The Morning After

Nothing came.

I lay awake with the door unlocked and the sheets twisted around my legs, every creak and shift of the old house sounding like the soft drag of rubber on wood. The phantom stretch of the dream still pulsed between my thighs. My pulse stayed high for what felt like hours. The mark on my breast ached. The house breathed around me - warm, patient, almost amuse - but the silhouette never reappeared. No gloved hand touched the door. No masked figure climbed onto the bed.

Eventually exhaustion won. Sleep took me hard and dreamless this time, a black, heavy drop that left no room for the Rubber Man or Constance or Ben’s stunned face in the music room.

I woke to full morning light and the ordinary sounds of a house that pretended it had never been anything else.

Sunlight cut across the bedroom floor in bright, ordinary bars. Somewhere downstairs a cabinet closed. The smell of coffee drifted up the stairs. For a disorienting second I thought the entire night - Constance’s fingers, the bitter fight, the latex dream - might have been only fever. Then I sat up and felt the dull throb of the bruise on my breast and the faint soreness between my legs, and the illusion broke.

I dressed slowly: jeans, a soft sweater that covered the mark, hair pulled back. Armor. When I came downstairs Ben was already at the kitchen island, two mugs out, the sage still sitting untouched where Constance had left it. He looked up. Dark circles under his eyes. The careful, wounded expression of a man who had spent the night replaying every word I had thrown at him.

“Morning,” he said quietly. “I made coffee.”

I took the mug he pushed toward me without answering. The first sip was too hot. I welcomed the burn.

Violet’s footsteps crossed the ceiling above us, then the bathroom door shut harder than necessary. She still hadn’t spoken more than a handful of sentences since we moved in. The house had not healed her either.

Ben cleared his throat. “About last night - ”

“Don’t.” I set the mug down. “We’re not doing the soft conversation over coffee. You slept in the guest room. I locked you out. That’s where we are.”

He nodded once, jaw tight, and looked away. The silence that settled was thick with everything the house had already started to rearrange inside both of us.

I carried my coffee to the back door and stared out at the narrow yard. The morning was clear, almost cheerful. Birds. A distant lawnmower. Ordinary Los Angeles pretending the Murder House was just another restored Craftsman.

Behind me Ben moved, the soft clink of his own mug. I felt him watching the line of my shoulders the way he used to before the affair, before the stillbirth, before this place began whispering that what we really needed might be uglier and more honest than forgiveness.

I did not turn around.

The sage sat on the counter between us like a question neither of us was ready to answer.

And somewhere in the walls, too faint for Ben to notice, rubber whispered against wood - just once - before falling silent again for the daylight hours.