Page 38 of Her Name in Red
Maren
The blood never comes off completely, no matter how hard I scrub. Not real blood but the metaphorical kind that seeps into your skin cells and changes you from the inside out. I stare at my hands under the bathroom light, turning them over to examine my palms. Clean. Pink. Ordinary. But I know better.
It's been a month since Rhodes showed up at my door that first night, after he fucking lost it on the ice. A month of him taking up space on my couch, drinking my beer, breathing my air. A month of his eyes tracking me when he thinks I'm not looking.
I haven't killed anyone in that time. That's…unusual. Not that I haven’t killed anyone, but I haven’t thought about it until now. Not a single stray thought of feeling a knife slipping into flesh and nicking bone.
The realization hits me as I'm standing in my kitchen at almost ten on a Thursday night, waiting for my store-bought butter chicken to finish its sad rotation. The hockey team played at home tonight. Won four-two. Rhodes scored twice. He'll be here soon, like he is after every home game.
I should be annoyed by the interruption to my routine. I should be climbing the walls from the absence of that familiar itch under my skin—the one that only blood can scratch. But I'm not.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I whisper to the empty apartment.
Normal people don't want to kill other people. Normal people don't get high off watching the light fade from someone's eyes.
But I've never been normal, and I'm not sure I want to start now.
The microwave beeps. I ignore it, wandering to the window instead. The parking lot below is half-empty, streetlights casting orange pools on wet asphalt. It rained earlier. The kind of cold December rain that makes everything smell like decay.
My fingertips trace invisible patterns on the windowpane. I should be out there, prowling the edges of campus, looking for someone walking alone. Someone who won't be missed right away. The night is perfect for it—dark enough to hide what needs hiding, wet enough to wash away what needs washing.
Instead, I'm here. Waiting. For him.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I don't need to look to know it's Riggs.
Showering now. Be there in 20. Want me to grab food on the way?
I walk back to the microwave and pull out the steaming plastic tray, the artificial butter-yellow sauce already congealing at the edges.
No. Just pulled some gourmet shit out of the microwave.
I don't wait for his response before tossing the phone back onto the counter. It slides across the laminate, stopping just short of the edge. Like everything in my life lately—right on the precipice of disaster, but somehow not quite falling.
He doesn't even ask if it's okay anymore. The first few times after that initial night, he'd text with a hesitant tone I could practically feel through the screen. You around tonight? or Mind if I stop by? Like he was afraid I'd suddenly realize what I was letting into my space and slam the door shut.
Now he just shows up. Like it's a given. Like he belongs here.
The weirdest part? I don't hate it.
I dump the food onto a chipped blue plate that doesn't match anything else I own. The rice is somehow both undercooked and mushy. Culinary fucking masterpiece. I eat standing up at the counter, shoveling food into my mouth without tasting it, eyes fixed on nothing.
Rhodes always comments on my “sad single-person meals,” as he calls them. Last week he actually brought me homemade lasagna, still warm in a glass dish, like he's some kind of Italian grandmother.
“It's not poisoned,” he'd said when I stared at it suspiciously. “My mom taught me how to make it. Thought you might appreciate something that didn't come from a box or a drive-thru for once.”
I'd eaten it. All of it. And then spent twenty minutes interrogating him about the recipe while he laughed at my sudden interest in cooking.
The memory makes my mouth twitch, almost a smile. I catch myself and force my face back to neutral, even though there's no one here to see.
Riggs is the closest thing I have to a friend. Which is so pathetic it almost makes me laugh. My only friend is a guy who watched me lick his blood off my fingers and didn't run screaming. A guy who looks at me like he knows exactly what kind of monster lurks beneath my skin and wants to pet it, anyway.
I finish eating and rinse the plate, leaving it in the sink with the other dishes I'll get to eventually. Maybe.
The apartment is a mess, as usual. Books and papers scattered across every surface, empty Dr. Pepper cans creating an aluminum graveyard on the coffee table. My clothes from yesterday are still on the bathroom floor. I don't bother picking anything up.
There are signs of him everywhere now. A hoodie from last week draped over the back of a chair. A half-empty bottle of that fancy protein shake shit in my fridge.
I'm sprawled on the couch, one leg dangling over the armrest, flipping through channels without really seeing what's on. My mind keeps circling back to that weird empty feeling where the itch for violence used to be. Like a phantom limb. You know it's gone, but your brain keeps sending signals to something that isn't there anymore.
