Unbreak Me by Michelle Hazen

Author:Michelle Hazen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

“Asafetida.” Andra wasn’t sure if it was her voice that sounded funny or the word itself. Tapping the little plastic spice container with one fingernail, she said it again. “Asafetida.” She bent a little more forward, the beer bottle in her hand clinking against the counter. LJ’s spices were a foreign language, smells and shapes and colors gathered into shakers with labels she wasn’t sure how to pronounce.

She ran her finger down a container of coriander, so softly that she could feel the seam where the plastic had been melded together. She wished she could feel LJ’s fingerprints on it, too. Before she had cleaned his apartment, she should have thought of all the marks of him she was wiping away. Andra wondered if his fingerprints were still on her skin. After six days of sweat and showers, probably not. If the FBI dusted for signs of his presence, they would be all over this apartment and her cottage, too, but she would be clean. It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem possible that he could have disappeared from her life so completely.

Tipping the bottle against her lips, she took a drink, wincing at the burn of the carbonation in the beer. It had been years since she’d had a drink. She’d barely made it through the neck of the small bottle, and already her head felt light, the lines of everything in LJ’s apartment a little more vivid than they had been. Until she’d cleaned out his fridge, she hadn’t realized LJ even liked beer. He’d never drunk one in front of her, but there were two beers on the shelf of his fridge, the other four to the six-pack missing. He must think she was terribly fragile, that he couldn’t even have a beer when she was around. The thought had made her angry, and she’d cracked one open for herself.

She’d had enough of the past dictating her present. It had driven LJ all the way across the country from her. She knew he would have gone whenever his mom needed him, even if they weren’t fighting. But that would have felt more temporary, the space between them shrunk to nothing by teasing text messages and calls full of laughter. Not this gaping, silent lack in all the moments that used to be filled up with his gregarious presence.

She circled the kitchen, trailing her fingers over things as if her fingerprints might make up for the lack of his. The wobbly table didn’t wobble anymore. He’d fixed it at some point. But of course he had: LJ fixed things. That was who he was.

It was why he couldn’t stand thinking he was causing her panic attacks, but it wasn’t him at all. She felt safer here, among the few things he’d left behind, than she did anywhere else on her own ranch. Of course, he couldn’t know the truth of that, because he wouldn’t even answer her calls. It was sex she was messed up about, not him, even if she couldn’t make him understand the distinction.

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