Page 358 of Face Off

My apartment is dark except for the light over the stove. I leave it on now because neither of us does particularly well entering empty rooms. Briggs drops onto one of the stools while I lock the door, put water on the stove, and take his phone when he slides it across the counter.

“I deleted the number,” he tells me.

“She’ll use another one.”

“I know.”

“I’ll keep this tonight.”

“I know.”

Every answer becomes quieter.

I set a glass of water in front of him and begin pulling food from the refrigerator. Cooking gives my hands somewhere to put the anger. It gives Briggs something to criticize while the panic works its way through him.

He watches me crack eggs into a bowl. “You mailed it.”

I look over my shoulder. “How do you know?”

“You have post-office misery all over your face.”

“That isn’t a thing.”

“It is when you’ve spent almost two months writing love letters like a soldier trapped overseas.”

“They aren’t love letters.”

“Do they contain love?”

“Some of them.”

“Are they letters?”

I whisk the eggs harder than necessary. “You’re sleeping in the guest room. Don’t make me reconsider.”

Briggs rests both forearms against the counter. “What did you tell her?”

“That isn’t your business.”

“I didn’t ask what you wrote.”

“You asked exactly what I wrote.”

“I asked what you told her. Those are emotionally different questions.”

“You’re exhausting.”

“And you’re avoiding me.”

I pour the eggs into the skillet and listen to them hiss. Briggs waits through the silence because he has learned something from these nights too. He no longer fills every quiet moment before someone can leave him inside it.

“I asked if I would ever hear her voice again.”

The confession changes the room.

Briggs straightens. “You want to call her?”

“I want to hear her.”