I tried to sleep.
The charger sat on the nightstand where I had dropped it. The album still said four plays. I would not open it to see if the fifth circle had finished. I lay on my back in the same shorts he had hooked aside and stared at the ceiling until the house went dumb. Mom’s door was shut. Dad’s fan was a low roar down the hall. My body would not cool. His fingers had left me twitching and empty and I hated that the empty felt like a door he had walked through and not closed.
I turned on my side. I turned on the other. I put my hand between my legs and took it away because if he had heard a toy he could hear a mattress.
His shower started.
It ran a long time. Longer than a man who was only washing off a day. I listened to the water hit tile and I thought about his hand in the
