Page 51 of 56 Days
She’s still caught on the backpack.
She’d watched for it when they’d returned to the apartment the first time: he’d hurried off into the bedroom with it before coming back to the kitchen without it, so whatever was in there, it wasn’t food.
What would he have bought in that place that he didn’t want her to see? Whatcouldhe have?
And why hide anything from her at all?
She’d casually asked him for the receipt in the car on the way home, under the pretense of figuring how much she owed him. But he’d told her he didn’t know where he’d put it, even though she’d watched him slip it inside his jacket at the checkout.
Had he genuinely forgotten that?
Or just outright lied?
When they return to the apartment a second time, Oliver starts tearing at the printer box and Ciara announces that she’s going to have a shower.
She takes a towel into the bathroom, locks the door behind her, and strips. She turns the monsoon showerhead up full, the temperature to just below scalding, and stands under its pressurized rainfall for thirty seconds, making sure to get the ends of her hair dripping wet. Then she steps out of it, wraps the towel around her, and sinks down until she is sittingcross-leggedon the tiled floor, back against the door.
She needs a minute alone.
To think.
The backpack isn’t a big deal. People are entitled to privacy and there’s plenty of things you can buy in a supermarket that you might not want to announce to the woman you’ve just started a relationship with. Like...
The best she can come up with is hemorrhoid cream, which she’s not even sure they sell in supermarkets, but there must be lots of things.
A thick steam starts to swirl in the air above her.
The problem is that it’s reminded her that there could be a set of kitchen knives in there. Or ahalf-pintof vodka he’ll drink before noon from a water bottle. Or something from the health section that he needs because of some undisclosed medical condition.
The problem is she doesn’t knowwhatcould be in there, because she doesn’t knowhim.
Not well enough to feel certain she’s safe here, living with him in this place where no one else knows she is.
Shewantsto be here. She does.
Butshouldshe be?
A hard knock on the bathroom door startles her.
“You alive in there?” Oliver’s voice, muffled by the door.
Ciara jumps up, out of the towel, and back into the shower stream before answering so that her, “Yeah?” sounds like it’s coming from the right place.
“I’ve put dinner on,” he says. “Ready in ten minutes or so.”
“Okay,” she calls out. “Great.”
She hears a clicking noise then—is that the door handle? Is he trying to get in?
Or is he just checking to see if she’s locked it?
She waits.
“Is everything all right?” he asks after a beat.
“Yeah. Fine. Why?”
She waits for an answer but none comes, and a few seconds later she thinks she hears the door to the living roomclunkclosed.
