When we got back to his place and I tried to come upstairs with him, Barrett immediately tried to stop me.
“You don’t have to come up, why don’t you go home? I’m fine. Really,” he said and started up the stairs.
I followed close behind him.
“Let me take a leak, then I’ll leave.”
He looked me up and down as if I were a stranger before nodding and letting me into the apartment.
I went to the bathroom and closed the door. What was I going to do? I lifted my hand and could still see the pale letters that spelled Hilary could still smell the sour stench of what held her in the shadows. I leaned against the sink and stared blankly into the mirror just above it. Haggard, unshaved, brutish; all words that would describe the image that stared back from the glass, I was not myself.
“Who are yo
