Tear You Apart Read Online Free PDF Page B

What are you up to today?”
    “Gotta put out a bunch of fires. That jackass Bingham can’t do any damn thing right when I’m gone.” He yawns.
    I contemplate crawling under the covers and going back to sleep for a few hours, but it would be impossible with him in the house. He will turn on the television or bang the dresser drawers. Run the coffee grinder. He will shake me gently to ask me where to find his socks, his keys. “No, don’t get up,” he’ll say. “I can make my own breakfast.” But I know he wants me to do it, because I’m here and because he’d much rather not do it himself.
    I leave my husband in the bed. In the bathroom, I run the water and splash my face. It’s cold, and I swallow it greedily, feeling the chill slip down my throat and hit my too-empty stomach. I fill a paper cup from the dispenser and take it to him.
    Ross looks at me as if I’m crazy. “What’s this?”
    “I thought you might want a drink.”
    “No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m not thirsty.”
    He pats me on the ass when he passes. I hear the shower running, and I sit on the bed with my paper cup of water still in my hands, and I close my eyes against a sudden sting of tears.
    From behind me, cradled in its dock, my phone buzzes with an email message. It will be Naveen, I think, emailing me to remind me about the shipments due to the Philly gallery later today. Or it could be my brother’s wife following up on summer vacation plans. Or it could be junk mail that has slipped through my carefully constructed set of spam filters and is now clogging my in-box. But the message pinging so cheerfully isn’t any of those.
    It’s from Will.

Chapter Four
    Will takes pictures of buildings.
    I’m here to carry things or hold them while he points and shoots. Skyline shots, he tells me, are really popular for stock photography. At home, he’ll manipulate some of them in Photoshop.
    “Post apocalyptic scenes,” he tells me with a grin. “Make the city look deserted. Ready for zombies, that sort of thing.”
    I’m holding his tote bag over one shoulder, an extra-large cup of coffee in one hand. “Uh-huh.”
    “You don’t like zombies.” It’s not a question. He says it as if he already knows me. He points his camera. Takes a picture. Doesn’t even look to see how it came out, just takes another. And another.
    “Not really.”
    He gives me another grin, his eyes narrowing in sunshine that’s too bright for this time of year. “Vampires that sparkle?”
    “No.” I laugh. Shake my head. “Not a horror fan.”
    “What do you like, Elisabeth? Chick flicks? Rom-com?” Point. Shoot. He aims the camera in my direction and clicks before I can look away.
    Sneaky.
    “I like action movies. Lots of shooting and muscle cars. Science fiction, too.” I’d put a hand in front of my face, but that would be too obvious. I hate it when women protest with squeals and cooing about getting their pictures taken, as if the world will end. Or their souls will be stolen. It’s worse than the ones who pose and pout and primp anytime a camera’s within range.
    I don’t want him to take my picture because then there will be proof I’m here with him. Not that I have any reason to deny it. I’m in the city on business. I had breakfast with Naveen. Stopped by the gallery to handle some things. I met with Will for coffee, that’s all. And now to follow him through the city as he takes pictures for his stock work. There’s nothing wrong in what I’m doing.
    He takes me to a park. We stare together at the giant Easter Island–looking head in the middle of it, neither of us saying much. Just beyond it, a line of people waiting for milk shakes from a stand stretches nearly all the way around the park.
    “Those must be some pretty fucking amazing milk shakes,” Will says after a minute or so.
    I burst into laughter. It’s loud. Raucous. Unfettered, that’s a good way to describe it, and I stifle it with my hand when he