Chapter 441 - 441: What Is Aiysha Up To?

While Kyle sat on a cold bench at the top of Primrose Hill, Los Angeles was still in the dark.

It was a little after three in the morning, and Aiysha hadn't slept.

She lay on her side of the bed, which these days was the whole bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned slowly above her. The apartment was silent. Clarissa was still at her grandmother's. Jones was still at his Airbnb. The only sound was the fridge humming in the kitchen and, every so often, a car passing on the street below.

She had tried everything. Warm milk. A podcast about the ocean. Counting backwards from a hundred.

It hadn't worked.

Her phone lay face down on the nightstand. She had promised herself she wouldn't touch it.

She lasted another four minutes.

The screen lit up her face as she unlocked it, and her thumb went where it always went lately. WhatsApp. Status updates. Kyle's name sitting there near the top of her contacts.

There was nothing new. Just the same old story he had posted when he first left. The misty green backdrop. The light jacket. The wind in his hair. That new haircut that made his jaw look sharper than it had any right to.

"Off to England for a bit."

A bit. That had been weeks ago now.

Aiysha stared at it anyway.

She closed the app. Then she opened it again.

It wasn't even about what had happened in his bedroom. That was what scared her the most. She had expected the memory to fade, to become one of those embarrassing things she would laugh about years from now. Instead, it had settled into something worse. It wasn't the accident she kept thinking about.

It was everything around it.

The way he had held her back when she kissed him. The way he had told her Jones was a good man and that her marriage was worth fighting for, when any other man would have taken what she was offering. The terrible-looking bowl of food he had made her that somehow tasted amazing. The blanket he had tucked over her on the couch.

Nobody had looked after her like that in a long time.

And he had left the country without saying a word to her.

"Why would he?" she muttered. "You're his neighbor. His friend's wife. That's it."

She set the phone down on her chest and closed her eyes.

Maybe if she worked things out with Jones, these feelings would go away. She had told herself that a dozen times since that night. It had sounded reasonable in daylight. At three in the morning, it sounded like something a person said when they were running out of options.

But it was the only plan she had.

Aiysha picked up the phone again. This time, she didn't open Kyle's status. She opened her chat with Jones.

The last message was four days old.

[[Jones: Clarissa called. She says grandma is feeding her too much. Sounds happy.]]

[[Aiysha: Good.]]

Good. That was all she had written back. One word to the father of her child.

She winced at it now.

Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. She typed. Deleted it. Typed again.

[[Aiysha: Are you awake?]]

She stared at it. It looked desperate. It looked like a drunk text, and she hadn't even been drinking. She almost deleted it.

Instead, she pressed send before she could change her mind, then threw the phone onto the pillow beside her like it had bitten her.

"Oh my God. Oh my God, why did I do that?"

It was three in the morning. He was definitely asleep. He would wake up and think she had completely lost her mind.

The phone buzzed.

Aiysha stopped breathing.

[[Jones: Yeah.]]

She grabbed the phone with both hands and sat up.

[[Jones: Can't sleep either?]]

[[Aiysha: No.]]

[[Jones: Me neither. This place has a mattress like a slab of concrete. I paid extra for it.]]

A small laugh escaped her before she could stop it. It was such a Jones thing to say. Complaining about money even when he finally had some.

[[Aiysha: You always did hate hotel beds.]]

[[Jones: It's not a hotel. It's worse. There's a painting of a horse above the bed and it's staring at me.]]

She laughed again, louder this time, and covered her mouth even though there was nobody in the apartment to hear.

For a few minutes, they just talked. Nothing heavy. He told her the horse had a name now. She told him the kitchen tap was leaking again. Neither of them mentioned the drawer. Neither of them mentioned the papers inside it.

Then Jones went quiet.

The three dots appeared. Stopped. Appeared again.

[[Jones: Why are you texting me at 3am, Aiysha?]]

She stared at the question for a long time.

There were a lot of honest answers. Because she was lonely. Because the bed was too big. Because she kept thinking about another man and she didn't know how to stop.

She couldn't send any of them.

[[Aiysha: I don't know. I think I wanted to hear from you.]]

It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the whole truth.

The reply took a while.

[[Jones: Okay.]]

Then another.

[[Jones: Do you want to get breakfast? Later. Like, actual morning. Not now.]]

Aiysha read it three times.

Her chest felt tight. She couldn't tell if it was hope or guilt. Maybe it was both.

[[Aiysha: Yeah. I'd like that.]]

[[Jones: The diner on the corner. 8?]]

[[Aiysha: 8.]]

[[Jones: Try and get some sleep.]]

[[Aiysha: You too. Say goodnight to the horse.]]

[[Jones: He says goodnight.]]

She put the phone down and lay back against the pillows, smiling at the ceiling fan like an idiot.

She didn't sleep. But for the first time in days, she didn't feel like she was drowning either.

By half past five, Aiysha gave up on rest completely.

-

She pulled on her gym clothes, tied her hair back, and grabbed her keys. Her first client wasn't until the afternoon, but the gym opened early on Saturdays, and if she sat in that apartment any longer, she was going to text Jones something stupid and ruin everything before it had even started.

The hallway outside was quiet. The building was still asleep.

She walked past Kyle's door on the way to the stairs.

She didn't slow down. She didn't look at it. She was proud of herself for that.

She looked at it a little bit.

The gym was almost empty when she arrived, just two early risers on the treadmills and Tasha behind the front desk, sipping an iced coffee the size of her head. Tasha looked up and nearly choked on it.

"Girl. What are you doing here? You're not on till two."

"Couldn't sleep."

Tasha's eyes narrowed. At five foot two, she had a way of looking up at people that somehow made them feel smaller than her.

"You look different."

"I look tired."

"No. You look like somebody texted you." Tasha leaned over the desk. "Who was it?"

Aiysha rolled her eyes and walked past her toward the weights. "My husband."

Tasha's mouth fell open. "Your husband? Why would your husband have that effect on you?"

"I'm meeting him for breakfast."

"Breakfast," Tasha repeated slowly, like it was a foreign word. "Okay. Okay. That's... actually, that's good, right?"

Aiysha picked up a pair of dumbbells and didn't answer.

It should have been good. It probably was good. She went through her sets slowly, counting each rep under her breath, letting the burn in her arms push everything else out of her head.

It almost worked.

On her third set, her phone buzzed on the bench beside her. Her heart jumped before she even looked at it.

For one stupid second, she thought it might be him. The other him.

It was a gym reminder about a class schedule change.

Aiysha put the weights down and sat on the bench for a long moment, staring at nothing.

"It'll go away," she whispered. "Once things are fixed with Jones, it'll go away."

This was what she told herself, believing it was because her mind was too free to wander.

-

The diner on the corner had barely changed since they had first started going there years ago. Same cracked red booths. Same coffee that tasted like it had been brewing since the morning before.

Aiysha arrived at five to eight, showered and dressed, with just a little makeup on so it didn't look like she was trying too hard.

Jones was already there.

He sat in their old booth by the window, a cup of coffee in front of him that he hadn't touched. He looked tired. He had shaved, though. She noticed that.

He stood up when he saw her, awkward, like he wasn't sure whether to hug her or shake her hand. In the end, he did neither.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

She slid into the seat across from him. That was when she saw it.

On the seat beside him, half-hidden under his jacket, was a large brown envelope.

Aiysha's smile faded.

Jones followed her gaze. He didn't move it.

"I wasn't sure," he said quietly, "which conversation we were having this morning."