Page 110 of The Quiet Tenant

“And you thought you’d find it in the basement?”

A silence hangs between us. Then, the most beautiful sound: he laughs and I laugh, too, at myself, at my obvious lie, at the wonderful sense of relief warming me from head to toe.

“Busted,” I say.

He cocks his head. Studies me as if he’s never seen me before, like I’m a statue at a museum and he wants to memorize all my indentations and crevices. Like he wants to find out, and never forget, which parts of me give off light and which are pure shade.

I shift under his gaze. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. Serious again.

He opens his mouth, perhaps to reassure me that it’s okay, that he didn’t want the whole party to come inside but there’s no harm if it’s just one person, no harm if it’s just me, but—

His eyes are unsettled. They bounce from me to something above my right shoulder. Back to me, back to the thing. I trace his gaze from my coat sleeve to…

The piles of boxes?

It’s a reflex. An instinct left over from childhood, when the kid next to me at school shielded their test sheet from view and it made me want to peek even more.

My body moves before I tell it to. An imperceptible shift—my back twisting ever so slightly, rib cage turning, neck craning in the direction of the boxes behind us.

A hand clasps my arm. He’s grabbing on to me. Not the way he once did, the delicacy of affection, the urgency of passion. This is a tight grasp, somewhere between strength and panic. This is control.

I trace an invisible line with my eyes from his hand, veinous and white-knuckled around my coat sleeve, to his face. The handsome face I cradled that night at the restaurant. The lips I nibbled on, the nose I kissed swiftly, shyly, when it was all over.

There’s something I don’t recognize. A toughness, a void. An abyss opening underneath our feet. The sudden awareness that I don’t know him. Not really. That we’ve never stayed up all night talking.That he’s never told me about his childhood, his parents, his hopes and dreams and how they turned out.

He’s a man who hides things in his basement.

There’s an infinite range of possibilities, from the most innocent to the most embarrassing.

It’s okay,I want to tell him.We all have secrets. The truth is I hated my parents—no, wait, even that’s not true. The truth—the truth is that no one has ever loved me unconditionally. No one ever paid attention to me before you did, and I thought I was fine alone in my corner but I’m not. I’m really not.

The truth is I haven’t been fine in a long time.

The truth is I want to take up room. I want to be at the center of a person’s life. Adored, celebrated. The truth is I want someone to laugh at my jokes, especially the stupid ones, and I want someone who will see me and not run the other way.

The truth,I want to tell him,the truth is I would follow you anywhere.

He blinks. His grasp relaxes around my arm. He lets go, slowly, as if he’s only just realized he grabbed me in the first place.

He clears his throat. “I’m sorry. I—” He makes a humming sound and says it again, like a prayer he learned by heart: “I’m sorry.”

I touch the skin underneath my coat and sweater, still hot from being squeezed, slightly painful to the touch.

“It’s fine,” I tell him.

My own hand reaches out and hovers awkwardly as I can’t decide what to do—a hug, a tap, a fucking handshake?

“Come over here,” he says. “Let me show you something.”

He points to the workbench. To the shadowy end of the basement, where the light of the bare lightbulb doesn’t quite reach.

I would follow you anywhere.

“It’s just something I’ve been working on,” he tells me, his hand beckoning me to join him.

Then, a thud, actually more like a slam coming from upstairs, and an engine like a clap of thunder. Close to us. Right outside the house, if I had to guess. Where only his truck is parked. Everyone else found spots down the street.

His head, his entire body turning in the direction of the sound. A blur—I watch as his silhouette bolts, then disappears up the concrete steps.

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