I need to see you

The girl missed her, cared about her. It was a crush, of course, an infatuation, but it was better than the utter disregard, even disdain, with which Gabe treated her. Nat could respond to Violet if she wanted to. And she did. She wanted to keep the girl on the line in case she needed her.

Nat was about to reply when the phone vibrated again. It was Gabe, his timing impeccable.

See you Monday.

It was not what she’d hoped for, but it was something. It was enough. She blocked Violet’s calls and messages, removing the temptation to engage. She was not ready to betray Gabe. Not yet, anyway. Shoving the phone into the pocket of her shorts, she stumbled toward the subway.

41

The Footprint

As Nat emerged from the underground station and shambled toward her apartment, exhaustion threatened to overtake her. She had traveled to Sagaponack and back in a day. She’d met Gabe’s wife, kissed his daughter, and nearly had sex with him . . . twice. She’d had a drink and the word whore thrown in her face. And she’d had several cocktails—even if most of them were ridiculously weak. Her eyes were heavy as she let herself into her building, squinting in the bright lights of the lobby.

She rode the tiny elevator up to her second-floor apartment and unlocked the door. Flicking on the lamp, she went straight to the freezer. One more slug of vodka would ensure a deep, dreamless sleep. The bottle was alarmingly low, and she’d forgotten to fill the ice cube tray. But she poured a couple of inches of liquor into a glass and added a splash of orange juice. She had just swallowed the first mouthful, when she noticed something wasn’t right.

Nat’s apartment was a mess, but it was her mess. She knew the stack of unopened mail (mostly bills), the paper coffee cups, the empty take-out containers, and the packaging from a new mascara that littered her coffee table. The dresser with its drawers perpetually ajar, the sofa with its jumble of pillows and jackets and blankets, those were all familiar to her. In fact, it was a new sense of order that shook her. Someone had tidied the throw pillows. Someone had closed the dresser drawers and her laptop. It hadn’t been her.

She took another drink and moved into the tiny living area. Nothing else seemed amiss. Gabe’s patterned tie was still on her bed, next to her pillow. The window was open a crack, just as she’d left it. There was a flimsy locking mechanism meant to block further access. It wasn’t the most secure system, but the apartment was on the second floor. A thief would have to be pretty determined to scale the fire escape and break into her studio. And for what? Her laptop was still sitting on her desk, the diamond pendant was still around her neck.

Her double bed was pressed up against the window, and she looked down at the covers pulled back to reveal the fitted sheet. And there it was, in the center of the pink cotton. Faint, but there. A footprint.