natch, and I didn’t have answers. I said I thought he just wanted to be with someone but didn’t want a girlfriend. Because he already has one, Kerry said. I laughed, but it’s not as though I haven’t thought that a hundred times. Thing is, I don’t think he does. I think it’s more complicated than that.
For better or worse, HN and I are now definitely a thing. I just don’t know what that thing is. The sex is nice, and I have feelings for him and he has feelings for me, or pretends to, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why we’re not even allowed to take a walk around the block together.
Need to break up with HN, sooner rather than later. If I thought we were just sex buddies, then that would be one thing, but I know that we are more and he still won’t tell me what is happening inside of that big, thick skull. I need to get out before I get hurt. We exchanged keys the other day, more of a neighborly thing, but still, it seemed like something. Corbin, if you’re in my apartment and reading this, then fuck you, and stop doing that thing with your tongue in my ear. It’s gross.
HN is broken. Something is seriously wrong with him. If he won’t talk to me, then it needs to end.
It’s over. He came over and accused me of—I don’t actually know what he accused me of. Telling someone about us. One of our neighbors! I’m beginning to think there is something really wrong with him, and now I want out.
Cor is moving to London for six months, and his cousin is moving into his place. I’m happy. Why wouldn’t I be? If only he hadn’t looked so sad when he told me.
That was the last entry that mentioned him. It was dated a week before. Henry was shocked. Corbin was moving to London. When was that happening? Something about it pissed him off. London was their place, and now he was returning as though nothing of importance had happened there. As though it were just another city.
The next day, Henry broke into Corbin’s apartment and found a folder on his desk that contained travel documents and copies of the work visa for his time in London. He was leaving in a week, a Thursday night flight. Henry made an easy decision—that same Thursday night he would break into Audrey’s apartment again, and if she was there, he’d kill her.
It was time to fuck over Corbin for real, and let him know who had done it to him.
Henry stayed away from Beacon Hill and Bury Street for the next week. He knew he’d been pushing his luck by spending so much time in that neighborhood. Someone was going to notice. That week, he finished a job at a Cambridge nonprofit in which one of its internal groups was considering becoming its own nonprofit entity. He also booked a new client, a small law firm in Waltham with a personnel dispute, and over the weekend took the executive assistant from the nonprofit out to dinner. It was a boring date, and an awful restaurant, so Henry amused himself by telling her a long, improvised story about an affair he’d had with a famous television star. Watching the woman’s eyes light up with utter belief as he made up stories of the actress’s pathetic behavior almost salvaged the evening.
When Thursday night arrived he filled his backpack with his favorite tools, pulled a tight synthetic ski hat over his hair, donned gloves, and walked all the way to Bury Street. It was a beautiful spring night, the air rain-washed and smelling of crushed blossoms, and Henry felt as if the muscles of his body were singing in unison. He felt as though he could kill Audrey Marshall and tear her in two with just his hands.
It hadn’t worked that way.
After he entered through the kitchen, Audrey must have heard him.
“Corbin?” she said nervously as she stepped into the kitchen. Henry grabbed her from behind and stuck the knife in her neck before she could say another word. The spray from the artery went from the counter across the cabinets to the ceiling as she crumpled to the floor.
It was early morning before he left her apartment the same way he had entered it. He left her body arranged the way he’d wanted it. Split down the middle. Half of her for