38

Marianna.

Insomnia, I've decided, is God's way of saying "fuck you specifically."

I'm lying in Duane Richter's guest bed, staring at the ceiling like it holds the answers to questions I'm too tired to ask. The city lights filter through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting shadows that move and shift like living things.

My body is exhausted. Like, bone-deep, cellular-level exhausted. The kind of tired where your eyelids feel like they're made of lead and your limbs might as well be sandbags.

But my brain? Oh, my brain is throwing a fucking rave.

I roll over. Face the window. Count the lights on the buildings across the way. One. Two. Three. Seventeen. Forty-two. It doesn't help.

I try counting backwards from one hundred. Deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

It doesn't work. I flip onto my back again. The ceiling is still grey. My phone says it's 2:40 AM.

I've been lying here for four hours and thirty-three minutes.

This is fine. Everything is fine. I'm fine.

I close my eyes. Try to summon sleep through sheer force of will.

Nothing. My stomach growls. I ignore it. Food requires getting out of bed, and bed is the only place where I can pretend the world doesn't exist.

There's a sound. Soft. Tentative. A knock on the door.

Nothing about that knock sounds like something Duane Richter would do. Duane doesn't knock gently. Duane exists in the world like a force of nature—you either get out of his way or you get steamrolled.

"Come in," I say.

The door opens. It's Duane. Of course it's Duane. Who else would it be? We're the only two people in this stupid apartment.

He's standing in the doorway, backlit by the hallway lights, and for a second he just... stands there. Like he's forgotten why he came. Like he's a video game character whose AI script has glitched.

He's wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. His hair is messed up. There's something in his hands.

A mug.

Duane Richter is standing in my doorway at 3 AM holding a mug like he's in a fucking rom-com.

"I made tea," he says.

I blink.

"You... made tea."

"Yes."

"You know how to make tea?"

His jaw tightens. "It's not a complex process, Marianna. You heat water and add a bag."

"I just didn't think you knew where the tea was. I didn't think you knew tea existed in this apartment."

"I bought it."

Oh.

Oh.

He bought tea and brought it to me at 3 AM and I don't know what to do with this information.

"It's chamomile," he continues, still standing in the doorway like he's afraid to come closer. "Do you want the tea or not?"

"Yes." The word comes out. "Yes, thank you."

He walks into the room. Sets the mug on the nightstand with the kind of careful precision that suggests he's never done this before and is worried about fucking it up.

We exist in awkward silence for approximately seventeen years.

Duane clears his throat. Looks at the wall instead of at me. "I need to apologize."

"For what?"

"For earlier. The questions—" He stops. Tries again. "I was out of line."

This is excruciating. Watching Duane Richter try to apologize is like watching someone perform surgery on themselves with a butter knife.

"You were kind of an asshole," I offer.

"I was." He's still looking at the wall. "I am. Generally. It's not specific to you."

"Wow. Such comfort."

"What I mean is—" He finally looks at me. His eyes are dark and tired and something else I can't name. "What happened to you, you're not..."

He trails off.

"I'm not what?" I prompt.

"Broken," he says finally. "You're not broken."

The word hits me.