Chapter 10: The Open Door
The knock echoed, cheap and hollow against the thin door. For a long moment, there was nothing but the thrum of bass from inside, a muffled beat that vibrated in the soles of Jennie’s shoes. Then a latch clicked, and the door swung inward.
Leonid stood there, framed by the dim yellow light of his room. He was barefoot, dressed in loose grey sweatpants low on his hips and nothing else. His hair was damp, black curls clinging to his forehead and neck, water tracing a path down the hard plane of his chest and disappearing into the trail of hair below his navel. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his posture loose-limbed and heavy.
He blinked at her.Slowly. His dark brown eyes were nearly black, pupils swallowing the irises, leaving only a thin ring of warm brown. They held a distant, clouded sheen, as if he were looking at her from the bottom of a deep, quiet well. The sharp intelligence she knew was there was submerged, replaced by a languid, dreamy disconnect.
A slow smile spread across his face. It was a beautiful, lopsided thing, but it was like watching a reflection in still water—the image was there, but the substance was gone. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“Hey, J.”
His voice was a low rumble, softened by whatever was floating in his system.
Before she could even form a syllable, the scene behind him snapped into focus. The small room was hazy, the single desk lamp casting long shadows. The scent of weed was richer here, earthy and pungent, layered over his usual clean soap smell and something else—a sweet, floral perfume.
On the floor, leaned back against his unmade bed, was a woman.
She was beautiful in a stark, unconcerned way. Sharp cheekbones, skin pale as milk, a tumble of messy, deep red hair falling over her shoulders. She wore a loose black tank top and ripped jeans, and she was sitting cross-legged, a small wooden rolling tray balanced perfectly in the valley between her thighs. Her fingers, tipped with chipped black polish, were deftly finishing a joint.
She looked up at Jennie. Her eyes, a startling green, were half-lidded and amused. She didn’t seem surprised. She didn’t move.
Jennie’s rehearsed words—I saw you look at me, You can’t just shut me out, What about last night?—dissolved like sugar in hot water. They vanished, leaving a dry, acidic taste in her mouth. She stood frozen on the threshold, the stolen hoodie suddenly feeling childish, a ridiculous costume.
The redhead’s gaze drifted from Jennie’s face down to the too-big sweatshirt, then back up. A knowing smirk touched her lips. She hummed, a low sound that cut through the music.
“Leo,” she said, her voice a smoky drawl. “Your girlfriend’s here.”
The words were casual, tossed out like a piece of trash. But they hit Jennie square in the chest, a sucker-punch of implication that hollowed her out. She felt the blood drain from her face, a cold numbness spreading from her fingertips.
Leonid’s smile didn’t falter. He glanced back at the woman, then at Jennie, his head moving with a careful, exaggerated slowness, as if his neck was made of rubber. “Nah,” he said, the word stretching out. “This is Jennie.”
He said her name like it was a fact, a neutral piece of data. Not my Jennie. Not the girl from last night. Just Jennie.
The redhead’s smirk deepened. She lifted the finished joint, licked the edge of the paper to seal it, her eyes never leaving Jennie. “Right. Jennie.”
The air in the hallway felt thin, impossible to breathe. The haze from the room seemed to leak out, wrapping around Jennie, suffocating her. She felt like a ghost, a projection, standing outside a life he was living without her.
“Can I come in?” Jennie heard herself ask. The voice that came out was small, tight. It was all she could manage.
Leonid stared at her for another long moment, his dilated eyes searching her face for something he was clearly too far gone to find. Finally, he shrugged, a slow, rolling motion of his shoulders. “Sure.”
He stepped back, leaving the door open. A silent, indifferent invitation.
Jennie stepped into the room. The clutter pressed in on her—the volleyball posters, the textbooks stacked beside a half-full ashtray on the desk, the smell of him mixed with the stranger’s perfume and the thick, skunky smoke. Her eyes darted to the bed, to the rumpled sheets, searching for any sign, any evidence. It just looked slept in.Alone.
She hovered in the middle of the tiny space, feeling gigantic and stupid. The redhead was now watching her with open curiosity, like a scientist observing an odd insect. She sparked a lighter and put the joint to her lips, the tip glowing orange. She inhaled deeply, then held the smoke out toward Leonid.
Without looking away from Jennie, he took it. His fingers brushed the other woman’s. He brought it to his lips, his gaze locked on Jennie as he inhaled. He held it, then let the smoke curl from his nostrils and his slightly parted lips. It was an intensely intimate act, performed with a detached, almost performative coolness.
He offered the joint back to her, but she just shook her head, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her hands gripping her own biceps.
“You’re quiet,” Leonid said, his voice a little clearer now, though the dreamy quality remained. He took another pull. “You’re always so quiet, Jennie.”
There was no malice in it. Just a foggy observation. It cut deeper than anger would have.
“You didn’t answer my texts,” she said. Her voice trembled.She hated it.
“Hmm.” He leaned back against his desk, crossing his ankles. “Phone’s over there.” He gestured vaguely with the joint toward a pile of clothes on a chair.
The redhead chuckled softly, tapping ash into the tray on her thighs.
Jennie’s control snapped. The raw, anxious energy from the entire day, from the silence, from Kai’s hand on her back, from this woman sitting in his space like she belonged here, boiled over. “Who is she?”
The question came out sharper than she intended, a shard of glass.
Leonid blinked again, that slow, underwater blink. He looked at the redhead, then back at Jennie. “Maya. She works at the bar.” He said it like it explained everything. Maybe, in his world, it did.
“I’m just hanging,” Maya said, her voice a lazy purr. She leaned her head back against the mattress, looking up at Jennie from under her lashes. “Don’t sweat it, Jennie.”
Don’t sweat it. As if Jennie’s entire history, her entire secret heart, was just a minor inconvenience. The casual dismissal was a new kind of agony.
Leonid was just watching her, his high shielding him from the tension crackling in the room. He was floating, and she was anchored to the ground, being pulled apart.
“Last night,” she started, the words choking her. “You… we…”
He tilted his head. A faint, confused line appeared between his brows. “Last night was cool.” Another drag. The smoke hung between them like a curtain. “You needed a place. It was cool.”
Cool. The word was an ice pick. It reduced hours of whispered confessions, of warm skin and softer breaths, of a crack in a decade of silence, to a casual favor.A social courtesy.
Maya raised an eyebrow, clearly enjoying the show. She took the joint back from Leonid, her fingers lingering on his.
Jennie felt something inside her fracture. The careful, patient, orbiting Jennie shattered. The girl who had watched him for years through a lens of quiet obsession was suddenly standing in the middle of the storm, and it was sterile, and it was cruel, and it had nothing to do with her.
“I should go,” she whispered. The room was tilting.
Leonid’s soft, hazy smile returned.“Okay. See you, J.”
He didn’t ask her to stay. He didn’t explain. He didn’t walk her to the door. He just stood there, beautiful and ruined and a million miles away, while Maya blew a perfect smoke ring toward the ceiling.Jennie turned. The movement felt mechanical. She walked out of the room, out of the haze, into the stark, cold air of the hallway. She didn’t look back. She pulled the door shut behind her, the click of the latch final and deafening.
She made it down the first flight of stairs before her legs gave way. She sank onto a concrete step, the cold seeping through her jeans. She wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling them to her chest, making herself small. The scent of his hoodie, of her own laundry detergent, filled her nostrils. A pathetic, fabricated comfort.
She didn’t cry. Her eyes burned, but the tears wouldn’t come. She just sat there in the humming silence, the bass from his room now a faint, indistinct throb through the floor.
She had crossed every line to get to him. And he’d been in the clouds, with a beautiful girl on his floor, and it had meant nothing.
The glass hadn’t just cracked. It had vaporized.
After a long time, she pushed herself to her feet. Her body felt leaden. She walked back into the night, the image burned into her mind: him leaning in the doorway, high and smiling, utterly, devastatingly gone.