Page 171 of The Clinch
It looks cold.I send it anyway.
A minute later my phone buzzes.
NATE
Okay. She said what she said?
I don’t answerthat one either.
Because she did. Because I heard every word.
I plant both hands on the granite and wait for the urge to move to pass.
It’s that or put my fist through something expensive.
The apartment smells faintly of her shampoo and whatever face cream she uses at night. Soap. Paper from her notes. Thecitrus cleaner the housekeeper uses on the surfaces. Underneath it all, the ghost of dinner from last night.
I have to work my mouth loose before I crack something.
This is what she asked for. Space. Choice. Her own life.
If she asks, I come.
If there’s danger, I move.
Otherwise, I hold the line.
The apartment still smells like her.
I tell myself I can survive that.
I’ve survived worse.
I’m trying to remember what.
41
TAKING THE HIT (LIZ)
Aweek back at the Cherokee is long enough to feel like routine, short enough to still feel temporary.
Eden is here some nights, barefoot in an oversized sweatshirt, picking through takeout and telling me about patients, Nate, or whatever absurd new thing one of the Defenders guys is up to. Other nights, she’s in Tarrytown with him, and the apartment settles around me. Not empty. Just mine again.
In the mornings, I wedge myself onto the M15 with everyone else trying to get to Midtown before nine. No black sedan. No back door opening before I reach the curb. No quiet assumption that my day has already been decided for me.
I asked for that. I still mean it.
Grossman has stopped pretending to be polite. The pace doesn’t scare me. It dares me, which is different. I know how to work. I know how to keep going.
Some mornings I run intervals along the East River until my thighs burn and the noise in my head evens out. Running was ours for a while, the rhythm of it. I catch myself looking across the water, as if I might feel him out there somewhere farthersouth on the Brooklyn side, doing his own roadwork while the city stretches awake between us.
I miss him.
Not in a way that makes me want to go back. In sharper places than that. In the click of the lock. In the silence after. In the ridiculous competence of him. In the way part of my body had already started expecting him.
Travis wanted to reduce me. Leo wanted to guard against threat. My body answered both men with panic. That doesn’t make them the same.
I’m not ready to do much with that distinction yet. I only know it’s here now, sitting in the room with me whether I invite it in or not.
