Murder Road by James Simone St

Author:James, Simone St. [James, Simone St.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Mystery, thriller, Paranormal, Adult, Suspense
ISBN: 9780593200384
Goodreads: 196614815
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-03-05T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

After the night with the spaghetti and meatballs, Eddie and I weren’t exactly dating. It was something simpler and yet more complicated than that. I had roomed with plenty of people who had been in half-assed relationships, who agonized over unreturned phone calls, confusing gifts of concert tickets (What does it mean if he invites me to see the Smashing Pumpkins with him?), and who made a mixtape for who. I’d seen a dozen dramatic breakups and a few engagements, which were also destined for eventual dramatic breakups. None of that described Eddie and me.

We spent a lot of time together. He helped me get my car fixed. I went with him to run his errands, because even his errands were interesting to me. We watched TV and he rubbed my feet—he was insanely good at it—and we talked about everything and nothing. I never, even once, wondered why he didn’t call me back.

Was that dating? It didn’t seem like it to me. Instead, under the quiet exterior of our time together, it felt like I was being pulled open, the threads of me unraveling as every part of my life came apart at the seams. I didn’t recognize this life. I had run for so long since California, been so many women. I had never let a man help me fix my car or rub my feet. These things were momentous to me.

They were momentous to Eddie, too. At times I’d catch him looking at me as if he was happy to see me but wasn’t quite sure how I’d come to be there. He was closed off and inside himself like I was, though his reasons and methods were different from mine, and he was equally baffled as to how all of this was happening. I didn’t think he’d call what we were doing dating, either.

He didn’t even try to sleep with me, not at first. Even though my skin hummed every time he touched me, even though we sat so close at the movies that our knees touched. Even though we were often alone in his bachelor apartment or in my shared living room, my legs curled underneath me as we watched TV.

We had dinner with his parents. His mother was polite and pleasant, though I could tell she wanted to open the top of my skull and dig around inside with a microscope, analyzing this girlfriend that Eddie had brought home. His father took refuge in hearty jokes and comments about politics that were targeted so widely, he obviously hoped to draw me in. Taxes going up! You hear about that Russian space station? What’s next? Maybe he wanted me to reply with a joke about Bill Clinton playing the saxophone, but I didn’t. I rarely watched the news—the roommates in my shared house changed the channel when the news came on, and no one subscribed to a newspaper.

After that dinner with his parents, Eddie said he was going to the bathroom. I followed him

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