A duffel bag lay on the floor next to the couch. It was open and clothes – T-shirts and underwear, mostly – stuck partway out of it. Back when they’d both shared the same bed, she’d spent too much time picking up after him. But since they’d broken up, he’d become more considerate. Yes, he’d left a mess behind when he’d gone off to play his gig, but at least it was a contained mess. That was a major improvement.
The first time she’d confronted Larry about being a slob, he’d tried to play it off as no big deal. I’m a creative type. We live in our heads, not in the real word, you know? Besides, what does it matter where stuff is? On a shelf, on the floor…. Is one place inherently better than the other?
She’d felt like strangling him then. Sometimes she wished she had.
She’d first met Larry Ramirez when he’d accompanied one of his clients – a deaf man who’d undergone multiple back surgeries – to physical therapy. Larry was a sign language interpreter in his day job, and he served as the communication channel between his client and Lori. She’d found him funny and charming, not to mention handsome, and after the fourth PT session for his client, she’d asked him out. He wasn’t her patient so it wasn’t exactly unethical for her to go out with him, but it did skirt the boundaries of professionalism. They’d had dinner then gone back to her place to have a drink. She made it a rule not to sleep with guys on the first date, but she’d broken that rule with Larry. They started dating regularly after that, and three months later, when the lease on his apartment was up, she asked him to move in with her.
Larry didn’t only sign for the deaf; he was also a jazz guitarist who sometimes played with a group and sometimes played solo. She wasn’t the biggest fan of jazz, but she thought he played beautifully, and she loved to watch him perform, whether in a group or on his own.
She’d learned one other thing about him early on. He was bisexual. He’d told her not to worry, that he was currently in a ‘girl phase’. She’d never dated anyone who was bisexual before, and she was worried. She feared he’d eventually get tired of her and go into a ‘guy phase’, but she decided to put her fears aside and see where their relationship went. It lasted for the better part of three years before she’d decided they made better friends than lovers. When she told Larry, he’d agreed at once, and while she’d been relieved that he’d taken it so well, she’d also been disappointed that he didn’t seem at least a little bit sad. He’d always been a go-with-the-flow type, but she would’ve liked to think their relationship had meant something more to him.
Larry didn’t have a steady job. As both an interpreter and a musician he got paid by the gig and, after they broke up, he hadn’t been able to afford his own place right away. She’d told him he could continue to stay with her until he’d saved up enough money to move out. That had been nine months ago, and he was still sleeping on her couch every night. Not counting those nights when he stayed out partying with friends or having sex with whoever he was seeing at the time. She kept hoping he’d enter into a long-term relationship with someone and move into their place, but he rarely slept with anyone more than a handful of times in a row.
She’d once asked him why he kept moving from one short-term relationship to another.
It’s hard to find anyone who holds my interest very long, you know? He’d smiled and added, You were the last interesting person I dated.
The last part had probably been bullshit, but it had made her feel good nonetheless.
It was sometimes frustrating – and more than a little weird – to have her ex as a roommate, but they made it work, more or less. And while she wanted him to get back on his feet and leave, she knew she’d miss him when he was gone.
She sighed.
“Girl, you ought to have your head examined.”
She thought of the goat-eyed woman and the shadow thing she’d seen lurking in FoodSaver’s parking lot and regretted her choice of words.
Chapter Two
She got ready for bed, a process that normally took half an hour, but she hurried and was done in fifteen minutes. She usually slept in her panties and an oversized T-shirt, and tonight she had on a XXL red-and-gray OSU shirt so large it hung down to her knees. She’d only just gotten into bed and slid under the covers when her phone rang. She’d forgotten to turn the ringer off when she’d placed it on her nightstand, and she was tempted to ignore it, but what if it was important, maybe even an emergency?
“Fuck,” she muttered. She snatched the phone off the nightstand and answered it without checking the display to see who it was.
“Hello?”
“Hey, beautiful.”
It was Justin. She hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, but now that she heard his voice, she was glad he’d called, and even more glad she’d chosen to answer.
“Hey yourself.”
“Sorry I didn’t call earlier. I just got home from work. We had a backlog of tests that needed to be done, and Arlene insisted the techs stay late tonight and get caught up. You know how she is when we get even a little bit behind.”
Arlene was Justin’s supervisor at BioChem Diagnostics, and while Lori had never met her, she’d heard Justin complain about the woman on numerous occasions.
Lori was tempted to tell Justin everything that had happened to her that night, but she was reluctant to talk about the goat-eyed woman, the shadow thing, and the old man in the Volvo. When you put all three together, they sounded outlandish, and Justin was too logical to accept the trifecta of weirdness she’d experienced tonight. And even if he were inclined to believe everything she said, she still didn’t want to talk about it, not yet. She wanted to try to forget it all, at least for now.
A few weeks after she and Larry had decided to be just friends, Lori had been ready to date again. She’d never tried a dating service before, but Reeny swore by them, since that’s how she’d met her husband, Charles, so Lori decided to give it a try. She researched which online dating services had the highest success rate in matching people, chose one, signed up to the service, and filled out a profile. When it came time to upload a photo, she couldn’t decide which one to use, so she’d ended up asking Larry to help her pick one – which was all kinds of weird. He told her to go with a picture of her that appeared on the PT practice’s website. In it, she was wearing her uniform and working with a patient. Don’t worry about privacy issues, Larry had said. We can blur the guy’s face. She was looking at the camera and smiling while she held the patient’s feet to the floor so he could do some sit-ups. It’s a good picture. You look really pretty in it, and it shows you’re a caring person.
She hadn’t been certain the photo was a good choice, but she decided to trust Larry’s opinion and uploaded it. She received her first message from a potential suitor within fifteen minutes. She received a lot of messages over the next few days, and while she’d been encouraged at first by the responses, they soon became overwhelming – and there were more than a few creepers in the mix. One guy asked if she would send him pictures of her feet, and another asked if she was into breast bondage. She hadn’t known that was a thing, and when she looked it up on the Internet she immediately regretted it. Not only did it not look like any fun, it looked like it hurt.
She was about to cancel her account and give up on the entire idea of online dating when she received a message from a man named Justin Nguyen. She almost didn’t open it, but she had a friend in middle school named Justin. His last name had been Reed, but he’d been a good kid, so she figured, what the hell. Maybe the universe was trying to tell her something. She opened the message, which was a friendly, polite one – no inquiries about which fetishes she might be into – so she checked out his profile. She liked what she saw, sent him a message, and they met for coffee several days later. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything, and she didn’t feel any immediate sexual attraction toward him. But he was nice and funny and smart, and unlike Larry, he seemed to have his shit together. She decided to go out with him a second time, then a third, and they’d been dating steadily ever since, coming up on seven months now. She still wasn’t sure she was in love with him, but she cared for him a great deal and she enjoyed his company, and that was enough for now.
“Want to have coffee tomorrow morning before work?” she asked. “My treat.”
They both worked in offices downtown, but their buildings were a couple of blocks apart. There was a Starbucks between them, and they’d often meet there around seven a.m., especially if they hadn’t seen each other the day before. They’d have coffee and breakfast – a scone for him, a piece of fruit or yogurt for her – and they’d chat about anything and everything, from work to world events. Getting together like this always reminded her of their first date, and she loved starting her day this way. She hoped Justin would say yes. After tonight, she could use a little normalcy.
“Sorry, I can’t.”
She waited for him to go on, to explain why he couldn’t have coffee with her tomorrow. Not that he had to give her a reason. She didn’t believe in being the kind of girlfriend who kept constant tabs on her boyfriend, but he almost always explained what was going on if he couldn’t get together with her. He didn’t say anything right away, though, and she started to wonder if something was wrong. But before she could ask if he was okay, he went on.
“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in the morning. It’s just a checkup, but if I cancel, it’ll be weeks before they can fit me in again. Maybe longer.”
There was nothing about this that she found unreasonable, which made her wonder why Justin sounded defensive, as if he were expecting her to challenge his explanation.
“No problem,” she said. “Maybe we can do it the day after tomorrow.”
“Sure. Yeah. Sounds great.”
He sounded distracted, and she wondered if he was just tired. He had said he’d had to stay late at work tonight. Still, something seemed off, and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Then she remembered something. Hadn’t he seen his doctor earlier in the month? And hadn’t that appointment also been for a checkup? Why would he need another so soon? The answer, of course, was that he wouldn’t – which meant something else was going on. Was he cheating on her, maybe seeing someone else for coffee tomorrow? Or maybe he was spending the night at her place tonight, whoever she was, and he didn’t want to leave her any earlier than he had to tomorrow morning. No, that didn’t make sense. Justin had called her. If he was at someone else’s place, or if someone was at his, why would he call her? Neither of them were teenagers and while they texted or spoke most days, it wasn’t uncommon for a day to go by now and again without any contact between them. When that happened, she’d never worried about it, so there was no reason for him to think she’d get suspicious if he didn’t get in touch tonight. Unless he was feeling guilty about cheating and needed to set up an alibi in order to decrease his anxiety about being discovered.
She almost laughed then. After all the weird shit that had gone down at FoodSaver, she was being paranoid. Maybe she simply misremembered the last time Justin had gone to the doctor. Or maybe one of the appointments was with his physician and the other was with his dentist. Whichever was the case, she highly doubted Justin would cheat on her. He believed there was a right way and a wrong way of doing things, and that the right way – whatever it was – should be followed. Always. It was a trait that made him extremely good at medical testing, even if it did make him overly conventional and a bit boring sometimes. No, if he had wanted to see someone else, he would’ve broken up with her first. She was certain of that. He wasn’t like Larry, who could be balls deep inside someone he’d just met before it occurred to him that the person he was currently dating might be displeased by his actions.
Then again, things weren’t always the way they seemed, were they?
“I hate to do this,” Lori said, “but I should go. I’m exhausted. How about I call you after work tomorrow night? Maybe we could have dinner.”
“Sounds good.”
