My mother's not going to take this in stride.
She's going to think the city corrupted me.
And maybe it has, but I'm happy that way. I can't step in the same river twice, but that's okay, because there are more rivers out there, unchartered water, that I'll get to explore with the man of my dreams.
The sky is still dark. It's so early it barely constitutes 'tomorrow' or 'morning' when Naz reappears at the dorm. He once more makes it up to my room without anyone signing him in, slipping right past the flimsy security of the dorm, reminding me how unsafe a place like this can be. Santino's death lingers on the back of my mind, knowing there's a killer roaming around putting me on edge.
Maybe moving in with Naz is the best idea. At least with him, I'm safe. Nobody is stupid enough to mess with him.
He knocks on the door of the dorm room before dawn, rousing both Melody and me from sleep. We locked the door last night for probably the first time all semester. Melody merely rolls over, throwing her blanket over her head with a groan as I flick on the light and open the door. Naz strolls in, dressed as usual, a pair of black gloves on his hands.
Groggily, I rub my eyes as I survey him. "Is it cold out or something?"
He raises an eyebrow in question. "Why?"
"You're wearing gloves," I point out.
"No," he says, glancing down at his hands, before turning away from me and surveying my things. I finished packing last night, everything shoved into boxes except for my pillow and blanket. "This should all fit in the car, but if not, we can come back for it later."
"Okay."
I flop back down on my bed, yawning, and watch as he stacks boxes and picks them up, heading out the door.
It takes him less than ten minutes on his own to take everything downstairs to the Mercedes, parked in a coveted spot right along the curb. He has it all crammed in and loaded before I even get around to sliding on my shoes. I tell him I'll meet him at the car as I snatch the blanket off of Melody's head and shove her over to sit down.
"What?" she groans, half-asleep. She elbows me as she tries to grab her blanket.
"I'm leaving," I say. "Wanted to say goodbye."
"Later, hooker," she says. "See you later, not goodbye."
"See you later," I say, throwing the blanket back over her head. I stand back up and head for the door.
"So just chill," she calls out. "'Till the next episode."
Rolling my eyes, I head out, finding Naz waiting downstairs with the passenger door open for me. I get in, some anxiety brewing in my stomach when he climbs in beside me.
"You ready to go home?" he asks as he starts the car.
Home. Such a simple word, but the connotation of it makes something inside of me soar. I've never really felt like I was standing on stable ground, like there was somewhere I could call home permanently. My life has always been a series of temporaries: new towns, new people, new schools, and new houses. New everything. The world around me fluctuated, so many variables in my word problem of life to ever figure out the answer of who I am.
But Naz is my new constant.
My permanent.
He makes it easier to find my answer, to find my place.
My home.
"Yeah," I say, offering him a small smile. "I'm ready."
I'm quiet on the drive to Brooklyn, quiet when we pull up to the house, quiet as we head inside. We unload my things, taking them up to his room … our room … for me to unpack.
"Should I … ?" I hesitate, looking at the massive dresser. "Can I … ?"
"Whatever you want," he says, answering my unasked questions. "What's mine is yours, Karissa."
There's an extra closet in here, half of the drawers in his dresser empty, like it was all waiting for me to move in all along. Naz lingers in the room while I unpack before excusing himself when his phone rings. He comes back a few minutes later, pausing in the doorway. "I have some work to take care of … I'll be back around noon. Settle in, get comfortable … "
"I will."
He strolls over, kissing me, a smile tugging his lips. "I'm happy you're here."
"I'm happy to be here," I whisper, but he's already gone before the words are from my lips.
I finish unpacking, almost everything I own belonging in the bedroom, before I head downstairs to the den. I take the few DVDs and books I own and put them on his shelves, mixed in with his. When I'm finished, I glance at the time. Barely ten o'clock in the morning. I have at least two hours until Naz gets back, so I do what any self-respecting woman would do when left all alone with her guy's belongings for the first time.
I snoop.
I've seen what Naz has on the surface, but I dig deeper, wanting to see more of the man, the parts of him that are tucked away. I rifle through shelves and cabinets, even searching his junk drawer in the kitchen, before heading back to the bedroom and turning to his things.
You can tell a lot about a person by what they keep hidden in their underwear drawer. It's their private spot, the one place they don't expect anyone to touch out of decency. It's where I always hid my love letters, my birth control when I got it at sixteen without my mother's consent, the vibrator I bought on my eighteenth birthday … but Naz's drawer is a ghost town.
What a letdown.
I shut the drawer, glancing in the others to find nothing out of the ordinary, before heading to his closet. I count a dozen black suits, not including the one he's wearing and whatever's dirty, but he has a good bit of other clothes. I wish he'd wear the others more often. I'm checking out his tie collection, most solid colors, when my eyes drift to the shelf on the top of the closet.
A silver metal case, no bigger than a shoebox, sits in the corner. Curious, I reach up on my tiptoes and pull it down, nearly dropping it as soon as I get my hands on it. It's heavy. I can hear stuff jingling around inside. There's a lock on the box, but I haven't found any keys during my search that would open it.
Scowling, I shake the box, trying to figure out what's inside, before straining my muscles to shove it back up on the shelf.
Another letdown.
Giving up, I head out of the bedroom, looking in closets and scarcely furnished guest rooms, before heading back downstairs. Every other room is exactly as expected … nothing but laundry stuff in the laundry room, a spare room full of exercise equipment, and the massive garage is full of tools, old faded stains on the concrete.
I find a door leading down into what I assume is the basement, a musky, dank odor wafting out of it. There's no light switch, and the stairs are flimsy, the little bit of light filtering down from behind me illuminating tons of cobwebs, so I don't dare go down there.
No thanks.
It's twelve o'clock on the dot when I hear the front door open. I'm sitting on the couch in the den, my feet tucked beneath me as I flip through channels on the television. Naz walks in, letting out a deep sigh as he flops down beside me. He looks older than when he left just hours ago, the bags beneath his eyes heavier, a weariness in his face that hints at exhaustion.
"You look tired," I say, settling on some cooking show.
"I am," he says. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."
"Take a nap."
"I'm not a toddler."
I shrug. "I take naps."
"Yeah, well, it's beauty sleep for the beautiful," he says, looking at me, "but there's no rest for the wicked."
I roll my eyes. "I wouldn't call myself beautiful."
"I would."
"I wouldn't call you wicked, either."
"I would."
"Regardless," I say, "if you're tired, you should go to sleep."
"Yeah, I should," he admits, although he makes no move to go upstairs, settling in on the couch as he kicks his shoes off. "You find anything interesting today?"
My brow furrows. "When?"
"When you went through my stuff."
My heart seems to stop for a second as I turn to him. "Why do you think I went through your stuff?"
"Because you're human," he says. "It's normal to be curious, and you're a smart woman … I'd expect no less."
I'm not sure what to say. He doesn't sound upset in the least, but his matter-of-fact tone, pegging my actions from the start like he knows me better than I know myself, still unnerves me. "No, I didn't find anything."
"Figured you wouldn't," he said. "Nowhere near as interesting as what I found in your drawers in the dorm."