Page 5 of Windlass

She smiled. Then she remembered the evening before, and the smile died.

Her chest twinged uneasily at the thought of going back inside, even with the promise of a shower. Instead, she walked to the window of the hayloft and sat, legs dangling over the edge. The wood scraped pleasantly against the back of her thighs. Outside, the apple trees in the orchard had just finished blooming, but she imagined a hint of their sweet fragrance as the breeze blew through the new green leaves of late June. Olive grazed in the pasture, flaxen tail swishing to ward off flies. Leave it to Stevie to find a horse with hair that matched her own.

Her fingers itched with the need, omnipresent and oppressive, to run her fingers through Stevie’s smooth blond locks. Every once in a while, Angie was able to convince Stevie to let her do something different than a ponytail. Sometimes she’d braid Stevie’s hair, Stevie sitting at her feet while they watched stupid B-list sci-fi films, and sometimes she’d wheedle Stevie into letting her run a straightener through it. Stevie whined, but Angie knew she secretly loved every second, even if she didn’t really care about the outcome.

Her chest twinged again. She bit her lip, testing the edge of her teeth against the skin right up until the point before her lip split. It helped a little. A swallow darted over her head with a flutter of wings.

The morning had been fine. Neither of them was morning people. They exchanged cordial grunts and appreciative sighs when the coffee announced it was done brewing with its chipper beep. Stevie had errands to run, and Angie had paperwork to catch up on in her barn office, which gave them purpose and an excuse not to deal with the elephant that had taken up residence in her house in Morgan’s absence.

Now, though, she strained for the sound of tires on gravel and the slam of a car door announcing Stevie’s return, but only heard the bark of the dogs boarding for the weekend. Angie’s dog daycare and boarding facility, a satellite of the veterinary clinic, was closed Sundays, and she handled the feeding and morning play hour by herself. That still left plenty of time to hang out with Stevie, which is what she usually did on Sundays. Neither of them had mentioned plans for later before they parted ways today.

I hate this.

The thought was vicious and swift, and her eyes stung. An emotion she’d never really had a name for yawned like an abyss inside her chest—a pure, dark, agonizing need, distilled into nothingness, impossible to fill and always hungry. She stared at the orchard. Her orchard. Her home. When she inherited the property, she’d naively thought it would be enough, and when her friends moved in, surrounding her with loyalty and trust, she’d prayed they would replace her losses.

But unconditional love, she theorized on the nights she lay awake counting her sins, left behind a black hole when retracted.

She’d tried to fill it. Her twenties had been a wreck of bodies, of whispered endearments she’d never been able to return, until at last she stopped trying. It wasn’t fair to her partners. Sex for sex’s sake was different. It could, under the right circumstances, temporarily mimic satiety, or at least drive her far enough out of her body she no longer felt the pangs of hunger.

Fuck or flight: her two reactions.

There was enough pop psychology on her social feeds to tell her why she bolted. Girl’s family betrays her; ergo, girl cannot let anyone else in ever again, even if she wants to. The few times she’d come close had ended . . . badly. A breakup over text. Ghosted messages. Cheating. Being a complete piece of shit was better than the alternative apparently.

She would not feed Stevie to that void.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. A text from Stevie popped up, a meme referencing one of their inside jokes. Her lip quivered as she smiled.

Fucking hell.

She tapped out a reply, which was mostly GIFs. Words were too hard. Her blood raced beneath her skin. She would have ripped free of it all were such a thing possible. Anything to get away from this torturous longing.

Instead, she opened a new message.

You free tonight?she asked Lana.

Yeah,came the near-immediate reply. Lana always had her phone on her, which was annoying in person, but convenient for emergencies.

Your place cool?she asked.

The dancing dots that indicated Lana was typing had time to complete a full routine before the reply finally arrived.

A friend is crashing at my place. I’ll come to u.

The “friend” part was probably a lie. More like some poor girl who hadn’t yet learned who she was sleeping with.

Now it was her turn to send the dots into a waltz. As an unspoken rule, she didn’t have Lana over on her day off, or really ever if possible. Days off were when she hung out with Stevie. To break that rule after what had almost happened the night before would be tantamount to a slap in the face. Only a truly deplorable asshole would do such a thing to their best friend, but if she didn’t, she would end up beneath Stevie, and then she’d ruin everything.

The void behind her ribs snarled. She closed her eyes, but that made it worse, because behind her eyes she was alone in the dark with the truth.

Stevie fiddled with her phone, not paying attention to the images and videos flying past with each flick of her thumb. Marvin, her pit bull, lay stretched out on the couch beside her with his head in her lap and his eyes looking up at her with the kind of abject adoration that, as Morgan had once told her, only someone who did not understand puns could feel about Stevie. She stroked a gentle line between his eyes with her free hand.

“Who’s my boy?”

I am, his expression replied, though that expression also telegraphed a desperate need for french fries and access to the cat’s litter box. She didn’t mind being on the same level as fries. Cat shit, on the other hand . . .

James, Angie’s excessively large and grumpy black Maine coon, studied her clinically from his perch on the back of the faux leather armchair by the game room bookshelf.

“You arenotmy boy,” she told him. He didn’t blink.

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