Before She Knew Him(91)

Thinking back, Hen realized that before she knew him, before they were neighbors, Matthew had already been a huge part of her life. It felt logical to her now that she and Matthew eventually met, even though she knew it wasn’t.

She put the sketch in the pile with the other pictures she was planning on recycling, then, on second thought, she brought it over to her drafting table, got one of her ink rollers, and covered the entire image with a spread of black ink. Then she crumpled it up and threw it away.

By the time she was finished going through the last box in the stack, Hen realized she was listening to “In Spite of Me” by Morphine, the song that had been playing when Matthew/Richard had shown up at her studio. She stopped what she was doing, frozen for a moment. She considered switching the disc, but then let it continue to play and went back to sorting. It was nothing more than background noise, she thought, and pretty soon she might not even notice it.