“She better not have,” I snarl.

“I bet she put it in her bullet journal. Saturday, six P.M. A special gold star sticker indicating sexual intercourse completed.” Truly drifts half-asleep again, emitting the occasional cackle.

In my diary, written in the little gaps of time where I let Tom sleep, I’d be writing, Sex, fucking, sucking, nearly dying, need sustenance—with smudged ink and a weak hand. Me and my romantic heart.

I will always defend him. “You can’t know what things are like for a couple when they’re alone.” I stretch and groan in misery. “I bet he’s absolutely spectacular in bed. He’s so … competent. She would have had zero complaints.”

“Did you ever, ever see them kiss? Even once? I thought it was weird. I would have liked to see them kiss.” Truly’s slurring. Milk and toast are obviously strong opiates.

“Maybe she didn’t want to when I was there.”

Because I’d probably plunder and stab and burn. I’d watch from a hillside as her village burned to the ground, the flames crackling in my Viking eyes. I mess up my current anchor, have to clip all the threads out and start again.

Truly’s a mind reader. “I’m so glad you’re on my team. You’d be a terrifying adversary.”

“You’re mixing me up with my brother.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“He’s like the boss you fight in the last level of a computer game. Anyway, I never did anything to break up Tom and Megan. I was so polite to her.”

“With your giant gray eyes staring at her during every Christmas dinner like she was flattened onto a microscope slide.”

“She’s so beautiful,” I groan, my needle sliding in and out on autopilot. “I think I was half in love with her myself. Her skin and hair are just … beautiful.” There’s no other word I can use for her.

“So are yours.”

“Hair?” I wave a hand at my bare neck. “What is this hair you speak of?”

“Darce,” Truly says like I am a pitiful dweeb, “you are one tough cookie, but gosh, what a pretty cookie. Anyway, what does it matter? He doesn’t care about looks.”

I pause, knot, and clip. “Tom is the best person. The ultimate human man. I was used to her having him. But now …” I drop the needle into the carpet and curse, scratching around for it. “He’s single and I think I need to shoot myself out of a cannon into space. I was sexually threatening to him just now.” I prick my finger and swear. “He was afraid of me.”

“Oh really.” She starts giggling, delirious. She walks to the bathroom, which is very close by in her tiny apartment. She audibly pees for ages.

“He lied and didn’t tell me. He was planning on telling me after the renovation was finished. He said it was safer.” The word just makes me cringe. “Safer. What am I going to do, maul him?” I think back to the kitchen. “Okay, fair point.”

Truly spits toothpaste into the sink. “Maybe he doesn’t trust himself.”

“That’s really not it.” I think back to the kitchen. I was so sure I’d felt one firm press on my stomach from the truthful part of Tom Valeska’s anatomy. “He wants to get the renovation done without me hanging around, trying to smell him. I’m just going to have to keep a lid on myself and get through these next couple of months. Can I stay here with you?”

She smiles sweetly. “No. You stay with him.” I drag her into her bedroom and turn on a lamp. I pull off her cherry-print Keds and she crawls into bed, still dressed. She starts to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m so tired,” she says in between little sobs. “Lying down hurts.”

I smooth her hair neater on the pillow. “I know, but you’re going to pass out any second. I’m going to be here when you wake up and help with the packaging.”

“I bet Vince’s never made you wreck a kitchen,” Truly says, eyes closing, tears running down her cheeks and into her hair.

“No. He really hasn’t.”

“Interesting. Better not tell Jamie.” For a dizzy second, I misunderstand and think she is talking to herself. She’s my one person I’ve kept ruthlessly quarantined from him.

She’s mine, 100 percent.

“No shit. He’d be on the next available flight. Business class, window seat. Snobby blond snob, drinking wine in a suit, frowning down at the world below, swooping in to save Tom from my clutches.”

“That’s sorta hot,” she slurs as she fades off, her head rolling to one side.

Good Lord. Several barrels of Chemical X must have rolled into the reservoir. Echoes of Holly’s breathy He’s so good-looking reverberate around the room. I wonder if Jamie has buried himself into Truly’s primordial lizard brain, like a tick.

If he has, I’ll tweezer him out.

In the living room, I sit back down with my needle and thread. I miss my hideous handsome brother. It’s moments like this, in the dark, with no music or anyone to talk to. The absence of him is the void inside me, and I don’t know what more I can stuff into it. And on top of it all, I’ve just fucked up, big-time. I think of Tom’s abject terror. I was too honest. And I was stone-cold sober.

The cheap wine bottle is just sitting there on the rug like a penguin.

“What?” I say to it. “Leave me alone for a minute.” I sew, keeping my eyes on the needle.

It won’t stop staring at me.

I relent after a few more anchors and unscrew the cap to smell it. I take a small sip from the bottle, then deepen my swallows. About a glass burns down the hatch. I think about Tom looking in my recycling bin. I think about the task Truly has trusted me to do.

“I’ve got to concentrate,” I say sternly to the bottle, and put it in Truly’s fridge. Getting up and down a couple of times gives me some ghostly chest flutters. I’ve forgotten my medication at home.

For the first time in forever, I feel concerned for myself. This is worse than when I let my Furby die under my bed, mewling and crying. How do I correct this monumental neglect? I pat my chest. “Hang in there.” I really should go have a review and an ECG, but Jamie always comes with me to those appointments. I’m a baby. I’m just Princess, playing at being a grown-up, and failing.

I’m going to sew every single anchor before Truly wakes up. I’m like the elves helping the shoemaker. I will sew and sew. Maybe it will take my mind off Tom’s walking around in the world, single and resplendent.

Maybe I could convince him, my brain suggests optimistically, and my needle goes into my finger.

How could I risk hurting and losing him, just to have his body? I’d have to be the worst person. The most reckless, careless person. A rebound kind of girl. Oh wait. I am.

“Human flotsam,” I say to myself, and I stitch on, and on, and on.

Chapter 11

I haven’t seen the colors of sunrise in a long, long time.

In my old life, I’d be loading my car with photography gear even earlier than this and heading off to a shoot, a slave to this buttercream light. Everyone looks beautiful in this glow. It airbrushes in a way that my software package never could. It puts a flush in everything it touches.

But, all that said: Kill. Me. Now. It’s. Early. I lie in bed and stare at the exposed rafters above me.

I’d nearly bought a tent, but Tom had shaken his head and moved me into the backyard studio. Just store yourself in here with your furniture, DB. When he tossed my mattress down onto the bedframe with a sexual grunt, we never made eye contact. Not even Patty’s cheerful sneezes could break the tension. Sorry little buffer, Aunt Darcy did a big, bad thing.

I tore up the kitchen and I tore up my oldest friendship.

My voice is ringing in every silence: Tom Valeska, get in me. It echoes louder and louder, until we’re wincing and walking away from each other. He’s usually so good at erasing my weird moments, but this was too much. But I feel those gold lamplight eyes are always watching me. Something deep inside me—optimism, perhaps—tells me that he’s turning over my offer and inspecting it from all angles. Measuring it and testing it for faults. Show me what you got.