*
Careful not to make any extra noise, Tallie walked past Emmett camped on the couch with his backpack underneath his knees. She stood in her kitchen, replied to texts from a couple of her girlfriends. Texted, i love you, miss you, to Aisha, knowing she wouldn’t see it until Sunday. Tallie took her laptop to the kitchen table and checked the browser history—sports websites and articles. Emmett certainly hadn’t googled how to murder the woman who bought you coffee last night.
She walked into the living room, got on the floor across from him. She was eager for him to wake up so she could gauge his mood, to see if he was feeling better. His head was turned toward her, and she resisted the urge to get closer. To lean in and inspect him more, to see how he smelled as he slept. To whisper Who are you? into his ear so he’d dreamily open his mouth and scatter his secrets across the morning light.
EMMETT
He woke up to Tallie trying to be quiet in the kitchen and the smell of coffee, bacon, eggs. He had a full-blown, throbbing red-wine headache. He took himself and his backpack to the bathroom first thing.
“Hi, Emmett, good morning. I hope you’re feeling well. I put a new toothbrush on the counter for you. You probably see it,” she said from the other side of the door after tapping on it.
Peeing, he spotted the red toothbrush still in the package on the counter.
“Good morning. Yes, I feel okay. Thank you. I see the toothbrush.”
“And I have coffee and breakfast when you get out.”
“Thank you,” he said again.
Emmett brushed his teeth using her cinnamon toothpaste, his reflection blinking back at him. He hadn’t intended on being alive to see himself in a morning mirror. He pictured the bridge in cloudy daylight, the cars whizzing by. Was there a chance he’d be conscious after hitting the river? He’d read about the rare survivor stories, but he’d also read that the impact from jumping off a bridge was the equivalent of getting hit by a car, that his body could be falling at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour. He would accelerate as he fell, then his bones would break, his organs would tear apart. Simple physics. And by chance, if those things didn’t kill him instantly, his last breath would be water.
He wasn’t scared.
Emmett splashed his face, wiped it dry on her hanging towel. Looked around at the little glass bottles and plastic tubes she had in there. Everything smelled like flowers, a girl garden.
（The hallway bathroom. Two candles: one half full of wax, one with a wick that hasn’t been lit. A photo of her and another woman hangs in a white frame next to the light switch. A hook next to the frame, holding two wooden necklaces, one beaded one. Pearly white liquid soap in the dispenser. Pale blue bath mat. Four fat bulbs of white light above her mirror. A postcard of Michelangelo’s David tacked next to it. The bathroom door handles are curved silver with curlicues on the ends. Swan’s neck faucet, silver. White floor vent, white tile. A full-length mirror on the back of the door. A wall outlet with two plugs, one holding an auto night-light. A small garbage can in the corner next to the toilet. A shower curtain matching the bath mat. A round frosted window fit for a ship.）
He was greeted by the cats sitting side by side in the hallway, watching the door. He petted them on their heads, rubbed behind their ears. When he walked into the kitchen, Tallie handed him a Harry Styles mug of coffee. Emmett pointed to Harry’s face and thanked her one more time, took a sip as she sat at the kitchen table.
（A plate of bacon, eggs, and toast. On the middle of the table—butter and local organic blackberry jam, almond butter. A carafe of water, two glasses, and a bottle of ibuprofen.）
“Red wine gives everyone a headache,” she said, touching the plastic top of the medicine. She motioned for him to have a seat. “Do you like breakfast?”
“Only a psychopath wouldn’t like breakfast,” he said. He took two ibuprofen. Last night he’d wondered if dinner would be his last meal, and now? He was ravenous for breakfast.
Emmett and Tallie ate and discussed the rain, the weekend forecast. She asked him again how he was feeling.
“Better…I feel better,” he said.
“Glad to hear it.”
He remembered the phony email to Joel and felt like garbage for it, wondering if he could make it all go away. His feelings shuffled like a deck of cards—diamonds of embarrassment, overreacting clubs, stubbornness in spades, the ace of guilt. And his heart, their hearts, still beating. Somehow. But hope. Hope was the real joker. Had he confused exhaustion for hopelessness? Maybe they felt exactly the same in the cold rain, darkness creeping.