Page 25 of Fluffed and Folded

He finished his food, carried both their bowls to the kitchen, put the leftover food in the fridge, and washed the dishes. When that was done, Darby was still asleep. He paused, wondering if there was something more he could or should do, but nothing came to mind. Reluctantly, he let himself out and closed the door, making certain it was locked behind him.

Darby woke an unknown time later in a darkened apartment. Her first moment of panic made her believe someone was in the apartment with her, but after taking a few deep breaths, she shook off the panic and tried to backtrack. How had she wound up asleep on her couch?Eli.Had Eli been there, or was that a dream? She wouldn’t have dreamed him eating dumplings, would she?

She reached for the television remote and turned it on, supplying the space with both noise and much-needed light. When she entered the kitchen, she stopped short. Where there was once a pot of dumplings, there was only empty space, and the dishes that had been in her sink were also gone, leaving aclean and empty space in their wake. Cautiously, she tiptoed to the fridge, pulled it open, and peeked inside.Eli put away my food and cleaned my kitchen.It hadn’t been horribly dirty, only a little untidy, but she wasn’t certain how she felt about that. Exposed, maybe? Vulnerable and off-kilter for certain. Darby was self-contained, perfectly content to look after herself. And yet lately a total stranger had come to her rescue in multiple ways, most recently by helping her ward off food poisoning by refrigerating her leftovers. She was mid-contemplation of reheating said leftovers when she heard something.

Scritchhhhh

Darby had lived in the apartment for ten years, and she knew every sound, no matter how tiny. This one was anomalous, nothing she’d ever heard before, though she knew exactly what it was, the sound of something outside scratching the vinyl siding of her apartment.Someone is outside.She closed the refrigerator door and froze, trying to peer frantically out the window. Were they watching her? Could they see? The apartment was dark, save for the dim glow of the television now radiating from the living room, but was it enough to illuminate Darby, to show her fear?

I should call someone,she thought, but who? The police? She’d lived in the city long enough to know what DC cops would do with someone who reported a scratching sound outside.Ignore me or laugh at me or both.Either way, they certainly wouldn’t respond. Who else?Eli.That gave her pause. He would come, she knew, and he would make her feel better, but what if the person outside was dangerous? And then she remembered Tristan, who was such an obvious answer, that she rolled her eyes at her stupidity. Of course she should call the private eye/security guard she had hired for the purpose of investigating weird events. He was steps away, trained to track bad guys, andowned a gun. Not to mention the fact that he was menacing and huge, a walking barrel of muscles.

Her phone was conveniently in her pocket, but still she hesitated. Why, though? If she were honest with herself, she didn’t want Tristan; she wanted Eli. Tristan, for all his largeness and severity, did not make her feel safe the same way that Eli made her feel safe, as if she could be herself, tell him anything, and trust him with the outcome. Tristan was undoubtedly better at punching and shooting people and handling bad guys. But when she thought of who she wanted with her in this darkened apartment while an unknown person roamed outside, it wasn’t the former cop; it was the guy who worked with old people in assisted living. Why, though? The inability to find a solid answer disturbed her because of the vulnerability she saw in herself. Darby was alone, and she was fine with it. She had purposely chosen not to date again after Ham died, preferring to eschew the hassle of tying herself to another person, no matter how peripherally. Financially, she was set. While it would be nice to occasionally have a man to advise her on mechanical things that went wrong with her car or the apartments, it was nothing she couldn’t take care of by hiring someone. She assumed hiring Tristan would be the same; she needed extra security, so she hired a guy. But this was…different somehow. She felt a void she hadn’t felt since…she wasn’t certain she’d ever felt it.

Before Ham, she’d been too busy to date much. High school activities, family life, and her job had kept her calendar filled, too much to worry about boys, more than flirting with one at the Friday night football game. After Ham, she’d been resolved: no more men. Now? She was still resolved, at least mentally. She was better off remaining independent. That was why this feeling baffled her, almost a yearning sort of ache she couldn’t nail down. And if she couldn’t name it, she couldn’t resolve or fix it.

I will call Tristan,she decided. It was the most pragmatic thing, to utilize the person she had already hired for the purpose. Once again she reached in her pocket and then, unknown to her, stared into space, her mind a blank void.

When she came to, some unknown time later, she had no idea why she was in the kitchen, nor why all the lights were off. On autopilot now, she turned, went back to the couch, lay down, and promptly fell asleep.

CHAPTER 15

Tristan Evans sat on his couch, watching his girlfriend cut out thirty paper pumpkins with more precision than he would have thought possible. Her tongue was between her teeth, as it always was when she concentrated hard on a craft, her head tilting back and forth as she turned the paper. If someone had told him five years ago that he would be content to sit on a couch in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and watch a woman cut pumpkins, he probably would have punched them. Now, though…

“Are you happy in your new digs?” Josie asked, apropos of nothing. Or, more accurately, apropos of some internal dialogue he couldn’t possibly comprehend. How did she get from pumpkins to his apartment? He had no idea, nor would he understand the route, if she tried to describe it to him.

“Digs?” he repeated. It was a Josie word. She had a habit of pulling pieces of retro dialogue from somewhere and interjecting them into everyday conversation. Before Josie, he used to believe relationships were boring, that you must get tired of being with the same person on repeat. What he failed to realize back then was that you could be with the same person every minute of every day and never peel back as manylayers as they actually had. Tristan could tell anyone what Josie’s favorite snack was—something called “puppy chow”—and her dream vacation—England, followed by Italy—and her most embarrassing anecdote—running over a curb and hitting the instructor’s car during driver’s ed—but he had still only scratched the surface of her life, as well as her unreadable brain.

She sighed, exasperated with his teasing, or possibly his lack of answer. “Your man pad,” she amended, and he snorted a laugh.

“Let’s go back to digs. Yeah, I mean, it’s not for real, so…” He shrugged, looking around the posh—to him—apartment. It was in the trendy part of Adams Morgan, several steps up from the Columbia Heights neighborhood where he actually dwelled. His actual neighborhood was so bad that he had forbidden Josie from coming to it and, miracle of miracles, she agreed. “It’s nice that you can be here.”

She smiled. “It is nice. Feels like I no longer have a secret boyfriend. Now that I’m free to visit, I might show up all the time.” She tossed the words out like a challenge.

“Is that supposed to upset me? If so, you are all kinds of terrible at reading my signals.” He pulled her into his lap, easing his grip when she squawked and reached to set aside the pumpkins. She nestled into his embrace, another Josie thing that he loved.

“What’s bothering you about this place?” she asked, her fingers brushing his temple. Since his hair was only a few millimeters long, it was affection rather than an attempt to smooth flyaways.

“I don’t know. Memories, I guess.”

She raised her brows, waiting for more. It still boggled his mind that she wanted to know anything about his dismal life before her, but she seemed to hold the same fascination with him that he held with her. And it was nice, that bit of interest inhim. It was much more than anyone else had ever shown him, his family included.

He shrugged a shoulder, letting it drop heavily. “I had a place like this.”

“A place where a guy was murdered? You might be cursed.”

He gave her a squeeze and she smiled, nestling in to hear the remainder of the story. “A nice place. With a door on the bathroom and a stove where all the burners work.”

She whistled appreciatively. “Swanky. Tell me more.”

“After the academy, when I got a real job and started making money, I moved out of the hovel I’d been living in with three other guys, into a townhouse. It was in a nice neighborhood and I bought stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” Her head rested on his shoulder, face perched inquisitively. He couldn’t resist kissing the tip of her nose, when she looked at him like that.

“Couch. Chair. Table. TV. TV stand. Stuff. Real people stuff.” He sighed, because this was the part of the story where things took a turn. His former life blew up and he lost everything; his job, his townhouse, his stuff.

“How did it make you feel, to have that stuff?” she asked. Josie knew he’d grown up poor because he told her, but he wondered if she could fathom actual poverty. Though not rich by any means, her family had been solidly middle class. Josie’d had her own bedroom, with plenty of clothes and food and a car all her own. Tristan had shared his room with two siblings and a cousin, often ate only when the school gave free lunch, and hadn’t been able to get his license until he cobbled together enough money to buy a rust bucket of his own, one that was literally held together with duct tape in some places.

“At first good,” he answered. “But then…” he remembered back to that time, the feeling of accomplishment that was soon replaced by the fear of not accomplishing enough. Howmuch was enough? Would he feel it when he bought a bed? A dresser? A better car? A motorcycle? After the initial burst of euphoria, nothing ever filled that void. And when he lost it all, it felt like confirmation of the inevitable. Of course he couldn’t have anything, maybe didn’t deserve anything. The universe was merely restoring itself to its proper order. He’d stumbled around in blind misery until… He glanced down at Josie. Untilher. None of the stuff ever made him feel the way she did, as if he was worth something, as if his life had value, as if he were asuccess.

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