When the food arrives, I pay the delivery guy and step on a piece of paper that’s been shoved under the door.

Eloise.

It’s the same note as before, except I was home all day and didn’t hear her knocking. Maybe I missed it over all the excessive cleansing.

I take the food and my laptop into the living room. I want to google stuff about mental health and dreaming things that then come true. But after pushing on the power button multiple times, followed by every other button on the keyboard, it doesn’t turn on. Dead. Why are all my electronics on the fritz?

I put the ripped blouse in the closet on top of my old sewing supplies, pausing for just a second to touch a bit of satin and chiffon I bought years ago at a craft store in the city. A purchase from back when I first moved here and had design dreams dancing in my head. Dreams that were crushed inch by inch with every day spent at Blue Wave, every time I put on a black or gray sensible outfit, every phone call from Mother exhorting me to work harder, to be better, until there was nothing left.

With purposeful movements, I place my cell phone inside a paper bag and then put in in my briefcase, closing up the whole thing and setting it in the bathroom, under the sink, then closing the bathroom door to keep everything inside. I triple and quadruple check my ducky PJs are in the hamper. Then I put on an old oversize Les Mis T-shirt.

I get in bed and stare at the ceiling.

I can’t sleep, the thoughts spinning and lurching through my mind like a busted merry-go-round.

When Mark first started flirting with me, I ignored him. Avoided him. I thought he was messing with me, and I’m good at avoidance, it’s practically an art. But he was persistent.

After the first month of constant attention, compliments, and flirting, I started to believe he actually liked me.

He told me he appreciated my shyness and nerves. It made me different. Unique. He thought it was cute.

Then we were at the office late one night working on a project alone. He kissed me, and then we . . . well, it went further. And then it turned into a thing. But only around the office. Over the course of a month or two, the thoughtfulness and conversation became less and less until it was purely physical.

I should have stopped it before. I was weak. I am weak, and I regret it. All of it.

This whole day is an exposure of every fault I’ve tried to hide, every time I’ve tried to pretend I’m happy when I’m not.

I lie in the dark forever, judging myself and coming up lacking over and over.

I can’t sleep.

Then the broken sobs whisper through the walls.