She woke on Ben’s couch, and the dark curtains of the nightmare dropped around her, a man looming up instead, silhouetted against the blue-lit ceiling. Andy reached up and grabbed Ben’s shoulders, recognized the feel of his big hands on hers. She didn’t even realize she was crying until she tried to speak and all that came out was hard sobs.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Ben gathered her into his chest. “It’s me. It’s me!”
Humiliation washed over her, heavy and prickling. She had drenched herself and the couch in sweat. Pants wet with what she hoped wasn’t piss. She pushed him away, all her limbs aching like they had that night as she sprinted into the vastness of the desert toward nothing and away from her waking hell.
“Are you okay? What was that about?” Ben asked.
She waved at him, turned away, trying to swallow or squeeze out the sobs. She had control of her breathing in under a minute. It was her mind that she had trouble reeling in. It was out there, floating in the past, a battered kite caught in a storm. Loop by loop, she had to pull it in. Remember the apartment. The assignment. The man she was with, and not the people she had lost.
“Did you just get in?”
“I’ve been here a few minutes,” Ben said. “I saw you were sleeping, so…”
She nodded, wiped the tears away.
“‘Important,’” she said.
“Huh?”
“‘Important re: Luna.’ What did you actually want to tell me?”
“Are you o—”
“I’m not talking about it,” Andy said. His silhouette on the end of the couch was upright, rigid, alert. “You caught me in … in a private moment, Ben. It was a nightmare. It was no big deal. Let’s move on now so you can tell me what you wanted to tell me.”
His voice was careful. Quiet. “My brother Kenny turned up here this morning.”
He told her about the email from Luna. Andy wound her kite all the way in, hand over hand, so grateful that they weren’t talking about the storm anymore.
“You think she was making amends,” Andy said. “Saying her goodbyes.”
“Maybe.”
“What happened between those two?”
Ben gave a short, sad laugh. “It’s so stupid.”
Andy watched him lean back against the couch.
“He’s always wanted to pay me back,” Ben said. “For putting him through college. For taking him on. But he just can’t figure out how. He gets the guilts sometimes and gives it a try, but he’s always wrong. Like he bought me a Porsche once. What the hell am I gonna do with a Porsche? He’ll turn up with an expensive coffee machine. Or a lead into a job I’d rather kill myself than do.”
“Okay.”
“He invited me out to lunch, and I brought Luna and Gabe along without telling him. We’ve never really talked about that kind of stuff. Girls. Relationships. This was going to be the first woman I’d introduced him to, really. But it was a mistake to bring them without checking first. Because Kenny had a little surprise of his own. He was trying to set me up. Some client of his. An Instagram model.”
Andy nodded.
“Luna blew up. Kenny blew up. The client woman blew up. Gabe burst into tears.” Ben shook his head. Andy could see the smile tightening his cheeks. “I’m sitting there, the only person at the table who’s managing to keep it together.”
“So she wasn’t apologizing to Kenny with the email. She was just saying—”
“‘We’re all good,’” Ben said.
They both sat, thinking.
“Why would she suddenly say that, a week before she disappeared?” Ben asked.
“Because she knew something bad was coming.” She was either being scared, or being smart, Andy thought.
“I gotta go.” Andy glanced at her watch, rose from the humiliatingly damp couch. “We’re on duty in five hours. I would lecture you on the script—”
“I’ve learned my lesson.”
“And I’m too tired to do it.”
“Just stay here.” Ben waved a hand toward the bedroom. “You’ll add an hour to your sleep time.”
Andy stood there in the dark. His face was in shadow, unreadable, but a rush of tingles spread over the backs of her arms, a phenomenon she passed off to the nightmare. She told herself that she’d done unnecessary things with hosts before. Laughed with them, joked with them, ate with them when she didn’t need to, because she wasn’t a robot. She was a human. She felt things. Humor. Loneliness. Exhaustion. Sleeping beside Ben Haig now when she didn’t really need to wasn’t any different from a thousand times she’d relented to her humanity with a host before. It wasn’t crossing any lines. They weren’t lovers. He had no idea who she was.
She showered and climbed into the sheets in her panties, noting he was wearing boxer shorts as she peeled back the covers. He was turned on his side, facing away from her, already asleep.
The hours climbed toward sunrise and she lay awake and stared at the shadows on the wall.