Cold Water, Wrong Errand

She could hear them through the door. Caitlin's laugh, someone's husband asking about parking, the particular bright noise of a morning that had nothing to do with her. She turned the cold tap and let it run. The water was good.

She pressed both palms flat to the basin and let the sound of it drown the rest out for a moment — just the rush, just the cool ceramic under her hands, just the face in the mirror that looked a little flushed for nine in the morning. She was annoyed at that too. She'd been annoyed since she woke up. That low, specific pull she recognized immediately and chose to ignore, the way you'd walk past something spilled on the floor and tell yourself you'd deal with it later.

She'd gotten dressed. She'd driven over. She'd poured orange juice into a glass and talked about summer plans and stood in Caitlin's kitchen for forty minutes pretending her body wasn't doing this to her. Now she was in here, and her body was still doing it.

She splashed water on her face. Patted it dry with the hand towel that smelled like someone else's soap. Looked at herself in the vanity light, which was too bright and very honest. Outside: the husband again, something about the 10, someone laughing at the wrong moment in a story.

She pressed the back of her wrist against her sternum and felt her own pulse there, faster than it should have been. The sundress was thin enough that she could feel the warmth of her own skin through it — had been feeling it since the car, the way the fabric sat against her thighs, the way the hem rested at the back of her knee when she sat. She'd shifted in the seat twice and told herself it was just the heat. It was not the heat.

Her right hand moved to the counter's edge. She gripped it. The ceramic was cool and the overhead light buzzed faintly and through the door Caitlin said something that got a big laugh from everyone, all of them completely fine out there, completely fine. She exhaled.

It came out longer than she'd intended, something in it loosening before she'd decided to let it. This was annoying. This was genuinely, specifically annoying — the timing, the location, the fact that her body had apparently decided that nine a.m. at someone else's brunch was the moment it needed to press the issue.

She didn't want to want this here. She wanted to go back out and drink her juice and be a person who was fine. Her left hand was still on the basin. Her right had drifted to her hip, fingers resting against the thin cotton of the dress, feeling the warmth that had collected there.

She should go back out. The voices rose and fell on the other side of the door. Someone was telling a story now. No one was going to knock.

She looked at herself in the mirror. The flush was worse. Her jaw was set in a way that looked less like composure and more like a woman losing an argument with herself.