point.
A knock at the door, and my heart seized up. I closed my laptop and crept over, then peered through the peephole. Gasping, I flicked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
“Alex.”
He had his chin tucked and his brow knitted, all broody. “Can I come in?”
I held the door wider and watched him step inside. This couldn’t be real; this was an odd dream, the details all wrong.
“Nice place you got,” he said, even though it’s really not. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked over to the couch.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Oh.” I was befuddled but remembered my lines. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“That’d be amazing, yeah. Do you have some whiskey or something?”
I nodded and walked into the kitchen, then opened the cabinet over my fridge. In the back was a dusty bottle of scotch, something a clueless research assistant had gifted me for Christmas. I’d almost given it to Damien on the spot, but instead I stuck it back here next to a small fire extinguisher.
“Ice?” I called.
“Nah, neat.”
Robotically, I handed it over.
“Thanks,” he said. “You don’t want any?”
I took a long breath in and out. “Alex, I don’t drink.”
“But at the restaurant—”
“I didn’t drink anything. I just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
He sat on the couch and looked up at me. My whole torso tingled, my chest and belly.
“That’s not it,” I heard myself say. “I wanted you to drink, because I wanted you to open up. About Edie.”
He patted the cushion next to him and I sat obediently.
“There’s only one Healing Hands Reiki in Brooklyn,” he said finally, with a grin.
“I’m impressed you remembered.” I looked down at my knees. I’d changed into sweatpants after I got back from Bushwick and now I wished I looked cuter.
“It’s a memorable name.” He sighed and looked straight ahead. “I was in an Uber to Grand Central and found myself putting it in. As the destination. You really worried me on the phone.”
I shrugged. “I was just disturbed by everything Edie’s mom told me. She’s a disturbing woman.”
“That’s for damn sure.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I just don’t understand why you’re going back into all this stuff. So many years later. If I can help, I wanna help.”
His hand slid to the back of my neck, and like gravity was pulling me, I leaned into him. His chest smelled like autumn; his hand rubbed my far shoulder.
“Alex, I found this horrible video,” I told him, and my eyes filled with tears.
He craned his neck to look at me. “A video?”
“From the night Edie died.” A tear broke free. “Here, I’ll show you.” I stood up and got my laptop from the table, careful to leave a few feet between us when I sat back down. His knees sloped toward me as I found Damien’s email with the cleaned-up clip; I hit play, then hooked my heels on the sofa and wrapped my arms around my shins.
“I want that bitch out of my apartment!”
“I want to push her off this building!”
“I want to slit her throat!”
I could feel Alex cringing next to me. When the screen darkened, I hit stop.
“That’s all there is,” I lied. “The rest is just it recording inside my bag.”
“All these years you’ve had this, and you never told anyone?”
“I just found it,” I said. “I must have deleted it that same night. I just found my old camcorder and figured out how to recover deleted videos.”
“Wow. Did you show Sarah?”
I shook my head. “It scared the shit out of me. And the fact that neither you nor Sarah ever mentioned it makes me think…” I trailed off.
“I one hundred percent do not remember that,” he said, pointing at the computer. “I seriously don’t. My mother didn’t raise me to talk like that, dude. I don’t even know.” His voice was getting higher, his head shaking back and forth—a basketball player insisting he didn’t just foul.
“I know. Obviously, I feel the same way. I mean, yeah, we’d been fighting, and I wasn’t totally happy with her, but I would never…wish her harm.” I picked at my fingernails. “So you don’t remember this conversation at all? Or me having a camera?”
“Not at all. Swear to god.”
I nodded. “I believe you.” I didn’t want to show him my squabble with Sarah, when I declared I wouldn’t come to the concert—my alibi, the spot we both assumed I’d been. And