（The laugh track on the television show erupts. A character on the show is eating popcorn, listening to his office mates argue. Another character enters the office with a look of shock. The laugh track roars. Tallie giggles lightly, shakes her head.）
“Everything was fine?” Tallie asked, putting down her refilled mug of tea and reaching for the clothes. When she saw he was wearing only a towel around his waist, she turned her head away and cleared her throat.
“Your bathroom is so nice. This whole house is super nice. I shouldn’t have glossed over it yesterday.”
“Thank you. And I promise it’s okay. You’ve got plenty on your mind. My brother made a lot of money when he was younger. Finance, stocks, investment stuff I don’t fully understand. He’s a math whiz. I couldn’t have bought this house without his help. You’ll get to meet him and the rest of my family tomorrow at the party.”
Emmett got the charger from his backpack and plugged his phone in, leaving it on the living-room floor. He took the clothes from her and went to the bathroom to change. Did looking forward to something feel like this? Living had felt so much like dying that he could hardly remember. Did it feel like concertina wire unraveling? Like his heart was a cracked, tipped cup, running over?
TALLIE
Tallie told herself she wasn’t going to watch Emmett walk down the hallway. He’d surprised her, being in a towel. Joel’s favorite red towel; Joel, pre-ex, pre-baby, sans ponytail. Had she really given him that towel? Had it been an accident or on purpose? Sure, Emmett may have walked out dripping like a romance novel, but he had mental health issues he needed to deal with—so many scarlet warnings that he might as well have been a matador in a traje de luces. Still, her stomach dipped when she saw the towel and the way his water-dark hair curled behind his ear. Bridge, Mr. Probably Handsome, Mr. Definitely Handsome, Emmett No Last Name, steamy hot and blushing like a peach.
While he was in the bathroom changing, Tallie picked his phone up off the floor, clicked to see if it was locked. Yes. His background, a default photo of the earth. She turned to make sure the bathroom door stayed closed. She tried 1234 to unlock his screen. Nope. And no notifications. Nothing. She heard him move around in the bathroom, and she put his phone back. She went to her bedroom, got his letters from the top drawer of her dresser. His green rain jacket hung on the hook by the front door. She couldn’t remember which letter went where, but she split them up, putting one in the inside pocket and one in the outside. She prayed Emmett wouldn’t come out of the bathroom at that moment, and she huffed out a breath of release when, thankfully, he didn’t. She returned to the couch.
*
“Can I ask you a question? About yesterday?” she asked him gently after he came out of the bathroom and sat next to her, but not too close.
“Sure.”
“Do you feel like being on the bridge was a proportionate response to whatever it was that sent you there?” She knew her question probably sounded too much like a question a therapist would ask, so she turned the TV volume down and added, “There’s no right answer, by the way. I’m just curious.”
“I do,” he said easily.
“How else do you deal with stress in your life? How did you handle your wife’s death when it happened?”
“I haven’t properly handled her death yet, really. I can’t. I try, I guess…but none of it makes sense. She was there and now she’s just gone? Everything gets too slippery. My brain can’t…hold it. It feels both final and eternal at the same time. I can’t process it so I just let it…sit there…dark.”
“I understand,” Tallie said and paused. “Emmett, do you feel compelled to go back to the bridge?”
“Right now? No.”
“Do you have anyone you share your feelings with? Anyone you can trust?”
“I used to…Hunter…we lived together before I got married, but I don’t talk to many people anymore,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t have a short answer for that.”
“But you have a long one?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“Okay. Do you wish you could talk to someone you could trust?”
“I’m naturally quiet,” he said.
“Do you like being naturally quiet?” she asked, digging in like they were in her office and she was getting paid to learn every little thing about him.
“No one has ever asked me that before. I think so?”