Page 218 of Rising Heat

The questioning started on day two during breakfast.

Mom had looked at me across the kitchen table over the rim of her coffee cup with the same expression she used to wear when I was a teenager pretending a report card didn’t exist.

“Is this about work?”

“Work’s fine.”

“The city?”

“I love the city.”

“Is it a boy?” she had asked carefully.

“I’m going back to Boston,” I’d said. “This is just a visit.”

Even lying here spiraling hard enough to qualify as cardio, I know that much is true.

I just needed a few days to remember I’m still the same person who packed up a car in January with nothing but a hostage plant and a few boxes and drove to another state anyway.

The problem is I keep acting like she vanished under cartons of ice cream, trash TV, and catastrophic overthinking, when she’s just waiting for me to get off the damn daybed.

Bex shows up a little before work carrying a chai tea latte and a blueberry scone.

That alone tells me how my current condition is being perceived. She drove forty-five minutes from Philly to get here, and Bex treats unnecessary traffic the way most people treat food poisoning.

I answer the door in the same sweatpants I wore Sunday, my hair twisted into a claw clip that’s been losing the battle against gravity since sometime yesterday afternoon.

She takes one look at me.

“You’ve been self-medicating with sugar and empty carbs.”

“I’ve been coping.”

“You’ve been hiding.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive…”

She walks inside and shoves the bag and the cup into my hand before I can further defend myself. Mom pokes her head out from the kitchen just long enough to spot Bex in the foyer. Her shoulders loosen almost immediately, like she’s relieved reinforcements have finally arrived, before she disappears again without saying a word.

Bex drops onto the daybed, and Roxy immediately hops to the floor like the occupancy limit’s been exceeded. She disappears into the hallway for a solid ten minutes before wandering back once she’s apparently decided Bex can stay.

“Tell me,” Bex says.

So I do.

I tell her about Brett on the stoop with the flowers and the way he managed to reach directly into every fear I’ve been carrying around and hand it back to me dressed up like logic. I tell her about Mack’s words and the way they twisted inside of me before I even made it through the front door. I tell her about the drive back to West Chester and the chips and the ice cream and Roxy’s unpaid therapy sessions.

By the time I finish talking, I’m emotional again and Bex is watching me with that expression she gets when she’s trying very hard not to interrupt a witness who’s still testifying.

“Okay,” she says slowly.

I already don’t like that tone.

“Did you maybe say any of this to them?”

I blink at her.

“They were there.”