Then he sat down at the counter and pressed both hands flat against the surface, the way a man does when he needs to feel something solid and real beneath him, because the ground has just shifted and he needs to make sure it's still there." His phone buzzed. It was his friend Damon. "You eating tonight or you just going to stare at your walls?" Marcus typed back. "Something came up.
Something or someone." Marcus put his phone face down on the counter. He was not ready for that question. He was not ready for any of the questions that were forming in the back of his mind with the patient relentless urgency of things that have been waiting too long to be asked. He got up.
He checked on Lily, who was asleep and undisturbed by the entire private earthquake that had just occurred in the kitchen. He stood in her doorway for a moment, watching her breathe, letting that specific piece do what it always did, anchor him, remind him who he was and what mattered and what he was responsible for protecting. He thought she's a tenant. He thought she told you herself she's not ready.
He thought you have a daughter and 14 clients and $43 and you cannot afford to be wrong about this. He thought you didn't mean the dress. He went to bed. He did not sleep for a long time.
Victoria came home at 11:50. He heard her key in the lock. He heard her cross the hallway. He heard her stop outside his door for just a moment.
A pause that was one or two seconds longer than it needed to be if she was just walking past. And then he heard her door close. He stared at the ceiling. Neither of them slept much that night.
Neither of them knew the other was awake, but they were both awake for a long time on opposite sides of a thin wall with the same thing sitting in the center of their chests. In the morning, everything was ordinary. That was the most extraordinary part. Victoria was at the counter with her coffee when Marcus came in.
She handed him a cup without being asked. She'd started doing this about two weeks ago, just knowing the timing. And she said, "Lily's awake. She asked me to tell you she wants the eggs with the yellow part soft again." "The yellow part soft," Marcus repeated.
"I told her that's called over easy." And she said she didn't care what it was called. "May?" He laughed. She smiled. And just like that, the kitchen was normal again, and the thing from last night was still there, but they were both choosing for now. maybe for a little while longer to let it exist without naming it.
It was a mutual unspoken agreement, the kind that only works between two people who both understand exactly what they're agreeing to. Marcus made the eggs. Lily came in, saw Victoria climbed immediately into the chair next to her, and began telling her about a dream involving Oliver the giraffe slandering boy from school and a dragon. Victoria listened with complete seriousness and offered tactical advice about the dream dragon that made Lily dissolve into laughter.
Marcus stood at the stove and kept his face pointed at the pan. He was in trouble. He had been in trouble for weeks. He was just now out of the ability to pretend otherwise.
The next four days moved fast and quiet. They fell into a rhythm that felt terrifyingly like domesticity. not performed, not arranged, just grown naturally out of two people sharing space long enough to start accommodating each other without thinking about it. Victoria started leaving a note if she'd be home late. Marcus started making a little extra at dinner on the nights he cooked, leaving a plate on the stove without comment.
Lily had at some point, and without formal announcement, claimed Victoria as a permanent fixture in her life, the way children claim things they love completely and without apology. On Tuesday of the following week, Marcus's friend Damon finally appeared in person. Damon Harris was loud, direct, and constitutionally incapable of letting anything go unressed. He'd been Marcus's closest friend since college, and the one person Marcus had never successfully lied to.
He showed up with a six-pack and a loud knock and let himself into the living room with the ease of someone who considered himself furniture in this apartment. He stopped when he saw the shelf. Victoria's books. Gerald the giraffe sitting between them.
He looked at Marcus. The tenant, he said. She lives here, Damon. She has a giraffe on the bookshelf.
That's Lily's. That's not Lily's spot on the shelf. That's in the middle of the adult section. Damon sat down.
He opened a beer and looked at Marcus with the expression of a man conducting an informal investigation. Tell me about the tenant. There's nothing to tell. Marcus Elijah Brooks.
Don't full name me. I will full name you every time until you stop lying to me about important things. Damon leaned forward. You look like a man who hasn't slept a full night in 2 weeks.
You look like a man who is being very, very careful about something. and there is a woman's giraffe on your bookshelf. He paused. So the tenant Marcus drank his beer. He looked at the ceiling and then because Damon was the one person he could not actually outmaneuver and had never successfully managed to mislead.
It's complicated. It's always complicated. Simplify it. She's she's not someone who's available.
Marcus said not really. She's in the middle of something with someone from her past. And she chose this apartment specifically because she needed somewhere that wasn't going to demand anything from her. He set the bottle down.
I'm not going to be the person who makes her feel like she walked out of one thing and straight into another. Damon was quiet for a moment. That was notable. Damon was rarely quiet.