Page 197 of The Lies We Play

I stare at her until I am sure.

She nods.

In the kitchen, I pour coffee into a chipped white cup and sit at the small table by the window like a woman who has every intention of behaving normally.

Florence has other plans.

Florence is never gentle in the morning. She wakes up loud, shameless, overcaffeinated, and dressed better than anyone has a right to be before noon. Church bells crash through the air. A scooter whines around the corner like it has a personal beef with the laws of physics. Somewhere below, a man shouts at a delivery driver with such operatic betrayal that I briefly wonder if the van killed his firstborn or merely parked too close to the curb.

The basil plant on the sill has surrendered to the glass. I should water it. I should do many things. Stretch. Eat something with protein. Stop letting my life be run by fear, old men, beautiful liars, and whatever curse God put on women who fall for men with dangerous hands and tragic eyes.

Instead, I drink coffee that tastes like regret and burnt almonds.

The light comes in anyway.

It slides across the table. Finds the cracks in the wood. Find my fingers wrapped around the cup. Finds Bella resting beneath my skin, quiet for now, the tremor curled in my left wrist like a secret that learned to breathe with me.

The day is going to happen whether I am ready or not.

Rude, honestly.

I push away from the table before I can talk myself out of it, cross the room, and take the new phone from the nightstand.

It feels expensive. Sleek. Too clean for my life.

I hold it in both hands.

There is a ridiculous, humiliating part of me that expects it to ring the second I touch it. Like the phone knows. Like it understands that some names do not sit inside a device quietly. Some names take up space. Some names turn plastic and glass into a living thing.

I open the contacts.

There is only one.

Creed.

My thumb hovers above it.

My pulse does something dramatic and unnecessary, because apparently my body is still auditioning for a tragedy I didn't agree to star in.

But I refuse to call.

I am absolutely not going to call.

Calling would be pathetic. Calling would be desperate. Calling would be exactly what a woman does when she has spent ten years pretending she buried a man only to find out the grave was empty, the dirt was decorative, and the idiot in question might still be breathing somewhere with all his terrible beauty intact.

So I do not call.

I type.

Which is different—barely.

I type, then delete, then type again, because self-respect is a flexible concept before noon.

I have your number again.

I stare at it.

Awful.