelings of paranoia, agoraphobia-lite, and fear were no surprise, given her past trauma.
And everyone felt panicky and weird sometimes.
The difference between someone with an anxiety disorder, and a quote-unquote normal person was that the normal person didn’t let the fears take over.
They felt them, noted them, and moved on with their lives.
They didn’t allow the demons to haunt them continuously, day in and day out.
There was a liberating lack of obsession.
Lately, Sasha’d had more “normal” encounters with anxiety than usual.
This was one of them. She was being so spontaneous.
The fact that she was actually leaving her house this late—and didn’t even know what to expect when she got to Wes’s place—was uncharted territory.
But something in her felt exhilarated from not knowing.
It was like watching a thriller on the edge of her seat, wondering what was going to happen next.
Trying to guess, weighing the outcomes. Except this was real life. Her life had become an adventure.
Before she could change her mind, she lunged out of bed.
She threw on some black leggings and a cropped sweatshirt, messily twisted her hair into a clip, and blended a rose tint onto her cheekbones and lips.
Her heart was thundering in her chest. She wasn’t sure how Wes would perceive this burst of spontaneity, but the notebook felt like it was on fire in her hands. She had to deliver it to him.
A short time later, she found herself standing outside of Foam Alone Laundromat.
On the doorbell plate by the front door, she saw DANE next to apartment four.
With a trembling finger, she pushed his buzzer.
And then she waited. And waited. Sasha stood outside of the building for ten minutes.
Each second that passed, she wondered if he was ignoring her, asleep, or just not home.
Most normal people were out, weren’t they?
She felt a small pang. Even though she and Wes had put it to bed, the smoldering encounter at her apartment lingered in her mind.
He’d lingered. She could still feel him all over her.
If only she had the kind of personality that could fuck and forget.
No doubt, Imani could do that. Imani seemed to be a sexual gladiator, the kind of love-’em-and-leave-’em woman Sasha had always yearned to be.
But as pro-sex as Sasha was for everyone else, she was hesitant when it came to herself.
She suspected this came from living with a mom who seemed ruined by sex (Freudian, but true).
The way young Sasha saw it, Marcia had valued hormones over logic, and the cost was high.
She was left with a fatherless child who, though loved, had complicated her life immeasurably—and had transformed her from Hot Side Chick to Scorned Woman in under nine months. Heavy shit to ponder in middle school.
Okay, but back to Imani, she thought. Is Wes upstairs with her right now? Or someone else? Wait, is Wes solo-polyamorous?