DAY TWENTY NINE

The rain sounded like a percussion section. I wrapped myself in my covers, alone at four in the morning. Wide awake after three solid hours of sleep.

I’d walked out on him to save my dignity. He’d made sure I had a car home, but I could barely look at the driver.

I’d reveled in feeling like a piece of meat with Adam. Rejecting my identity for a few hours. Existing for his pleasure. I didn’t know what had changed. Something enormous and abstract. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I got on my stomach and put my arms between my chest and the mattress, trying to squeeze out the panic that Adam and self-respect were incompatible.

I took my journal off the night table and scribbled in the half light.

At some point, it was going to come to this.

There was never hope for it. I’m running west to chase the sun. It’s going to set, no matter how fast I go.

I’d stopped writing questions in my journal. I was making statements. I didn’t even notice the change for the first two pages. I didn’t realize something had broken until the third page, when I was unable to get the stream of consciousness back to questions.

Take a page from Adam’s book. He didn’t need love all those years. I don’t have to love a man to get satisfaction from him either. Maybe. What would it be like?

Finally. A question. And yet, it was unanswerable because I couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t sink deeply into a fantasy about some Dom I’d never met, seen, spoken to.

What was it like for Adam? How did he give himself to that intimacy without being intimate?

Practice.

Maybe.

Maybe peeling Serena and subs like her down to the core built him up until intimacy wasn’t intimacy anymore.

The valid, even productive train of thought veered off the rails as I imagined him fucking Serena. Eating her pussy. Pulling her hair. Pretending to rape her by a creek.

My heart was a spool of emotions spinning as the thread was pulled faster and faster. She wanted him. She could have him again. I’d known it before, back when I was confident that I’d win him back, but all my imaginings of them weren’t an imagined past, but a possible future.

I grabbed my phone.

His green dot was planted solidly in Murray Hill, in his kitchen, if the satellites were dead on.

That should have helped, but it didn’t, because Montauk Adam wasn’t limited to a single room. If he could take me anywhere in the house, he could take Serena too. She’d said she was going to Tel Aviv, but wasn’t she back already? Or he could be with someone else. Or texting her. Or thinking about how he was going to get her in bed.

“For the love of God, Diana. Get control of your life,” I said, tossing the phone back on the table. I hugged my pillow. It was a sad substitute.

Get control.

All right. Well, the first thing I had to get control of was the next few hours. Because sleep wasn’t in the cards, and I wasn’t going to lie in bed and mope like a freaking loser. If I was awake, I was going to do something. I put on sweat pants and a hoodie, laced up my sneakers, and went for a fucking run in the fucking rain.

The utter, blanket stupidity of this move wasn’t apparent until I got around the corner and stepped in a puddle that left one sock soaking wet. The other didn’t meet the wetness challenge until the next block.

Yet I felt better. Cold. Wet. Slipping every dozen steps, I still felt as if I’d gotten control of a few minutes of my life. All I needed to do was tack together more minutes, hours, and days.

I heard splashing footsteps behind me about four blocks from home, on a cobblestone stretch of Crosby. New York never sleeps, but it does go into a fugue state in the wee hours. A few cars splashed past. The bakery lights were on. But I didn’t see another soul on the street. I turned. A man jogged half a block behind me, but not jogging. Not really. He was in jeans and a T-shirt. His hood shadowed his face.

What a pain in the ass.

I wasn’t afraid. Not at first. At first I took the normal precautions. I turned onto a wider street with more traffic. He was still there. Then I had the good sense to be scared.

My heart raced. My vision closed up in the rain. I picked up my pace, but not that much. Not enough to force him to run. I wanted him to be complacent, because I had to think.

Assume it’s not a coincidence. Assume it’s not a random guy minding his own business. Run into a public place. Except there are no public places at four in the morning.

Run home. Then he’d know where I lived.

The thunder cracked and the rain picked up as I chose home. Crosby Street was narrow and dark, but I could get behind a locked door.

Headlights from a slow-moving car lit up the sidewalk, and I avoided another puddle. As I turned, the same headlights shone ahead. I turned. The man in jeans was still behind me, and astride him, a car kept pace. He glanced at it. Stopped as I kept going. When I turned back again, the man in jeans was running away from me, and the car sped ahead.

What the hell?

Had the driver chased the man away? I hadn’t heard anything. Was it just the presence of the car? What had just happened?

You know exactly what happened.

I got under a scaffold and took out my phone, quickly opening the phone tracking app.

Adam’s green dot was two blocks ahead of me, turning off the street I was on, left onto Crosby. Must have been Dominic’s car. Or a hire. Something he’d grabbed fast when he saw me move. Something he could park by the loft and wait in, because according to the dot, that was exactly what he was doing.

If I started jogging, I’d get home from the other direction. He’d already be watching.

I could have gone and gotten a hotel room just to fuck with him. But I wasn’t feeling spiteful. Having taken the run, I was truly tired.

I jogged home, looked at the car long enough to note it was Dominic’s, and went into the lobby without even waving at my husband. I didn’t want him to know I knew he was there, and I wanted to give him the gift of thinking I was safe because of him. Whether it was true or not, whether he deserved it or not, the gift was still mine to give.