At some point, my eyes fall to the side. I saw a sock on the floor by the door. Just one, gray with a pink toe. I’d been looking for its match all week. I spotted it from the bed while he was on top of me and I thought, with perfect clarity, Oh, there it is.
Then nothing. Gaps. Time folded over itself and swallowed the rest.
I let it all go and I locked the door behind it.
I might’ve stayed in that memory forever, if it weren’t for one sentence that drags me back. A single sentence, three little words, whispered—no, rasped—no, purred in my ear, the darkest purr I’ve ever heard. It’s bitter chocolate and glinting knife edges; it’s broken streetlights and starless nights; it’s twisted and liquid and crooning and wrong, so wrong, because in one word, he opens all my locks and slides back a
