I came out of the shower, dressed and drying my hair with a towel as I heard the motors of heavy trucks and a jackhammer outside again.
What were they doing? It had been going on since yesterday morning, but I tried not to care at first, and then I just thought it was more installations from the new security. They’d been installing an alarm system and changing locks, but this sounded like serious construction.
I walked to the end of the hall, past my bedroom, and stood at the window, the warning beeps of a truck moving in reverse sounding off outside and workers calling out to one another. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, though.
Damon had disappeared again after the fight in my bedroom, and I hadn’t talked to him or heard him
in the house for almost two days.
Two days of freedom, rehearsing at the studio, practicing more at home, planning with Rika and Alex and brainstorming ideas for how to get me on some show bills or into outdoor festivals.
Someone climbed the stairs behind me, and I recognized the footfalls. Crane had this way of falling into his steps, almost like skidding, on the hardwood.
“What’s the noise outside?” I asked over my shoulder.
I felt him approach and waited.
“Mr. Torrance is having the ‘stupid, gaudy, fucking fountain’ removed, he said.”
I almost wanted to laugh at the way he repeated Damon’s words, throwing shade.
But then they sank in.
“Removed,” I mumbled.
He was taking out the fountain in front of my house. Throwing it away. Getting rid of it.
Like he didn’t want any reminder of the past or what he fell in love with about us as a boy.
He wanted to kill it.
I stopped drying my hair, holding the towel in my hands. “Is he here?” I asked.
“He’s close.”
Close. What does that mean? Was he always close? Even when he left?
“Do you need something?” Crane inquired. “I don’t expect him back to the house today, but I can get a message to him.”
I didn’t even know where to start. I wanted to say things to him, but everything in my head was still a hodgepodge of feelings contradicting facts.
I didn’t want to talk, but I wanted to feel him in the house.
Turning around, I followed the wall past Crane, without answering him, and slipped into my bedroom, closing the door.
I’d tried hard not to think about everything he said night before last—keeping busy with choreography and planning—but if I slowed for a second, he was there again, sitting against the wall in my room, and whispering nightmares I’d never seen and confessing secrets he’d tried hard to keep hidden for so long.
Should I forget everything he did? Was it all suddenly okay just because his feelings had been real?
I moved around my room, putting away clothes and cleaning up. Yesterday morning, after Damon’s tantrum, Crane came in and picked up everything his boss shoved onto the floor the night before and replaced my mirror. When I came home later, he’d brought in a contractor who replaced my door. The room was almost back in order. I wished he cleaned up all his messes as quickly.
There is a reason why all things are as they are.
I laid on my bed, hearing the trucks and workers still moving about outside, and closed my eyes, feeling my body relax but not my mind.
The pull of him was everywhere. I remembered so well the feel of teasing each other, laughing through a kiss, the heat of his arms around me, and the way his body craved mine. The way he wanted and the way I’ve always ached for his roughness and danger, his whispers and him.
The way I always saw Damon Torrance’s raven eyes in my head, even before I knew my ghost was Damon Torrance.