Gold Digger – Story 14 – THE HOODIE

I expected a lecture.

That’s the honest version.

D had said eleven words on the bike and four of them were you should’ve called earlier and I’d spent the entire ride preparing responses to arguments he hadn’t made yet and counter-arguments to my own counter-arguments and by the time we got to his building I had a comprehensive internal defense ready for deployment.

He made tea.

That was it.

Just – walked into his kitchen and put the kettle on like it was any other night and I was any other version of myself and none of the last three hours had happened.

I stood in his hallway in the leather dress and the demolished hair and watched him do it.

“You can change if you want,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

He looked at me once.

Went to his room.

Came back with the hoodie.

Maroon. Worn in the specific way things get worn when they’re the thing you reach for without thinking. It smells like D – that particular D smell that my nervous system has apparently been cataloguing without my permission for longer than I’m comfortable admitting.

He held it out.

I took it.

Put it on over the leather dress which is a combination that should not work and does not work and I did not care even slightly.

He handed me the tea.

We sat.

I expected questions.

Noah’s name. The club. What happened. Why I was in a corner. Why I waited so long.

D asked none of them.

He sat at his desk and opened his laptop and started working and I sat on his couch with my tea and the hoodie and the specific discomfort of a woman who had prepared for a fight and been given a blanket instead.

I watched him for a while.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?” I asked.

“I know what happened.”

“You don’t -“

“Noah left you at a table and you handled it until you couldn’t and then you called me.” He didn’t look up from the screen. “I know what happened.”

I sat with that.

“You’re still angry,” I said.

“I told you. I’m not angry.”

“D.”

He stopped typing.

Didn’t turn around.

“You come here when you want,” he said. Quiet. Controlled. The voice he uses when he’s chosen every word carefully.

“You leave when you decide to. I don’t get a say in any of it.”

I opened my mouth.

“I know,” he said. Before I could.

“That’s what this is.”

The room was very quiet.

“But you were sitting in that corner for an hour.”

He turned then. Just enough to look at me.

“And you called everyone else first.”

I didn’t have a response for that.

Not a prepared one.

Not a real one.

Not anything.

“I didn’t think you’d -” I started.

“I know you didn’t.”

That landed worse than everything else.

Because it wasn’t an accusation.

It was just – true.

I looked down at the hoodie.

At my hands inside the sleeves that were too long.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment.

Long enough that I thought he might say something important.

Instead he nodded once.

Then:

“Next time call sooner.”

Not angry.

Not dramatic.

Just certain.

Like he was discussing weather.

Which somehow made it worse.

I looked down at the tea.

At the hoodie.

At my hands disappearing into sleeves that were too long.

“Okay,” I said.

And I meant it.

That was probably the most dangerous thing that happened all night.

I fell asleep on D’s couch at some point after 3am.

When I woke up at 4:12 he was still at his desk.

Still working.

Jacket off. Coffee going cold beside him. The specific stillness of someone who has been sitting in the same place for a long time thinking about more than what’s on the screen.

I watched him for a moment in the dark.

Then I closed my eyes again.

I hated him a little for being right.

I hated myself more for taking so long to call.

Spreadsheet status: D → [row does not exist]

He said: you called everyone else first.

He said: I know that’s what this is.

He said: next time call sooner.

I said: okay. I meant it. That was probably the most dangerous thing that happened all night. The hoodie is still on. – Mila