I hear the keys jingle beyond the door. It must be her. It’s been three days. She tends to disappear, but rarely for that long, not without calling or briefly showing up for clothes. Anger, fear, hurt; bastards of my longing descend the ladder of my spine to meet in the pit of my stomach. For three nights I waited, trying desperately to convince myself that I wasn’t.

Love. On Friday, she said it. My roommate, best friend, and the women who never confessed her love to anyone said she loved me. Then, she vanished.

How she crooned then, my God, her brow lifting so earnestly, “I love you. You’re my everything.” Her voice scratchy, wounded. We’d been drinking at the local hipster hole in the wall, yelling out casual conversation in the way that only the youth knows how to, or cares to endure. The rest of the night is a scrambled mess. Our car slammed into something and would no longer start. Somehow we got home. Somehow I got into her bed.

Locks turn themselves vertical. The knob twists and clicks.