Page 96 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name

Her lips tingled, like they still remembered what almost happened.

Ryan cleared his throat, shifting his grip on the tub edge. His hand brushed against hers.

Jessica squeezed her fingers into a fist. “If we die in here, how long do you think it’ll take them to find our bodies?”

Ryan’s hand found hers again. This time, he squeezed it tight. “We’re not gonna die in here.”

Jessica tried to smile.

She failed.

* * *

Ryan tried to make himself comfortable in the bathtub, but it was too short by several feet. His legs were bent to the side and the rolled-up towel he was using as a pillow was damp and hard. Curled up at the other end, Jessica was dosing, her cheek pressed against her forearm.

He stared at the ceiling, listening to the never-ending drone of the wind and rain outside, and the steady trickle closer at hand, where water was running down the side of the wall and pooling on the floor.

He shifted onto his other hip bone. At least the discomfort gave him the impetus to think.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The battery was half-gone; he shouldn’t be using it. Yet, when it came to Kylie, he’d given up counting the things that he shouldn’t have done for her.

He brought up the last text she’d sent him. From an unknown number, of course. Nearly every time she contacted him, it was from a different cellphone. Sometimes the gap between those times was weeks. Sometimes it was months. Once, about five years back, she’d gone a whole year without contacting him and he’d thought, finally, it was over. She’d gotten clean, she’d gotten her shit together. And he’d begun entertaining ideas of getting his own together. Finalizing their divorce. Maybe dating again. Carlita Owens, a sheriff’s deputy he worked with in Memphis, had been chomping at the bit to put his profile up on Tinder.

And then, an unknown number on his cell. She was back in trouble. Except she now had a kid with her.

He looked down at the screen. This last text was from two days ago.

Ryan, I’m so sorry. For everything. I know I’ve put you through hell.

He stopped reading. He’d read it all before and not just in this text. That she was sorry. That she was getting help. That she was going to rehab.

And yet, she continued to compromise him in every way possible. She’d destroyed their marriage. Trashed his dignity. Jeopardized his job.

This shit had to stop. He needed to pull the ripcord on their pathetic excuse of a relationship and salvage what was left of his youth. But what weakened his resolve was the knowledge that none of it was her fault. Addiction was an illness. He saw the damage narcotics wrought in people’s lives nearly every day of his own. He observed the futility of this country’s ill-fated war on drugs everywhere he looked.

His wife was sick. She needed help. And he wasn’t providing that. Every time he sent her money or showed up to strong-arm some asshole who’d tried to get more than money from her, he wasn’t helping her. He was just enabling her to continue living that life. He was, in fact, making her sicker.

Underlying everything was his own bone-deep feeling of guilt. If he hadn’t gotten her knocked up, if they hadn’t gotten married so young, what would the trajectory of their lives have been?

It was an unanswerable question. All he knew was that he couldn’t let guilt destroy what remained of his life.

He hitdelete, and the text vanished.

As soon as he got back home, he’d get a new number. And the first call he’d make with it was to a divorce lawyer.

“I really hope this rehab is real this time, Kylie,” he muttered. Then he turned his phone off and slipped it back in his pocket.

Carefully, so as not to wake Jessica, he climbed out of the tub and stretched his stiff limbs. Then he sloshed across the inch of water that now covered the bathroom floor.

The hallway was pitch black, like the rest of the house. Too dark to see any of the damage the storm had done, but he could tell from the wind tunneling down the narrow passage that some parts of the living room and kitchen had been left exposed to the elements. Leaks had sprung up all along the passage, and the carpet was sopping. Every step was like walking on a wet sponge.

He returned to the bathroom, closing the door before the wind could follow him in.

The candle was burning low in the mug on the floor. Jessica stirred and sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“You hear that?”

“What?”