The Thinnest Air

by Minka Kent

She’ll never know how it feels to lock eyes with Andrew Price from across the room and feel the ground shake beneath my unsteady gait. He does something to me. Something no one else ever has. With him I’m loved. I’m safe.

During the entirety of our date, not once did his eyes wander to a single passing beautiful woman. He held every door. Used “please” and “thank you” when appropriate. Didn’t utter a single word about any of his exes. And not once did he check his phone in my presence.

Showing emotion isn’t my forte. I’d rather suffer through a thousand pelvic exams than shed a single tear in front of another person.

Raised by two Harvard-educated women’s studies professors alongside three older sisters, Harris was a staunch feminist.

Funny how all those old misgivings no longer matter once shit gets real.

It turns out the human body doesn’t always know the difference between excitement and anxiety.

He’s seconds from uncorking a bottle of Merlot when he glances up, meeting my sister’s steely gaze. I told him she can’t help it—she looks at everyone that way. She doesn’t trust most people, and she hardly likes anyone. She’s slow to warm up, but she will warm up . . . one of these days.

So if you want to sit here and act like nobody’s doing anything, if you think you could do a better job, then be my fucking guest.”

It was mostly word vomit,

He takes it black. No cream, no sugar. My favorite customers back home take their coffee black. They’re the ones who don’t have time for bullshit.

he’d tell me to stop judging. And I’d remind him that I judge when I’m anxious. When I lose control of my surroundings, I fixate on other people, picking them apart if only for the distraction it provides my frazzled mind. It’s a terrible habit, one I’ve been meaning to break over the years.

“She said your mother used to make you watch the nightly news and practice talking like the anchors.”

rambling on about the importance of speaking like the educated socialites we were never going to be.

We’re not meant to be best friends with every person who crosses our paths. Not everyone has our best interests at heart.

But my sister was tofu. Absorbing the characteristics of whoever has managed to capture her attention at that point in her life, assimilating herself and becoming what they want her to become because it makes them like her better. And I can’t blame her. It’s in our genetics. Our mother is tofu.

God forbid Erica has to stand in the foyer an extra three minutes. She acts like she’s standing at the fiery gates of hell, refusing to move any closer than she has to.

to which he promptly responded by confiscating her cherished iPhone for five days, the worst punishment a parent could possibly inflict on a modern-day child.

we don’t know the truth. And the truth couldn’t care less about what we want to believe.

One year, she went from a free-spirited, gypsy-blouse-and-braid-wearing hippie to an uptight, organic-food-obsessed PTA mom in under eight hours.

She’s always been anxious about things beyond her control, but I don’t blame her. She had it rough. Not only did she have to raise me, but she was stuck raising my mother most of the time as well.

She always had to stay one step ahead of everything, making sure nothing bad ever happened to either of us.

I suppose we’re always deciding what we want to see in life and choosing how we’re going to see it.

Sometimes love is wonderful. Other times it’s poison.

That’s the curse of us Ambrose women. We’re powerless when it comes to our men.

“It’s so wonderful to see you, sweetheart.” In over three decades on this planet, my mother has yet to refer to me as “sweetheart.” “Ungrateful brat?” Yes. “Little bitch.” Yes. “Biggest mistake of my life.” Yes. “Sweetheart?” Never.

I sit, unmoving, watching this freak show and deducing that these people—my family—have become caricatures of themselves.

I’ve never been more grateful for my immunity to pompous, Rolex-wearing douchebags with bleached smiles and fast cars.

Ridgewood Heights is a mecca for the nonworking well-to-do, and most of the female residents are former stay-at-home moms who read too many crime books and never miss an episode of Dateline. Not to mention that old people with excessive wealth tend to be on the paranoid side. I’m not surprised they insisted on a self-defense class.

But there’s something about human nature that makes us shameless opportunists. We stumble across a chance, experience the tiniest taste of something we want, and we can’t say no. We literally can’t say no.

Stalking is about fear. And obsession. And control.

Besides, what good would it do you if we were both worked up over this?”

He hears me, but he’s not listening.

Monsters are real. They’re real, and they’re capable of doing the unspeakable. And they don’t hide under beds or in closets—they hide in plain sight. You just don’t always notice them.

Denial is a strange beast,

I spread the spine of my book and follow the sentences on the page with my eyes, though I don’t read them. I can’t focus right now with all these realizations hurling themselves at me faster than I know how to process them.

Salt Lake City for a weekend of family-oriented fun. Zoos. Theme parks. Kid-friendly restaurants with screaming babies and exasperated parents chasing after their overly tired offspring, so desperate to enjoy just one dinner out that they’ll subject the rest of the world to the fruits of their failed parenting labors.

Little shit. Never has my decision to be child-free felt so reinforced as it does in this moment.

If you can find your name on a souvenir shot glass at a drugstore, it’s far too common.”

I wish I could take a side, but they all have valid arguments.

“But you know your brain functions better on a full stomach. It’s proven. Backed by science.”

A woman worth five million could be a dangerous commodity in the wrong hands. I may be young, but I’m not naive.

“I’ve seen men do that before. They seem totally fine, and then they . . . snap. The ones with the biggest egos snap the hardest.”

We’ve been talking on the phone almost nightly for the past month. Most of the time I wait until Andrew’s in bed, and I sneak out to sit in the car or tiptoe to the guesthouse under the veil of night.

Harris is sneaky. Bet he knows now about the $$$ and he’s interested in Mer because his coffee shops are failing.

“You’ve always taken such good care of me,” I say. Greer shrugs like it’s no big deal. “You’re my favorite person.”

He attends to two more customers, a pair of gossip queen–types with platinum-blonde extensions, matching Karen Walker sunglasses, and overdrawn Kylie Jenner lips.

“Nope,” he says as he passes. “Never heard of him.” Typical New York ass.

After everything I’ve been through in the past week and now this, I’m not in a good place, and there’s nothing I can do to mask that.

Somewhere along the line, I guess he decided he liked me as a human after all, and he wouldn’t stop pushing for me to leave my husband.

All I know is he’s gone and she’s gone, and there are no such things as coincidences.

peanut butter Cap’n Crunch