Page 18 of Silver Lining (The Diamond Trilogy 3)
I can’t picture her standing over the stove, stirring a pot of noodles. She does have noodles, two boxes in a slim cupboard above the fridge.
Oh—traveling. She would have been traveling before for her work as an influencer.
But she’s not traveling now. How could she, really? Posting her face all over a public profile would bring the NSA running faster than she could count to ten.
So could my presence here.
It’s a toss-up.
The living room doesn’t offer much in the way of new things to look at. There’s the couch and the crocheted blanket I’ve been sleeping under. A television on an IKEA stand, with a fake potted plant perched nearby. I’ve been in here for days. I know every leaf on that plant.
I pass by the bathroom in the narrow hall separating Holly’s bedroom from the rest of the space. Her medicine cabinet is practically bare. A bottle of Tylenol—that’s it. No prescriptions. I searched the medicine cabinet the last time she went shopping, hoping for something stronger.
Nothing.
The one place I haven’t been is London’s bedroom.
The door’s open when I get there. Open wide. It’s almost flat against the inner wall, so I can lean against the doorframe and look in. I’ve assessed hundreds of rooms over the course of my career. None of them have made my hair stand on end. Not like this.
At first glance there’s nothing out of the ordinary. A full-size mattress with a rumpled white comforter sits close to one wall, with just enough room on the side for a person of London’s size to squeeze past. A slim end table holds up a nondescript lamp. The closet space isn’t anything to write home about—a long closet set into one wall. Shallow. So shallow it can’t hold all of London’s clothes, which are stacked on the floor, bursting at the seams. This is the first hint of her former influencer life.
She has a wardrobe.
But it doesn’t look like it’s recently been in use. The hamper wedged into a corner of the closet only has a few items at the bottom. She hasn’t been changing in and out of various looks for photoshoots. I would be shocked to discover she’s been sneaking out to take photos. It wouldn’t be much of a travel shoot for London.
So there are the clothes.
And then there is the shelf.
It’s one shelf, also IKEA-chic, snugged up in a space below the narrow window at the front of the room. The window looks down over a New York City street as nondescript as anywhere else. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. That doesn’t mean they won’t find us. But that’s old information. What interests me is the contents of the shelf.
The top two squares are filled with records.
Records leaning against each other in a tilted slope toward the left side. On top of the shelf, in a place of prominence, is a blush pink record player. This, at least, looks perfect for an Instagram shoot. Something sent to her by a company that wanted her influence, no doubt. Women like London get this kind of thing all the time. That’s why they go into careers on social media, or at least side jobs there.
I would expect London’s apartment to be full of these kinds of gifts, or bribes, or payments.
It’s not.
Aside from her clothes, the record player is the only obvious sign of her career. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she bought this for herself to go with her record collection.
I didn’t intend to come into the room when I stood up. Only to look. To canvas. The records change my plans. My fingers itch to separate them from each other and read the titles. It’s the same aching itch I have to touch London whenever she’s in the same room, which is nearly always.
A deep breath to steady myself turns into an exercise in restraint. I can smell her. The light floral soapy scent of her shampoo is all over the blanket, and she’s left it tumbled and open, like she just climbed out of it. The bed is a trap. It’s the records that hook me at the center of my chest and tug me across the threshold.
The fact that I hesitated has made all of this more illicit and more irresistible. If I’d just walked in like I own both the bedroom and London Frank, I wouldn’t get to feel this blend of shame and exhilaration.
My feet meet the rug and it gives. The rug, like everything else, is shockingly secondhand. It’s endearing as hell to know that a person like London, beautiful, well-traveled London, furnishes her apartment with comfortable castoffs. I fight off the urge to sink down to my knees and run my palms over the fabric ridges.
The rug ends where the shelf begins.
This is more intimate than rifling through her underwear drawer. Make no mistake—I want to do that, too. So much that if she ever knew, she’d call me a sick bastard and change the locks. I want to look at the records more. Is it an obsession if it makes you want to go through a person’s records more than you want to see their lingerie?
