All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 111

111

Afterward she led him along the dark of the Charles River, Eliot House so grand he stared at the exalted white windows, and when she finally dragged him across the checkered floor and up the paneled stairs to her room, he was dizzy at the thought that she got to live in such a place.

She kissed him and he kissed her.

She pulled his T-shirt from him and stepped back and stared at him, her eyes tracing the spareness of him; the scars borne for her. He stood back in the shadow of her dresser, like wherever he was he lamented the space he took up in her world.

Hours from morning he woke and slipped from the bed where she slept, and through the window he watched the sky flare over the Charles. He took a pencil and paper from her small desk and sketched the shape of her in a detail he knew he would not ever forget.

As he scrawled his name and placed the picture down for her, he saw from the window the rise of the cupola and beyond it JFK Park.

And as he stole from Misty’s life he followed that view and stood where he knew Grace had once stood, his steps in hers.

He knew then he would not go back to Skip.

He knew then things would get worse and maybe not ever better.

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