Wild Nights, Wild Nights || s.reid

20. One Need Not be a Chamber to be Haunted

You ended back up at your apartment instead of Spencer's after you realized that you didn't have any clean clothes left in your go bag for the next day. Neither of you minded the change of plans. In fact, Spencer seemed thrilled at the prospect of spending yet another evening at your apartment, and you were more than happy to have his company.

When you arrived at your apartment, though, there wasn't the frenzy that typically accompanied your after-case-rendezvous. In the past, there was nothing but hands roving every part of each others' bodies and clothes flying to the floor the second you walked over the threshold of the door. But this time, there was no rush.

You both took off your shoes by the door, and you led him into your bedroom, where you extracted your phone without so much of a glance at the screen, turned the ringer off, and plugged it into the charger by your nightstand. You unpacked your bag, throwing soiled clothes into your laundry hamper while Spencer sat perched on the edge of your bed. Neither of you spoke; he just tracked you with his eyes as you walked from your closet and dresser to your bag to repack it.

It was a comfortable silence with no need for small talk.

But, eventually, Spencer grew tired of watching you and stood, walking around your room and taking in the photographs on the walls. Your room and office were the only rooms in your home with personalized touches—the former being to create at least one space of sanctuary for you, and the latter being to remind you of why you kept doing what you were doing.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watched Spencer flit from photograph to photograph and to the small plants you kept on one of the windowsills before he finally asked, "Why do you have so many pictures of plants?"

"I like nature, and I think they're pretty," you answered.

"Fair enough."

When you finished repacking your go bag and saw that he was staring intently at the monochrome photograph of dune grass you had hanging over your dresser, you quietly added, "I took most of these pictures on Long Island."

He looked back over to you. "You took these pictures?"

"Yeah," you said with a slight smile, "most of them. That one is from the beach."

And to anyone else, it would have looked like a random stock image, but to you, it was an inconspicuous piece of that past life. The photo was taken right by that blue house on the beach you still saw in your dreams, on the path bordered by dune grass. You remembered taking it vividly, too: You were seventeen, and Elizabeth had been going through a photography phase. You'd stolen her camera for the afternoon. You could practically hear her whining on the deck for you to hurry up. In response, you'd told her to shut up just as you took the photo, and she had come storming down the steps and onto the path to try and forcibly take it back from you. Just as she had reached for you, you'd threatened to tell your parents about how she had snuck out of the apartment the previous week to go to a party with her friends.

Elizabeth had always been the rebellious one of the two of you, never having been drowned by the pressures to succeed that you had felt, and a raging extrovert. Attending an upscale private school in Manhattan her whole life meant that Elizabeth was always surrounded by friends growing up; you, having been homeschooled and taking college courses at NYU during the summers to make sure your brain's insatiable appetite for knowledge and intellectual stimuli was adequately met, could never say the same for yourself. And while the two of you got along for the most part, that fundamental difference was perhaps the greatest source of contention between you two.

And, god, what you wouldn't give to even fight with her one last time.

But as your own homage to her, you had a few of her photographs up on the walls. Elizabeth had loved to photograph animals, and so, the few monochromatic song birds that decorated your room were courtesy of her.