My Husband Played Stranger, So I Took Off the Ring novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: The Closet
My apartment is one room above a laundromat on Pike Street.
On Tuesday night the whole floor hummed with dryers, and the window smelled like warm lint and lemon soap.
I was standing at the stove in my socks, burning grilled cheese, when someone knocked three times, soft.
I knew the knock.
I opened the door anyway.
Nate stood on the landing with his collar turned up and his hair wet.
"I came through the laundromat," he said. "The driver's out front. He thinks I'm at the library."
"You're dripping on my floor."
"There's a woman downstairs who gave me a dryer sheet and told me I looked like a man in trouble."
"She's right."
He almost smiled.
I stepped back, and he came in.
He looked at my apartment the way he used to look at the house we planned to buy, back when we planned things.
The mattress in the corner.
The milk crate of textbooks.
The shelf of diner aprons, folded in a row.
"You live here," he said.
"I live here."
"Your mom said you'd moved, but I didn't know it was this small."
I turned from the stove very slowly.
"My mom said."
He went still.
"Bridie said," he corrected. "At the stairwell. Earlier."
"Bridie said I live above a laundromat?"
"She was proud of you."
It was thin, and he knew it was thin.
I was too tired to chase it.
I put a plate in front of him, and he ate the grilled cheese standing up, the burned half first, because he has always eaten the worst piece so I don't have to.
When he finished, I said, "Where do you go?"
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