Teardrops spilt onto my pillow case.

They were sliding off my cheeks in twos and threes, hot and sticky. The sleeves of my shirt were becoming damp with them. I rested my chin on top of my forearms and stared at the solid wood bed frame in front of me.

It had been a day since I had the fight with Darren and I felt as if I hadn't even begun to start unpacking everything that happened. What had started out as an innocent visit quickly spiraled into the biggest fight we had ever had. There were so many words exchanged that surprised me. I knew that being in a highly emotional state made people say things they didn't mean but yesterday felt like the opposite of that. It seemed like every thought Darren had kept bottled up had come out in the blur of his fury.

It made everything I thought was true about us feel like a game of pretend. If he could keep things like that bottled up for that long, what else did he not tell me?

The side of Darren I saw yesterday, I was trying to accept that it had always been a part of him. How insecure he was to be jealous about Adonis’s gift and let it make him think I was cheating, how he described me as a burden and easily manipulated, those were not new. He had these tendencies and thoughts long before yesterday. It couldn’t have been my first time seeing them but the argument had forced me to process them. Had it really taken me over two years to finally have a more accurate view of who Darren was?

I was hurt. Sob into my covers, lay in the dark and cry in the shower hurt. Yet, even after all he had said to me, I wished he would call me. I hoped he would show up at my doorstep broken hearted and sorry about everything he said.

The hold he had on me was more intense than I had realized.

My door gave a loud whine as Nancy pushed it open. She had her phone tucked between her ear and neck, one hand on the door and the other holding a half eaten miniature donut.

“I’m asking her now,” she said into the phone, not having looked at me. “Mickey, Tìo wants to know if you want anything from McDonalds.”

I turned my face from her and shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”

I heard the floor creak underneath her as she walked over to my bed. I smelt the chocolate frosting on the donut as she craned her neck to try to see my expression. I tried to turn from her again but it was pointless. It was clear I was crying.

She popped the rest of the dessert into her mouth and spoke into the phone while chewing. “Get her a Big Mac, large fries, a milkshake, maybe a McFlurry for extra measure.”

“I said I wasn’t hungry.”

She continued speaking on the phone, staring at me with a sister-like smirk. “No, trust me. She will eat it all.”

“Nancy!” I swiped at her arm but she stepped back in time for me to miss. She hung up, a sympathetic frown forming on her lips.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Go away.”

I rolled over so my back was facing her. Nancy was the last person I would want to speak about Darren with. She hated him. She would be delighted to know we fought. She would regurgitat all the same insults she pelted his way even when they weren’t warranted. She’d make me feel like I should have seen it coming. She’d make it worse.

The bed sunk under Nancy’s weight as she sat beside me. I pouted, waiting for her to go into lecture mode. Depending on what she thought I was crying over, she would play her older sister card and act like her three extra years of life had made her far wiser than I. I waited for the condescension to begin but instead she remained quiet.

She was just sitting there.

I was doing my best to keep the sobs and tears in but I couldn't hold them back anymore. I curled into a ball and started crying all over again. I felt Nancy’s hand stroking my hair.

“I love you,” she said. “I’m here for you. Always.”

It was all she said for the rest of the time she sat with me. When Tìo came home with the food, she went downstairs and brought it up to me so the others wouldn’t see me crying. We ate together in the silence of my bedroom. 

I had reached the bottom of my milkshake, the straw whistling to signify I was done, when I finally replied, “I love you too.”

__________________

“You’re hitting a lot harder today. Who pissed you off?”

Gina was watching me as if she was a combination of impressed, humored, and confused. 

I held the boxing gloves in front of my face, taking a breath before continuing the drill. We were working on hooks and uppercuts. They were my favorite. Even as I delivered the blows, I knew I would wake up the next day achy and sore. I didn’t mind the idea. I welcomed the pain.

When I woke up in the morning from a night filled with tissues and ruined mascara, I sensed a major shift inside me. When I thought of Darren, I didn’t feel like crying. I felt like screaming. I felt like punching.

My thoughts that had whined, how could he? now asked, how dare he?

From the waterfall of tears sprang an intense desire to prove him wrong. I wanted to show him I wasn’t a burden. I wanted to show him I could fend for myself. I knew I didn’t have to prove him wrong but I wanted to almost out of revenge. I wanted him to see how wrong he had been and I wanted that to hurt him.

“Nevermind,” Gina said, realizing I wasn’t going to answer her question. “It doesn’t matter who angered you. It only matters how you use this aggression. I’ve always believed that the best fighters have anger to draw from. Not enough to make them reckless but just enough to keep them going.”

Oh, I had enough to keep me going. If Gina hadn’t cut me off, I could have roundhouse kicked that bag until my legs gave out. I could run laps until my sneakers were worn. The icy shower in the locker room did nothing to cool me down. I would have to wait until exhaustion hit me. When it did, I wouldn’t have the energy to imagine an alternate, harsher response to everything Darren had said or the different ways I could make him feel the humiliation he had made me feel.

Did I hate him? No and despite his beliefs, I wasn’t naive enough to think I had even stopped loving him. 

Maybe it was because I was mad at Darren but I was starting to give the questions Vincent had about Darren some more weight. It was strange that two people close to him were killed in a hit and run. When his mother died, she left Darren, her only child, thousands of dollars which he invested in his company. When Ross, the employee who managed the money for the company died, Darren didn't gain anything, except maybe he gained his silence. How Darren kept his business afloat during their time of financial struggle was pretty murky to me. Maybe Ross saw something he wasn’t supposed to see.

These thoughts were all rather extreme - I knew that. I wasn't even truly suspicious that they could lead somewhere but Vicent had obviously been wanting to explore this road and I wasn't being the most cooperative about it. Since I no longer felt as loyal to Darren, I could be fair to the investigation and perhaps gain pleasure from the idea that I was throwing him under a bus - a bus I highly doubted would actually run him over.

Vincent already got us a booth when I arrived at the waffle house. He was running his fingers along the side of a napkin when I spotted him. He was folding an edge very precisely, his eyes trained on his work. The tip of his tongue poked out of the side of his mouth in concentration and when he finished, he held up the napkin for inspection. It was folded into a flower.

"Board games and origami," I said, dropping my duffle bag with my gym stuff onto my seat before me. He glanced up at me, his nose and cheeks brushed with a soft pink blush. "You're full of surprises."

"And what do you do for fun, Mrs.Morales? Or are you too much of a grown up for fun?"

I slipped into the seat. The lamp overhead warmed me up from the chill that raged outside. I shrugged, fiddling with the utensils wrapped up in a napkin.

"I do lots of fun things."

"Mhm." Vincent squinted at me, a playful yet mocking grin on his lips. "Like what?"

"I'm good at darts," I said but it sounded more like a question. "And I . . . I do some gardening when the weather's nice."

Honestly, I busied myself with work most of the time. When I wasn't doing that, I was out with Darren or helping out around the house. This investigation was the most excitement I had experienced for a while and unfortunately it was the bad kind.

"And now you box, too." He gestured to the bag beside me with a pleased smile. I wondered if Vincent boxed too and that was why he was elated that I had taken it up. He was probably good at it, if he did. He had such good focus and he was probably bigger than the average opponent.

We took a look at the menus, Vincent deciding on the chicken and waffles and I on the protein packed pancakes to make the most out of the workout I just completed at the gym. When we were served, Vincent got started on his food immediately. Three bites in and he seemed as if he was in a world of his own, savoring every bite with a tenderness that would have made me laugh on a better day.

“I wanted to speak to you about Darren.” I launched the statement out into the air before I could back out. Vincent paused chewing, his fork hovering above his plate. The waffle piece that had been pierced through slid off as he stared at me. His trance was successfully broken.

“I spoke to him about his deceased coworker Ross Centino. He didn’t say anything very significant about him but I remembered something.” 

The fork made a slight clattering noise as Vincent dropped it into his plate.

There was no going back now. I had garnered his full attention.

“The day Ross died, Darren showed up at my house unannounced and acting strange. He looked distraught and later on he lost his temper with me, which is something he never does.”

"Lost his temper, how?”

“Nothing alarming," I said, clarifying before he got any extreme ideas. "He just yelled at me. I couldn’t remember if he had come over before Ross was declared dead or after.”

“Did he mention Ross being dead while he was with you?”

“No. He called to tell me about it the next day.”

We fell into a brief silence. I glanced down at my plate. A piece of pancake was floating around in the syrup.

“So, you’re following my train of thought here," Vincent started. "You think there might be a chance Ross saw something about the business that wasn’t right? You think Darren could have . . . silenced him?”

“No. I don’t think Darren is capable of that but I don’t want to withhold information from you.”

Vincent's expression twitched the slightest bit. He was trying to tread lightly. He was balancing between my loyalty to Darren and my loyalty to the investigation.

“Did something happen between you and Darren recently?”

“Why do you ask?”

He wiped his mouth with one of the unused napkins beside his origami flower. “My guess is you’ve been holding onto this for days but you decided to tell me now.”

I sighed, partly because I was stuffed and partly because of the subject matter. “We had  a fight.”

Begrudgingly, I launched into a recap of Darren and I's argument. It wasn't like I wanted to confide in Vincent about a private matter in my relationship but I couldn't deny that what happened could be tied to the case. Darren was a person of interest at the moment, whether I liked it or not, and the argument had revealed his true feelings towards Adonis.

“Do you think Darren might have suspected you were cheating before the shooting?” Vincent had voiced one of the first things I questioned when playing back the fight. I wondered how long he had thought my supposed affair was going on. I wondered if he felt relieved when Adonis was dead.

“Maybe. It seemed like this was something that had been bothering him for a while.”

“Theoretically, if Darren was guilty, maybe he opted to kill two birds with one stone. He frames Adonis as the man responsible for all the money owed to the drug traffickers and he gets rid of the man he thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him with.”

It was sickening to think about so I did my best to detach myself from the whole thing. I tried to convince myself that this was someone else's boyfriend I was speaking about and someone else's brother in law.

“Theoretically, that would make sense.”

“How about we go down to the station? While I work on getting a warrant to check out Darren’s place of business, you can look into the police reports about the hit and runs.”

This doesn't mean I'm sentencing Darren to prison, I told myself. I am only helping to tic him off the suspect list.

“That’s some pretty hands-on work," I said, surprised he was letting me get so involved.  "Am I allowed near police files?”  

“Don’t get too excited. I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Nancy Drew.” 

When the bill was paid, Vincent slipped something over the table to me with a smile so subtle it was barely there. The brown in his eyes twinkled.

He had given me the origami flower.

I stroked the paper petals. He didn't need to say anything. I knew it was consolation for what happened between Darren and I. It was a small gesture but it made warmth bloom in my chest.

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