But when the thing starts to move, I’m snapped back into my body.
Holy, shit! What the hell am I doing?
I look around in a panic, reaching for the handle on the wall, and Marla is suddenly concerned, asking if I have a fear of elevators.
I don’t answer, just close my eyes and press my lips together to avoid saying something I shouldn’t.
Somewhere to my left, the kid laughs and jumps up and down.
Up and down, up and down.
Thump-thump-thump.
I wince with every jump. “It’s just…I think I’m getting a migraine. Weird, but it just came out of the blue. I should probably go. Usually the only things that work are chugging water and then crashing for a few hours. I haven’t had one in a while. Maybe it was the cheese on the burger. Dairy sometimes brings them on and…” I’m rambling, but nerves prevent me from stopping.
Marla notices my discomfort and stills the kid, and all the while the elevator is shooting me closer and closer to their apartment. To Hollis.
But Marla the Martyr won’t have it. Because God only knows what’ll happen if she doesn’t have someone to fuss over. If she doesn’t have someone else’s needs to put before her own. “Hollis gets migraines every now and then. You can have one of his pain pills and then lay down in the guest bedroom. Well, it’s Hollis’s office, but there’s a couch, so…”
“No!” I practically shriek. “I, um…I don’t want to put your husband out.”
The elevator dings, and without looking back, Marla steps out. “Don’t worry about it.”
But that’s the thing Marla. I can’t not worry about it.
I’m still in the elevator, hands pushed against the doors to keep them from closing, a firm no on the tip of my tongue, when Marla turns around and smiles. “Hollis is in New York, meeting with his editor. He won’t even know you’re here.”
Her passion was feral; beautiful and untamed, she stirred in him his darkest demons.
— November’s Night, Hollis Thatcher
I’m sitting at Hollis’s desk, enjoying the comfort of his ugly ergonomic chair, when I get a text from Nicholas, telling me that the project he’s working on is nearing completion and he’ll be home in two weeks.
Which means I need to step up my game.
I have two weeks left to break up this marriage before I have to go back to Minneapolis indefinitely.
And…that’s not enough time.
I ignore Nicholas’s text; we’re not the sort of couple who rushes to answer each other’s messages.
Leaning forward, I continue browsing the files on Hollis’s computer (the man still uses the same password he did when we were together: 1.21Gigawatts) and I get a warm feeling in my stomach when I remember how Back to the Future was our make out movie of choice. Of course, the fact that he still uses that password is just another sign that he loves me. That we’re meant to be.
Psycho B-I-T-C-H, my ass.
In my opinion, Marla’s the psycho bit—
Holy shit.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
I’m looking at a picture of myself.
I’m looking at a picture of myself…on Hollis’s computer.
• • •
I didn’t take much from our apartment when I left.
Nicholas knew of my plan to leave Hollis. Hell, he helped me hatch it. And knowing I had no place to go following the destruction of that relationship, he offered me the spare bedroom in his condo, a property that belonged to his father’s firm. It already had everything I would need, and I had no desire to tote along memories of the past into my new life.
And that included photographs.
The one I’m staring at now was taken the summer before college. In it, I’m laying back on a beach towel, squinting up at the camera, my mouth frozen open in mid-laugh. Water droplets glisten on my neck, my chest, and wet curls stick to my cheeks, my forehead. The sun has turned everything golden, and my skin is smooth and wrinkle-free and holy fuck I look young.
And…happy. I look happy.
But how could I not have been, with high school behind me and the future so close I could taste it? Hollis and I lived in a bubble back then, a tiny world of our own creation, where other people didn’t exist, where time was irrelevant. We were hope and hunger, expectant and arrogant. We didn’t just dream, we dared.
My finger trembles as I click the mouse, and suddenly I’m looking at another picture of myself. It was taken at the same location – a lake just outside of our crackerjack hometown – and this time Hollis is by my side, pulling me close in a one-armed embrace. It’s a gritty selfie, shot with one of the disposable cameras Hollis had taken to carrying around that summer. I remember the way he wanted to document everything, every moment of what he considered our before. Because he was certain, so certain, that our after was going to be everything we’d ever dreamed of.
You’ll want to remember this, Becca, I remember him saying towards the end of that summer, when I complained about always having a camera in my face. Someday you’ll look back and be glad I took these.
And he was right.
I scroll through frame after frame, eating them up, marveling at our optimism, the pure unbridled freedom we exuded. We were always touching, always kissing, always drinking and fucking. In one, we’re skinny dipping in the lake. The next, we’re wrapped up together on a cot in the guest house on the Thatcher property. Every shot is either a couple selfie or a picture of me alone, sometimes looking at the camera, but more often staring wistfully into the distance. There are none of Hollis by himself, as if even back then he knew he could never really exist without me.
As for me? I’ve never looked so peaceful. So content.
Though I’m surprised to see myself this way, I shouldn’t be. That summer contained the absolute best days of my life; nothing since has even compared.
Well, maybe these past few weeks with Ford…
No.
I push that thought quickly out of my mind, though it proves impossible to banish entirely. It just relocates, this weighted sense of guilt, and makes its home in my stomach, where it lingers like a bad meal.
The next hour passes in a blur of images, all of them reflecting various points and time in our relationship. Junior homecoming to high school prom to college graduation, with a mixture of less significant memories peppered in between. When I get to the last one – a picture of me doing the dishes in our old apartment, the lighting dim and my forehead creased in concentration as I scrub – I’m desperate to copy or print them, maybe email them to myself so that I can look at them any time I please.
These photos are life, proof that I exist.
Chills creep spider-quick up my spine; suddenly, it feels like time is running out, that Marla could walk in at any moment and find me here, abusing her husband’s privacy.
Of course, it would only appear that way. Because what’s on this computer is just as much mine as it is hers, and I have every right to do whatever I want with it. Probably more of a right. Because aside for the kid (the kid, the kid, the goddamn kid), Hollis has more pictures of me on here than his wife.
I checked, did the math. And I win by a landslide.
I wonder…I wonder if he masturbates to them? Pulls up an image of my face and imagines being with me, remembering the way I feel, the way I used to tighten around him when I came…