Moonlight Phoenixes by Alexa Piper

Author:Alexa Piper [Alexa Piper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Once we got to the lobby of Sundial Tower, I told Ben I didn’t know how long I would be. He said that was fine, and he’d wait for me downstairs, so I left him with the doorperson and went to our apartment.

The elevator ride took very long and not long enough. I hadn’t ever come up here by myself. At the same time, I hadn’t really been alone in a long time, not like I used to be. And I hadn’t missed being alone at all.

Before Soyer, I’d felt most like myself when my shift ended, when I went outside and took the subway home, when I could live in the illusion that I was the only person on the planet, that nothing else existed but me and the moment, and the city around me that felt like a sleeping beast with an unstoppable heartbeat.

Now, Ben was my shadow when I went to work, true, yet after work…I hadn’t realized it, but I had Soyer. Soyer, who could be bright in all his black attire, yet present with me in the city’s loneliness after my shifts. He filled those moments between its slow, slow heartbeats with chatter and kisses.

Still, I was sure that the allure of loneliness was something that he understood. After all, his huge apartment, so empty, it was nothing if not a testament to how much he preferred his own company to those of others. And in that, we were, to a degree, alike, alone together.

The elevator arrived on the nineteenth floor, and I walked to our door, pulled out the newest key on my keychain, and turned it in the lock.

I didn’t bother depositing my jacket in the walk-in but dropped it on the couch, then looked around and rubbed my hands together.

“If I were Soyer and wanted to hide something from me, where would I hide the thing?”

I felt extremely guilty when my eyes narrowed in on the opening to the gallery, the way to Soyer’s office. Then again, he’d told me to snoop when he’d first left me alone here.

However, I couldn’t keep myself from walking quietly as I headed into his office, sneaking into the space. The room was like I’d left it. I wondered if he’d have told me to make a phone call from here if I was right about my hunch in the first place, but Soyer was Soyer. It was entirely possible.

I started with the obvious, his desk, going through all the deep drawers. It turned up nothing but a foreign brand of candy, the wrapper looking faded. What had once been a chocolate bar had lost its shape and was crumbling inside the creased wrapper when I pulled it from the back of the bottom drawer on the right.

I stuck my tongue out at the candy, almost tossed it into the trash, wondered whether it was a memento of some sort, and put it back right where I’d found it.

The books and assorted knickknacks on the shelves were the next logical step, but to get through all of them would take me hours.

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