Chapter 65: Nasty Man!
The mood had shifted the moment the phone lit up.
Liam sat on the edge of the table and watched Rachel’s back disappear down the hallway, her voice dropping to something low and private the moment she cleared the doorway. The candles were still going. The rose petals were still on the floor. The room had been arranged with care and intention and now it was just him in it, alone, listening to the muffled rhythm of a conversation he wasn’t part of.
He looked at himself in the mirror on the far wall.
Took a moment to register the full picture.
His shirt was open. His hair had lost its earlier structure. And his face — he squinted at the reflection — his face was glistening in the candlelight in a way that had nothing to do with sweat.
"Oh well," he said to his reflection. "That was fun."
He reached for his shirt and began buttoning it from the bottom, listening. Rachel’s voice hadn’t risen. Whatever was happening in that room was the kind of conversation that stays quiet because the person on the receiving end doesn’t want to be heard, which was a specific kind of bad.
He straightened his collar.
"Rachel." He said it toward the hallway, not loudly. "I’m going to head out—"
She didn’t respond but he waited for a few second.
Then he heard it. Underneath the silence — a small, caught sound. The kind people make when they’re trying very hard not to make any sound at all.
Liam set his shirt down.
He moved to the hallway and stopped outside the partially open bedroom door. Through the gap he could see her sitting on the edge of the bed, phone in her lap now, head slightly bowed. Her shoulders had the particular set of someone doing active work to hold themselves together.
"Hey." He kept his voice low. "You okay?"
Rachel’s head came up fast. She wiped her face with the back of her hand in one quick motion, the way people do when they’ve been caught and need two seconds to reassemble. "I’m fine."
"You don’t have to—"
"I’m fine, Liam." Firmer this time. The smile she produced was real enough at the edges but not in the middle. "Sorry about that. Bad timing."
He looked at her for a moment.
He knew better than to push. Whatever that call was — whoever was on the other end of it at this hour — she had chosen not to confide in him as she wasn’t obligated to, and he respected her decision even when it meant standing in a hallway with his hands in his pockets watching someone cry without being allowed to acknowledge it.
He ran through his options.
Staying felt wrong — she hadn’t asked him to stay and the energy in the room had changed into something she was managing alone. Leaving felt cold, he needed something in the middle. Something that acknowledged the moment without making it heavier than she wanted it to be.
He found it.
"Hey, Rachel."
She looked up.
"Don’t be sad." He said it with complete sincerity. "Because sad backwards is das. And das not good."
Silence followed as Rachel stared at him.
Her face held absolutely nothing — no expression, no reaction, the blankest canvas he had ever produced with a joke. She just looked at him with the eyes of a woman trying to decide if what had just happened had actually happened.
"Yeah." Liam nodded slowly. "I’ll let myself out."
He turned and walked down the hallway, picked up his jacket from the chair by the door, and let himself out into the corridor.
The door clicked shut behind him, he stood in the hallway for exactly two seconds.
Then from the other side of the door — muffled, involuntary, the specific sound of someone who tried not to and couldn’t help it — a snicker.
It was small and brief, even though that was the dumbest thing he had said to himself.
Liam smiled at the wall in front of him and walked toward the stairs.
Darren’s door was one floor down. Liam knocked twice — the same knock he’d been using since university, the rhythm Darren would recognise half asleep.
A pause, movement and the chain sliding.
The door opened and Darren stood there in a grey vest and shorts, hair slightly compressed from the pillow, wearing the expression of a man interrupted at the early edge of sleep.
He looked at Liam.
Then he took a full step backward.
"The—" He stopped. Stared. "What."
Liam frowned. "What?"
"What is—" Darren pointed somewhere in the region of Liam’s face. "What is on your—"
"What are you talking about?" Liam looked down at himself. Shirt buttoned, jacket on, no visible issues. He no longer had the problem he’d had twenty minutes ago so what was Darren even—
And then the mirror situation from upstairs replayed itself in his memory.
He touched his face.
"Do I have something on my face?" he said, and the moment the words left his mouth the answer arrived immediately and completely and he closed his eyes for approximately one second. "Oh. Wait—"
"Wait nothing!" Darren’s voice had gone up a full register. "I can SEE it, man! Your lips are shining! What did you—" He cut himself off, processing. "Oh you nasty—"
"I can explain—"
"Out here eating coochie like it’s the Last Supper!" Darren backed further into the apartment, gesturing broadly at Liam’s entire situation. "I didn’t even know you had that in you! You’ve been pretending this whole time acting all professional—"
"Are you going to let me in or not?"
"I don’t know if I want that in my house!"
"Darren."
"I’m serious! Go wash your face before you come near anything I own!"
Liam walked past him directly to the bathroom without waiting for formal permission. He ran the tap, soaped his hands, and handled the situation efficiently and without drama while Darren’s voice continued from the other side of the door.
"I’m trying to figure out when this happened," Darren was saying, loud enough to carry through the wall. "Because the Liam I grew up with was a square. Wore suits voluntarily. Read case files for fun. This man out here on a Tuesday night—"
"It’s Wednesday," Liam called.
"Wednesday morning! At whatever this time is! With your face—"
Liam dried off and came back out.
Darren was leaning against the kitchen counter looking at him with an expression that had moved past shock into something more philosophical. He shook his head slowly — not quite disapproval, not quite admiration. Somewhere in the uncomfortable middle.
"Sara really broke something loose in you, didn’t she," Darren said.
"I’m going to sleep on your couch," Liam said.
"At least you’re getting some," Darren muttered, pushing off the counter and heading back toward his bedroom. "I’ll get you a pillow. Nasty man."
"Thank you, Darren."
"Don’t thank me. Wash your face again."
"I washed my face."
"Wash it again," Darren said, and closed his bedroom door.
Liam sat down on the couch, stretched out, and stared at the ceiling.
From somewhere above him, through the building’s indifferent walls, he thought about Rachel sitting on the edge of her bed with her phone in her lap and her face carefully put back together.
He hoped she was okay and if anything, this made it worse for him but Liam had no choice but to close his eyes.