My Boyfriend Drugged Me to Fake My Affairs

At 3:47 a.m., the hospital hallway hummed under fluorescent lights. I sat in a plastic chair that dug into the back of my thighs, my phone pressed to my ear, listening to a voicemail I'd already played twice.

"Hey, it's me." Desmond's voice was loose, easy. Waves crashed behind him. "Nyra really needed this Hamptons thing, you know how she gets. I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Love you."

I didn't cry. I just sat there, staring at the vending machine across the hall, at the little red light blinking on a bag of pretzels stuck halfway down.

A nurse came out. Her scrubs had cartoon sunflowers on them, which felt wrong somehow, too cheerful for what she was about to say.

"Ms. Spencer?" She crouched a little, the way people do when they want to soften bad news with their knees. "She's gone. I'm so sorry. It was peaceful."

I nodded like I understood peaceful. I walked into the room alone. Grandma Millie's hand was still warm when I took it, and I sat there not knowing what to do with the rest of my life now that there was no one left in it who'd raised me.

On the bedside table sat something folded neat and square. A quilt. I hadn't seen it before—soft blues and creams, tiny stitches so even they looked machine-made, except I knew her hands, I knew she'd done every one herself. A note was pinned to the corner in her shaky handwriting.

*For my girl. Every stitch is a prayer. — Grandma.*

I pressed it to my chest and didn't let go for a long time.

---

In the parking lot, I called Desmond. He picked up on the fourth ring. Nyra's laugh spilled out behind him, bright and easy, like nothing in the world was wrong.

"Hey," he said. "Everything okay?"

"She's gone, Desmond. Grandma Millie died twenty minutes ago."

A pause. Not long enough. "Oh, babe. I'm so sorry." I heard him cover the phone, murmur something to Nyra. Her laugh dimmed but didn't stop. "I'll make it up to you, okay? Get some sleep. We'll talk tomorrow."

He didn't ask about the funeral. He didn't ask what she looked like at the end, or if I was alone, or what was in my arms right now, still smelling like her hand lotion and hospital soap.

He didn't come home.

I drove back to the apartment by myself, and once inside, I sat on the floor of the living room with the quilt pressed to my face, breathing her in — antiseptic and lavender lotion, over and over — and felt something crack open in my chest that had been holding steady for years. Not just grief. Loneliness, stacked so high I hadn't noticed how tall it had grown.

---

Desmond came back two days later with a bunch of bodega flowers, the cellophane still crinkling, and Nyra trailing behind him like she'd been invited.

"I got these for you," he said, holding them out like an apology that cost six dollars.

I tried to talk about the funeral — the plot, the flowers, the time. He waved a hand. "We'll figure it out. Let's not do this right now."

Nyra draped herself across my couch like she paid rent there, sighing loud enough for the room to notice. "God, death is just so triggering for me," she said, pressing two fingers to her temple. "I hope that's okay to say."

Desmond was at her side before I finished blinking. "Hey. Breathe. You don't have to be here for this if it's too much."

He was comforting her. Over my grandmother's death. I stood in my own kitchen and watched him choose her, again, the way he always did, without even the courtesy of hesitating.

---

Millie's funeral was small, in a quiet cemetery in Queens, the grass still wet from morning rain. Desmond showed up. He stayed forty minutes, most of it spent pacing near the gate with his phone to his ear, Nyra's name easy to read on his lips even from a distance.

"Something's come up," he told me, right before the last part of the service. "I have to go."

He left before they lowered the casket.

I stood alone at the grave, a single white peony in my hand, the prayer quilt folded over my arm like a shield. The dirt hit the wood in slow, heavy sounds.

A woman I recognized from the office — Clara Novak, sharp-mouthed, never one for sentiment — stood at the back the entire time. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She just stayed until the last shovel of dirt was turned, and when I finally looked up, she gave me the smallest nod, like she was the only one in this whole city who'd noticed I was standing there, breaking, completely alone.