Page 27 of Severance

“Do you want another one?” Mikah asks as soon as his beer is empty. He rises to his feet and maneuvers around the boxes and into the kitchen.

I look at my bottle. There’s still some left, but I say yes anyway.

The alcohol takes effect somewhere in the middle of my monologue on how to make a perfect cheesecake. I’ve never made one myself, but a girl can dream, right? My head’s suddenly woozy, my body feels like it’s fallen apart inside Dakota’s jacket, and I’m having a hard time moving my hands.

“I think I’m drunk,” I announce, shifting in my chair.

“You’ve had one beer.” Mikah cocks an eyebrow at me as if I spoke to him in French.

“I don’t really drink.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m kind of sleepy,” I confess.

“Knock yourself out.” He gets up and disappears down the hallway, the sound of his heavy footsteps growing softer and softer. He didn’t just desert me here, did he?

I’m too dizzy to get up from the chair, so I keep sitting with my beer in my hands and my eyes closed until Mikah comes back a few minutes later with a blanket.

“Just sleep it off, okay?” He grabs the bottle from me and sets it on the coffee table.

I nod. My vision is blurred and my mind’s fuzzy, and I realize for the first time since the attack—I don’t feel like something bad is about to happen to me. Maybe it’s the beer or maybe it’s this place or maybe it’s Mikah, but it’s nice not to be scared for once.

* * *

I’m not sure exactly what time it is when I wake up, but I know it’s very late. Past my curfew kind of late. It’s that one hour in the middle of the night when everything goes still, when there’s no traffic and no dogs barking, and if someone breathes somewhere inside the building, you know.

The blanket is on the floor. It must have fallen while I was asleep. The living room is dark and cold, and the apartment has an odd vibe—a blend of messy memories and uncertain future.

“Mikah?” I call from the chair, but for some reason, my voice is shot. His name comes out in a ragged whisper. My head’s still a little fuzzy and the tips of my fingers tingle from lack of circulation when I try to move.

The quiet, barely-there music that I hear drifting through the darkness of the apartment seems bizarre at this hour.

Sitting up, I study the shadows in the living room and strain to hear the chords. My breath is stuck somewhere between my lungs and my throat. It’s both calm and electrifying and sounds nothing like Mikah. I continue to listen until the music stops.

My bladder is what finally gives me the nudge to get up. Wrestling off Dakota’s jacket, I stand and make my way down the hallway. The door to Mikah’s bedroom is slightly ajar and light seeps through the narrow crack.

Inching forward, I peek inside and see Mikah perched on a chair with his acoustic guitar on his lap. He’s staring at the screen of his desktop computer, and I recognize the Pro Tools interface.

Some of the things I learned when I used to watch Dakota work on the band’s demos sort of stuck. Like what pedals are for, or what brands of amplifiers are best, or what Pro Tools is. They’re small pieces of information you tend to pick up when you spend all your time with a musician.

Mikah tears his gaze away from the computer and plucks at the strings of his guitar, humming some words I can’t make out. Seeing him sing makes me shiver all over, and I lose my balance and fall against the door, pushing it open. I grab at the handle to close it, but Mikah’s already noticed me.

He stops playing and spins in his chair. “Are you still drunk?”

“No.” I shake my head, looking around. He’s taken the painting and most of the posters down, and what’s left is bare walls and the essentials. His bookshelf is gone too. “Did you write that?” I gesture at the guitar, moving toward his bed to sit down.

“It’s just some demos.” He shrugs, his green eyes following me.

“You have a really nice voice.”

Mikah doesn’t respond. He drops his gaze to his guitar and fingers the strings. The melody filling the room is painfully familiar.

I watch him mess around with the chords with the same fascination with which I used to watch Dakota. During the shows, Dakota was always the one to perform the acoustic parts. At the last rehearsal before The Crystal Room performance, they played an acoustic song that they’d written together, but for some reason, it never made it into the final setlist. Hearing Mikah perform it without the shadow of Dakota’s voice is strange.

The music abruptly comes to an end and Mikah sets his guitar aside and rises to his feet. “Are you hungry?” he asks, stretching.

“What do you have?”

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