One Year Ago
The movie hadn’t been great, but Tori sat through the credits until the screen went black and she was the only person left in the theater.
She nursed a familiar ache in her chest—the one that came from being surrounded by couples and from watching fictional people fall in love while her own life felt as blank as the screen.
She had no one to talk to these days, only Cyrus.
She drove home with the windows sealed, the AC cranked up. It was early June in the Washington area; the temperatures eased a bit in the evening but the humidity was still brutal. She got to Eastbrook just past eleven PM, winding through suburban streets devoid of people.
Tori turned onto her block and felt the familiar weight settle in her sternum.
The house was just as she’d left it—dark, still, pristine.
What did she expect? That after a night at the movies it would magically transform into a cozy cottage complete with a cute guy in a cable-knit sweater?
It could never feel like home now, not after the embarrassing scene with the Allards at the cathedral’s Flower Mart last month.
Those people were her neighbors, her landlords—there was no avoiding them.
Tori typed in the code to the door, and the latch stuck as it always did.
Tonight the resistance annoyed her more than usual.
She knew she wouldn’t text Jo about it, or anything else that was wrong with the house.
Nothing felt right about this place anymore, but she was stuck here since her ex was paying for housing as part of the divorce settlement.
She jiggled it hard, felt the click, and pushed open the door.
Inside, the house yawned wide and cold.
She didn’t bother turning on the lights right away.
Her eyes were used to the dark. The entryway spilled into the living room—floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall, a gray wool rug under the coffee table, the faint glint of Leo’s favorite blue water bottle catching a sliver of moonlight. Was he missing it now? Did he miss her?
Even though she knew he would be gone until tomorrow afternoon, she still half expected to hear the creak of a step upstairs. The thud of a soccer ball in the hallway.
Tori dropped her keys in the ceramic bowl on the hall table and kicked off her shoes instead of tucking them into the hidden shoe closet Jo had so cleverly installed.
Why bother, she thought, and turned toward the kitchen.
When you’re alone, nothing really matters.
Maybe a glass of wine to help her sleep, she thought, flicking on the kitchen light, and perhaps a piece of dark chocolate.
A little reward for making it through another week.
That’s when she felt it.
A subtle shift in the air’s temperature. As if someone had opened a window and forgotten to close it.
She stopped moving and listened, her hand hovering near the refrigerator door.
There was a sound—barely a sound, but enough. A floorboard? A breath?
Every hair on her arms lifted.
Her voice caught, but she managed a tentative, “Hello?”
Nothing.
Her mind ran through the possibilities. Her ex? No, he didn’t have the key. Maybe Autumn hadn’t gone to stay with college friends in DC for the weekend after all. That had to be it. She had changed her mind and returned. But what was she doing upstairs?
“Autumn? Is that you?” She took a slow step back toward the front door, her mind racing. Had she locked it behind her? She couldn’t remember. “Autumn? You there?”
Then—a movement from the back hallway.
A figure burst into view, rushing toward her. A boy in a black hoodie, his sneakers scuffing the polished wooden floors as he sprinted past, his wiry limbs in a blur. As he crashed past her, one of his shoulders slammed into her arm hard enough to spin her half around.
“Hey!” she gasped, but he was already gone, the front door flung open, footsteps pounding down the path and into the night.
She turned back toward the hallway, her chest heaving.
And then she saw him.
Another boy, half-lost in the shadows just beyond the kitchen threshold.
Not moving. Not running.
“Yo, you okay?” His voice was low, coaxing, almost tender. As he emerged from the darkness, he pulled his hood back. The dim light illuminated his features—young, sharp, familiar.
Tori’s breath hitched. She should have screamed, backed away, reached for something sharp or heavy. But his expression wasn’t threatening. It was raw concern, etched plainly across his brow, a person who hadn’t learned to hide his feelings yet.
“You’re Van, right?” she asked. “Van Allard.”
He nodded, stepping forward. “You’re bleeding.”
Her eyes dropped to her hands. A thin rivulet of blood was working its way down between her knuckles, catching the kitchen light in an almost beautiful way. She hadn’t even felt it. “I must’ve … when he—” But the words collapsed before they could get out.
Van took a slow step toward her, as if she were a deer and he knew exactly how close he could get without spooking her. “Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s rinse it off.”
She didn’t stop him. She let herself be led to the kitchen sink. The faucet screeched a little as he turned the handle, letting the water run until it turned warm. His hands—larger than she expected, rough with youth and sports and whatever boys did—guided hers under the stream.
She looked up at him. Up close, he was startling—tall like his father, with that same burnished golden skin. But with the long-lashed hazel eyes of his mother and a jawline that lent him a defiant air. I bet he gets away with murder, she thought.
Tori yanked her hand back, grabbed a paper towel, and pressed it to the cut with more force than necessary. “I’m fine.”
“You got a Band-Aid somewhere?” he asked.
“I said I’m fine.” Her tone was clipped. She was the adult, he the interloper. She needed to establish her authority. Oh, what she could do with this little situation. Imagine! Call the police? Have them arrest Van Allard? That would make a delicious neighborhood scandal.
“Yeah, you keep saying you’re fine, but…”
Tori stepped back, trying to escape his force field. “What are you doing in my house? Do you have the code? Did you get it from your parents?”
The shrug he gave affirmed this. “You’re not gonna tell them, are you?”
She barked out a surprise laugh. “Tell them what? That their son let himself in to their tenant’s house? That’s illegal you know. I could call the police.”
The mirth vanished from his face. “Please don’t. It would be a nightmare. Like, next-level bad. We were just fooling around. It was stupid. We thought no one was home.”
“That doesn’t make it okay, you know.”
“I know.” He hung his head.
She wondered if he knew about her, what had happened with his dad.
Not that she expected parents to share that kind of gossip with a child.
You know the lady we’re renting to? Daddy was helping her with some household stuff and she tried to hook up with him.
But maybe they’d just poisoned the well in quieter ways.
Whispered slights. Tension thick enough to taste.
Parents could turn children against people in subtle ways.
She saw it all the time in her practice.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her voice wavering. “Did you and your friend target my house? Just because your parents own this doesn’t give you the right to come in.”
His face went blank. “What? No, I swear. We just thought—it was dark. It looked empty.”
“So you broke in?”
His hand raked through his shaggy hair, making it stick up in every direction. “Yeah. I know. It’s dumb.”
“If you know it’s dumb, why do it?”
“I don’t know. For the thrill, I guess. There’s something about being inside someone’s house when they’re not there.”
She didn’t say a word, certainly not that she recognized the urge.
It was the same one that drove her to study psychology.
She wanted to crawl inside people’s innermost thoughts because she didn’t know how to get close in any real way.
Intimacy was something she had to study, because it wasn’t something she ever lived.
In graduate school, it was such a common trait among future psychologists that they had a name for it—me-search.
“I’ll do whatever you want.” He looked up at her. “Please don’t tell my parents. They will freak out.”
There was something in his voice, a combination of fear of and contempt for his parents, that made her pause. It pleased her. The Allards, with their fancy house and cars, their sense of entitlement, had an Achilles’ heel. And he was standing in her kitchen, pleading with her.
“When I was in high school,” she said slowly, “I used to sneak into nearby pools to go swimming.” That wasn’t quite true.
It had happened once, when she was dating a boy who had a large social circle.
It had been a night of revelations—that people had immense yards with lighted pools, that her classmates were taking these kinds of chances, and that they were having so much fun.
“Skinny-dipping?” His grin was wicked. How quickly his mood changed.
“Of course.”
“That’s awesome. These days everyone has cameras.”
“You’re lucky I don’t.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“It’s only a matter of time until you get caught,” she said. “If you get arrested, it could ruin your whole future. Of course, you’re a minor.”
“I’m not. I’m eighteen. I’ll be nineteen in July.”
“And you’re a senior?”
“Ever hear of redshirting?” he asked. “It’s when they hold kids with summer birthdays back, especially boys.”
“Why would your parents do that?”
He shrugged. “Gives you an edge in sports. Stronger, bigger. Did you ever get caught? When you were sneaking into pools?”
She thought about that for a second—about that one humid night in high school.
It felt like ages ago. How a boy had picked her up at her apartment in Norfolk and driven her back to his lush green neighborhood in nearby Virginia Beach.
She had loved being part of that pack of wild suburban kids.
How they had scaled the fence of a house they thought was empty, stripped down, and dove into the pool.
How the neighbor’s porch light had flicked on, breaking the spell, and they’d all scattered into the darkness of those streets, breathless and high on adrenaline.
“No,” she said cautiously. “I never got caught.”
“See? And you turned into a totally respectable adult living in Bethesda.”