Chapter 1: The Hour

The toy had a cheap buzz and a mind of its own.

Tessa had been on the couch for most of an hour, his old hoodie rucked to her ribs, nothing under it, one heel on the cushion and the other on the floor. The thing in her hand was small, pink, louder than it had any right to be. She had turned it down twice. It still sounded like a secret with a motor. Her phone sat on her chest. She had typed the text and not sent it, then sent it, then wished the send had a cancel.

can’t get there. an hour. hate this thing.

The friend answered with a laugh and a question she did not open. The house was empty in the way a house is empty when the people who own it have gone to look at someone else’s marriage. Wedding until midnight. Her mother had said the cake was ugly and they would stay anyway. Jordan’s father had said feed the cat. Jordan had the key for the cat. Tessa had told herself he would come in the morning.

She was twenty-five. He was twenty-eight. Her mother had married his father four years ago, which was long enough for the word stepsister to be a habit and not long enough for it to feel like a fact. They did not share a bedroom wall anymore. They shared holidays, a cat, and a hoodie she stole when hers was wet and had not given back.

The buzz jumped. She swore at it. Her wrist ached. She was wet and annoyed and nowhere near done, the edge a rumor. She put her head back on the arm of the couch and closed her eyes and tried to think of no one in the house.

The key turned.

She heard it and did not move, because moving would have been admitting the hour. The lock was the heavy one. His, not a neighbor’s. The cat meowed from the kitchen, traitor, already on the counter. Jordan’s voice, low, to the cat: “You’re early.” Then nothing. Then the kitchen light, a strip under the door that wasn’t a door, the wide opening to the couch.

She pulled the hoodie down. The toy stayed in her hand because putting it down would have clicked. The buzz filled the gap where a hello should have been.

He stood in the opening with the cat food still in his hand. Work shirt. Key on the ring. He looked at the hoodie, which was his, and at her face, and at the pink thing, and did not do her the kindness of looking away.

“Didn’t know you were here,” he said.

“Wedding.” Her voice came out thin. “Midnight. You were supposed to be morning.”

“Cat texted.” A nothing joke. He set the food down on the pass-through. The can clicked. “I’ll do the bowl and go.”

“Don’t.” She heard herself. “Don’t make it a thing. I was— I’m finishing something. You can do the cat.”

He did the cat. Kibble. Water. The ordinary sounds of a man who had a reason to be in the house. She turned the toy off. The silence was worse. She could feel the wet on her thigh cooling. The hoodie smelled like his detergent from a year ago and like her now. She did not close her legs. Closing them would have been a speech.