Page 39

THIRTY-EIGHT

Alex wakes up to a window thrown wide open. The bright light streaming into the unfamiliar room makes her body go rigid under the sheet. She is naked, she realizes slowly. She reaches behind her on the bed to where the warmth of another body makes her jerk away, pulling the sheet with her. Tom is lying next to her. They had come back late, drunk and laughing. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, she remembers fuzzily. God, were they even singing something? She half laughs, half cringes at the memory of it.

There was the other part too. She remembers clothes being pulled off. She looks over the side of the bed and sees his suit crumpled next to it. She sees her pants in the pile; her shirt is nowhere to be found.

Tom raises his head from the pillow and squints at her. His hair is messy, his cheek red from where it was resting on his arm.

“Morning,” he says, his voice thick. His hands reach for her under the crisp white sheet. She lets him circle her waist, pulling her close to him. She feels his lips on her shoulder blade. Is this even happening, she wonders, her eyes on the bedroom curtains. They are a thin sage-green fabric that catches the breeze and billows into the room. Now she can see the tree-lined street beyond his window. It’s so different from the wide avenue she lives on with its truck exhaust and delivery drivers honking. Alex has the realization that she doesn’t know where she is. The thought sends a short burst of terror through her.

“Can I make you some coffee?” Tom asks suddenly. He leaps from the bed. She watches from the corner of her eye as he slips into a pair of track shorts. His body is sturdier than it appeared in his suits, his chest broad and, she is surprised to see, somewhat muscular. He runs his hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes.

“That would be lovely,” she says.

He kisses the top of her head. “I’ll be right back.”

She pulls the sheet up around her and sits up in bed, looking around the room again for her clothes.

“Stay in bed. I’ll bring it back.” Through the bedroom door she can see him walking around in the apartment’s bright kitchen, measuring coffee into a contraption on the marble countertop. He seems so domestic it is kind of strange he isn’t married, Alex thinks.

“Cream? Sugar?” he calls out to her.

“Half-and-half if you have it.”

He chatters as the coffee brews, telling her about the apartment, his neighbors, one of whom has an aggressive corgi. She half listens, looking around the apartment for clues about who Tom really is. She’s surprised to find it extremely cozy. There are houseplants in pots clustered around the bedroom window that appear to actually be thriving. The walls have real art: a framed poster of an exhibition in Berlin, a black-and-white photo of a couple kissing in a café in what looks like the fifties. She leans forward, scooting herself toward the edge of the bed to see a smaller framed photo. A boy and a young girl. They are holding up ice-cream cones on some sort of boardwalk. She’s never asked him if he has any siblings, she realizes.

“My family used to go to the Jersey Shore every summer,” Tom says. She hadn’t heard him come into the room. “My grandma would take us.”

“I’ve never been,” she says.

“Oh. Maybe someday we should go. It’s an easy drive.” Her heart thumps. Making plans with her at this stage. It’s too fast.

He is holding two mugs; he puts them on the bedside table and slides back into bed, and she rolls toward him.

“What’s this from?” he asks quietly, his fingers tracing the inside of her wrist. Oh God. Her fingers tremble. She wasn’t paying attention. She’d let herself forget about the scars entirely. How very, very stupid. She jerks her hands away from him, burying them under the sheet in front of her. She can feel her face throbbing. The humiliation of it all.

“It’s okay, Alex.” His voice being so kind makes her feel even worse. She is holding her breath as though by not taking another inhale she can somehow prevent herself from fully absorbing the sting of it all. She can feel them now; they itch at her wrists. How many times has she wished she could remove the skin there and with it every memory of how they got there?

“I should get to work,” Alex says, suddenly standing up and yanking the sheet with her. Her rules for safety have gone completely out the window. She is panicking now. She flees the bedroom, the sheet trailing her.

“Alex? Are you okay?” Tom has stood up. Now he follows her into the living room, watches as she stumbles frantically around his apartment collecting her things. A strapless bra on the edge of the couch. Her underwear inexplicably on the coffee table. She doesn’t look at Tom as she slips into each of these, furtively pulling them on underneath the sheet like she did back in the dressing room of her high school gym class. She would like nothing more than to shrivel up and disappear.

“Alex, really. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” But she can feel the prickly sting of tears in the back of her eyes.

“Have you seen my shirt?” she asks, her vision blurring. She feels herself beginning to have a breakdown. He points at a floor lamp, to which her shirt is somehow clinging, one arm reaching for the floor.

She yanks it off the lampshade and pulls it on quickly, fumbling with the top buttons, tears hazing her eyes. All of this was a mistake.

“I don’t know what I did to make you so upset, but I promise you I understand,” he says.

“You don’t,” Alex says. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“No?” he says. His voice has an edge to it now. “You don’t think I have struggled? That I struggle?”

“I don’t think you have any idea what I’ve gone through, Tom.” She feels a flash of anger now, avoiding eye contact as she reaches down to collect her sandals from the kitchen floor. Heels. She’d nearly forgotten. What a dumb thing to wear. She glances at the door.

“Oh no?” His voice is getting impatient. “Maybe not, but I know you can’t just escape the past.”

Her breath catches in her throat. She turns slowly, her shoes dangling from her hand. “What did you just say?” She looks at him. This man, this stranger.

His chest rises and falls. “Oh, come on, Alex. It’s obvious that you’re hiding from something.”

The first times they’d met flash in her memory, the coffee shop and then later on the street. Funny how it was always Tom approaching her. Almost as though he’d planned it that way. Was it all really just happenstance, or is there something more deliberate about the way Tom has inserted himself into her life? “Why did you ask me out, Tom?” Alex says, edging toward the door.

He steps toward her. “What do you mean? You just seemed interesting to me. I felt like we already knew each other somehow.” But she no longer believes him. The words of the letter coming straight out of his mouth are too much of a coincidence. She snatches her phone off the counter, her heart hammering.

“Alex, please.” He is pulling on a T-shirt, following her to the door. “Are you sure I can’t make you breakfast? I have a very good French toast recipe.” She almost wants to laugh at this.

“Alex,” he calls out as she darts past him. “Please.” But she doesn’t dare look back. She can’t trust him. She should never have allowed herself to go on the date to begin with.