Page 39 of Deeply Examined

“Do you need to know me?” I ask, not sure what answer I want to hear.

“Yes,” she says simply. “I would like that.”

I swallow, look away. “I have a past I’m not proud of, so I’d rather not talk about it.”

A long silence as she considers this. “Fine. Then don’t. Talk about the present. Tell me about your day, about your favorite food so I can cook it for you. Teach me about the stock market, about medicine. If you don’t want to look backward, we can look forward.”

Some of the tension drains out of my body at that. I was worried she’d pry. Dig up all the bones in my graveyard and, worst of all, find out who Ireallyam. How can I explain it now? That I knew her back in high school. The time for that conversation was months ago.

“I think I can do that. At least I’ll try,” I promise. I raise my wine glass to her. “To the future.”

She clinks her glass against mine. “The future,” she echoes, her voice soft but weighted. She takes a sip of her wine, her eyes lingering on mine, searching for truths I’m not ready to reveal. If she knew everything, she wouldn’t be sitting here. She wouldn’t be smiling at me, cooking me dinner, or hoping for a future.

She’d be running.

Jessica

Things shift after that first dinner together.

Not like a landslide. West doesn’t just open up and start telling me all his secrets.

No. He lets me in like a leaking faucet, in dribbles and drabbles. Some nights when he gets home, he’s tired or extra wary of me. Those times I get one-word answers and an excuse about needing to go to bed early. Other nights he’s more energized. Those are my favorite times, when he speaks long paragraphs about an interesting patient he had that day or about how he wants to invest in a new company that uses external brain wave stimulation to control epilepsy. In those rare shining moments, he loses his brooding man vibes and gains a boyish quality, open and unguarded.

In return, I tell him about my day—about my students. Milo, who aces every test but never turns in his homework because he works two jobs after school to help support his family. Kieke, whose family has moved three times in the past five months, bouncing between couches and unable to find stability. I slip granola bars into her backpack when she’s not looking, and, though we never talk about it, she always leaves her bag unzipped.

Not all my stories are heavy, though. There’s Beck, who just won the local science fair, and Ari—quiet, withdrawn Ari—who, with a little nudge from me, went from never speaking in class to starting his own e-sports club. Now he’s leading it with the kind of confidence I always knew was there.

At first, I’m hesitant to tell West everything. Sometimes, the things I share make him frown, a flicker of judgment in the downturn of his mouth. I hold back, editing out certain details, afraid he’ll say I’m too invested. Over time, something shifts. He starts to show interest in these students he’s never met, asking about them over dinner. How did Sam do on his test? Is Cheri still dating Nick? Slowly, the judgment fades, replaced by a curiosity that makes me feel a little less alone in carrying the weight of their stories.

Before I know it, a month has passed, and this condo, which once felt overwhelmingly opulent, now feels like home. I shouldn’t get too comfortable, though. This is only temporary. Every day I still search for Chicago apartments and New York jobs online. Eventually I’ll find a new home here or a new job in New York and then I’ll have to leave.

The thought fills me with sadness. I wouldn’t have called myself lonely before. I had friends and went on dates, but now that I’ve lived with West, I see that Iwaslonely. Going out with friends and dates all ended by 11:00 p.m., and the empty hours that followed were hollow. I used to putter around my apartment until 2:00 a.m., vacuuming my already clean floor and overwatering my houseplants until they all died in an effort to keep myself busy. I don’t do those things anymore. Now I stay up with West, talking or reading next to him until my eyelids droop and I yawn. Then I climb up the spiral stairs to my room and fall asleep with the echo of his voice and the flash of his mirror eyes in my mind.

West would never admit it, but the contented sigh he lets out as he sits beside me on the couch, paired with the subtle glances he keeps sneaking my way, tells me he was lonely before too.

As comfortable as everything is, two mysteries nag at me. One, why aren’t we having sex, and two, what’s in that locked room downstairs?

To answer number one, I run through the possibilities. Maybe he doesn’t find me attractive anymore? To test this theory, I wear my shortest skirt, the one that shows my butt when I bend over. It’s black and pleated, almost like my old cheerleading skirt. I pair it with a tight white crop top and my favorite beaten-up Vans.

That day West comes home and skids to a stop in the doorway. He stares at me with wide, gray eyes, which he then tilts to the ceiling and squeezes shut. Hand rubbing his temple, he stays there muttering to himself. I hear the whisper of his voice, counting 1, 2, 3, 4… The rest of the night he barely looks at me. The one time I put my hand on his shoulder when I walk by, he jumps like he was bitten by a rattlesnake.

By the end of the evening, I’m convinced he doesn’t like me that way anymore. Most likely, I’ve been friend-zoned. A common occurrence for me since I’m so “nice.”

Ugh.

No woman wants the hottest man she ever saw to just think of her as “nice.”

I give up on the idea of being more than friends with West and focus instead on the locked door. When I pass the room, I hear a low whirring sound, like the noise a computer makes when its fan turns on. Even more strange is that when it’s dark a flickering white light shines out from under the door. It strobes flashes of white, gray, and black across the hallway floor.

Intrigued, I search for the locked room’s key in every drawer and cupboard but find nothing. West either carries it with him or keeps it at his office. I try to pick the lock with an old bobby pin. In the movies that always works, but in real life half of the bobby pin breaks off and gets stuck in the lock mechanism. I spend a sweat-filled thirty minutes using every tool—kitchen knife, toothpick, another bobby pin—to get it free. I’m already rehearsing what excuse I’ll give West for ruining his lock when I finally get the piece out using my favorite eyebrow tweezers.

Thank God!

At that moment, the front door opens, and West strides in. I hide the tweezers behind my back, which is ridiculous because there’s nothing inherently suspicious about them. The weird thing is that West is also hiding something behindhisback, except his is harder to hide because it’s a huge white box tied with a shiny red bow.

Is that for me?

It can’t be, right?

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