Page 19 of Death, Interrupted

I decided to check my face in the bathroom mirror above the sink and found a few bruises. Joey hadn’t directly hit me, but I guess from all the struggling, I did leave with a few indirect punches. My body felt more numb than my face, and when I took off my sweater, I found a bruise stretching across my left shoulder. I made a mental note to ice it. But I didn’t ice it. I went back to pacing.

Sumner’s eyes kept showing up between one step and the next. That beautiful grey color. I kept telling myself to think about logistics. Where I had been. What I had touched. Whether I had left anything that would make this even worse. If there was any way Icould get caught after all, and have every other death connect to me. My brain nodded, then drifted back to those eyes, as if it had a favorite channel and kept switching to it.

I went to open a window to let in some fresh air. The air in my apartment started to feel too heavy, but the night air wasn’t really helping me think clearly. I had to remind myself that the world kept going, and I stood there with my hands on the sill, thinking about how she had set the knife back in my palm without shaking. She had placed it in my left hand, almost like she had watched me and understood that I was left-handed. It was a silly thought, but I just couldn’t shake it. I wanted her to have seen me. That detail of her not shaking as she put the knife into my hand would not leave. She had trusted me in that moment. There had been control in everything she had said and done, like the way she had told me to go, and the way I had obeyed.

I told myself out loud to relax because that sometimes worked, but it didn’t work tonight. I tried to distract myself with the mess on the coffee table. I stacked old mail, straightened a pile of bike magazines that I never read past the first page, because engines I could hear were better than engines I could stare at. And, frankly, I already knew everything about bikes anyway. And, lastly, I picked up the knife and checked the edge out of habit. It was still clean. I had not usedit tonight. Or ever. My knife was just a damn prop. Karma did most of the work for me.

Finally, when I started to get tired from pacing, I stripped to my boxers and went to bed, but I kept turning over the last minutes before I left, unable to stop thinking about it. I couldn’t get her voice out of my head, and the way she had said please. The way she held steady while the room fell apart. The way she separated me from the things I had done in front of her and still pushed me toward the door, not to reject me, but to keep me out of the consequences of Joey’s death. I was not used to that kind of mercy. It made my chest feel too full and my head feel a little light. I had never been a fan of either sensation, but since Sumner walked into my life, I let those feelings linger.

I told myself to list what I knew. Joey had charged. Joey had fallen. Joey had bled. Sumner had stayed upright. I had left. The police would hear “accident” and file it as they would any other accident. They wouldn’t ask her questions about me because they’d never know I was ever in that house. I had a feeling she would choose to lie about that. I somehow trusted her with that. I didn’t like that I was asking that of her when I had known her for about the span of a coffee break, but I could not change the fact that I had put her in that position by existing where I existed at thetime I existed there. My talent for timing had once again done me no favors.

Even when lying in my bed, I didn’t really know how to rest when my head was so full. Forcing myself to close my eyes, hers were what I immediately saw. Those pretty grey eyes that were filled with so many emotions, and that looked right into my soul, leaving a mark.

I needed to see her again. It was a stupid thing to want after everything I put her through, but I needed to know that she was okay. The only problem with that was that I knew nothing about her beyond her first name and what she looked like. I didn’t know her last name, nor whether she actually lived in that house with Joey or had her own place.

Going back there wasn’t an option.

Not this quickly.

I needed to give it time to settle.

And maybe one day…I would try to find her. But not in a creepy stalker kind of way.

Chapter 7

Sly

Okay, I was stalking her in a creepy way. Can you blame me, though? She’d been sitting in my head for five straight days, and I needed to know she was okay. I needed to see her again, just to make sure she was breathing and moving and not swallowed by the mess I left behind. That was it. I wasn’t going to get close. I wasn’t going to walk up and say, “Hey, Sumner, sorry about that night, want to go out? Because I fell for you the night your douchebag boyfriend died by forgetting gravity exists.” It sounded pathetic in myhead, but if I let my heart run the show, that’s exactly what would have come out of my mouth.

I couldn’t sleep at night, so I did the only sane thing a man with an aching heart could do. I rode back to the house and watched the street, hoping to see her again.

I also tried to find her on the internet, which was usually an easy and helpful way to find someone.

Social media was how I found every guy I killed.Fine. Accidentally made kill themselves. Two were on Facebook, one on Instagram, and the rest were polished up on LinkedIn. It wasn’t hard. People on those platforms handed over their information without being asked. I looked up where they worked, showed up, and followed them home. It was an easy and efficient system.

But with Sumner, I found nothing. I went through Joey’s Facebook and dug around his friends list. No Sumner. In fact, nothing ever came up when I searched for her name and the city we lived in. I also tried spelling her name differently, because I was still not convinced it was actually Sumner. Really, would it have been so hard to just use a second m instead of an n?

I guess that’s what made her unique.

Again, there was nothing when I searched for her online. Either she kept her life clean or the universe had decided I’d had enough luck.

So my last option was the street. I parked far enough away so no one could see me. To my luck, and because fate loved rubbing my nose in it, Sumner pulled up on the fifth day. It had been late, and I couldn’t see her face from where I stood, but I could tell by the weight in her walk that she wasn’t okay.

Why would she be okay? Her boulder of a boyfriend killed himself in front of her, and I left her to clean up the mess. I kept thinking about her on the phone with the ambulance, then the cops, then his family. I hated the picture of her doing that alone. She’d told me to leave, and for once I’d listened, even though everything in me wanted to stay and handle it for her. Not for Joey. Only for her.

So I stayed on the street, leaned against April with my helmet on and visor up, and watched her through the windows. Unlike Joey, who had been a weirdo by walking around his house without any lights on, Sumner seemed to have flipped every single switch in the house. I liked to believe she did it for me. Almost like she knew I was standing out here, watching her. I knew that wasn’t the case, and I was being delusional once again, but I wasn’t hurting anyone with my thinking.

I saw her walk around the living room, picking things up and putting them down. She entered thekitchen a few times, opened the fridge four times before deciding to grab a bag of chips from the cupboard. Then she disappeared upstairs and only came back into view ten minutes later with her hair pulled up into a bun. She still kept the lights on everywhere when she went into what I figured was her bedroom, and from then on, I didn’t see her until the early morning.

I was still there when the sky turned light grey—almost like her eyes—and I kept standing there with the hopes of her coming out of the house soon. I had a full bladder and an empty stomach, and I needed to fuel myself sooner or later, or else I’d get grumpy. The thought of just walking up to her front door and knocking in the hopes she’d let me in came to me a few times throughout the night, but it felt too intrusive.

So, I kept waiting until sometime around eight-thirty, and she finally stepped out of the house wearing black sweatpants and a tank top. From where I was standing, and with my perfect eyesight, I could see just how sad she was. She looked tired, too.

She locked the door, then stood on the stoop for a second like she was bracing for what the day would bring. Whatever she was up to this morning, she wasn’t really happy doing it. I slid my visor down when she walked to her car, and when she drove out of the driveway, I woke April and fell in behind her from far enough back that even I couldn’taccuse me of stalking.

It was a short drive to the grocery store, and after she parked, she headed inside without ever looking left or right. She might’ve seemed focused or unbothered to people who didn’t know her story, but I knew she was in deep thought, just trying to get through the day. I kept my helmet on, ready to head inside the store too, but my bladder whined at every move I made, begging me to empty it.

“I can’t fucking pee in an alley,” I murmured, narrowing my eyes at the wall next to April. Another sharp pain hit me right in the gut, and I decided then that going this many hours without peeing was pure torture.