Page 134 of On His Mind

And everything stops.

Penelope:My apartment is empty.

I read it once, and I’m already out of the chair.

I don’t know what it means exactly, but I think I do, and thinking I do is enough to get me on my feet. Ivory’s in London this semester. Her apartment’s empty and waiting.

There’s a mirror on the back of the door in this new room, and I catch myself in it on the way out. My hair’s gotten long over the summer, too long, hanging in my eyes, so I push it back with my fingers and mutter at my own reflection in French, and then I go, because the text came through twenty minutes ago, and twenty minutes is already too long.

The side door’s right here. There’s no creaking past the guys’ rooms upstairs, no way for them to know I’m sneaking out. The night’s gone crisp without my noticing summer end. I’m in a t-shirt, but I don’t go back for a jacket. I head straight for Linden Street.

I don’t text her back. I don’t know how to sayI’m comingin a way that isn’t already too much, so I just walk fast.

Her building’s dark when I reach it. Her window is a black square with nothing behind it. Asleep, maybe. Or not home at all. I stand on the sidewalk with my head tipped back, and I look at that dark window for longer than a sane man would, like if I stare hard enough something will move behind the glass.

“It’s empty,” a voice says at my shoulder.

I turn, and she’s right there, close enough to touch, looking up at the same window. The streetlight catches the side of her face, and my lungs forget their job. I’ve thought about her every single day for the past six weeks, and somehow I still wasn’t readyfor the actual sight of her. There isn’t a more beautiful woman anywhere in the world.

“You came,” she whispers.

“You texted.”

She looks at me and whatever’s holding me together pulls a notch tighter. I hold her eyes because I don’t trust myself to do anything else with them.

“Let’s get inside,” she says. It’s not an offer or a question.

I follow her, and that’s when I catch the liquor on her breath, warm and sweet under the cold. That explains the text.

The elevator’s quiet the whole way up. She stands close, and I watch the numbers.

Her apartment smells like a candle, and it undoes me a little, because I know it. I spent years learning that smell.

She drops her keys in the dish by the door and toes off her boots. I crouch and take my shoes off too, lining them up neat against the wall, and she laughs at me — quiet, fond.

“You can leave your shoes at the door now. It’s allowed because it’s just me in here.”

The wordallowedsits funny in my chest.

“Yeah,” I say, and I follow her into the kitchen in my socked feet on her cold floor.

She opens the fridge and takes out a container, grabs a spoon from the drawer, sets both on the counter between us. The container is filled with white stuff, layered, and fruit on top.

“Want some?”

“What is it?”

“A fruit parfait.” She says it like I know what it is.

I’ve never had one, so I just look at it. She peels the lid, digs the spoon in, and puts a bite in her mouth.

“So good,” she mumbles around it, eyes half shut.

“Yeah?”

She nods and takes another bite, then holds the spoon out across the counter to me. I reach to take it, and she doesn’t let go. Her fingers stay wrapped around the handle, so I close my hand over hers instead, both of us holding the one spoon, and I lean in and take the bite off it with my eyes on her the whole time.

Yogurt, granola, some kind of berry. It’s good. I nod to tell her so, and I don’t let go of her hand.