Turn 8 of 12

Close the laptop and hide it before opening the door

You slam the laptop shut. The sound cracks through the apartment like a gunshot and you wince, then grab it off the table and carry it fast to the bedroom, shoving it back under the laundry in the closet, burying it under a pile of winter shirts you haven't worn since March. You push the pile flat. You step back. It looks like a closet. It looks like nothing.

You cross to the front door. Your hands are cold and your heartbeat is in your throat, a sickening double-time that you can feel in your fingertips as you turn the deadbolt. You open the door and Meera is there — coat still on, keys in one hand, phone in the other, her face arranged in the particular expression she uses when she's worried but trying not to show it. She looks you up and down in one fast scan: the same clothes, the circles under your eyes, the way you're standing in the doorway like you're blocking something.

"You look terrible," she says. It's not cruel. It's Meera — direct, clinical, the way she talks about everything. She steps past you into the apartment without waiting for an invitation, because she never waits, because you've never needed her to.

"When did you last sleep?"

"I don't know. Last night. Maybe."

"That's not an answer." She sets her keys on the counter and turns to face you, and her eyes do the thing they always do — this quick, searching sweep that takes in more than you want it to. You can feel her reading you the way she reads a room: thoroughly, without rushing, missing nothing. It's the thing you've always loved about her and it's the thing that terrifies you right now, because the laptop is in the closet and the ledger is on the screen and the sixth confession is there in plain text and she is ten feet from the bedroom door.

She sits down at the kitchen table — your table, where the laptop was two minutes ago — and pulls out a chair and looks up at you.

"Talk to me," she says. "Something's wrong. Don't tell me it's nothing, because I've known you for six years and I can see it. What happened last night?"

You stand by the counter. The morning light is warm now, gold through the window, and it makes everything look clean and ordinary — the dishes in the rack, the kettle, Meera's coat draped over the chair. It all looks normal. It isn't. Somewhere in the closet, under a pile of shirts, seven confessions are pending, and one of them is about her, and the second one — the one about being seen — has been waiting for hours, and you can feel something in the air, a charge, like the moment before a storm breaks. Meera is watching you with her steady, careful eyes, waiting for an answer, and you don't know what to say that won't make everything worse.