“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Bas chuckled but I just kept quiet. I needed to regulate my awareness now that I’d been forced to wake up. I really needed to revoke his access to the apartment now that he’d completely moved out. “I came to return my apartment key. I thought you’d be up by now.”
That’s right, Bas had mentioned a few days ago that he would drop off his key on my next day off and I’d completelyforgotten. Grumbling, I whipped the comforter from obscuring my face.
“What time is it?”
“Almost five.”
Startling myself, I jumped out of bed. I never slept that late. Granted, I usually got home a lot later than I did last night, but grabbing my phone and taking in the time, I realized that I’d slept for almost sixteen hours. I hadn’t done that since I’d been a teenager, pulling all nighters and getting into trouble with my brother. Thoughts of Troian continued to plague my mind as I swept my legs off the bed, head in my hands as I tried to get my shit together. Also still lingering in my mind was the exchange with Qwill. I needed my mind purged something bad.
“Fuck,” I muttered, looking up at my best friend and giving him a nod. “Thanks for coming over and waking me up. Who knows how long I’d been asleep if you hadn’t come over. I forgot you even were.”
“Don’t mention it,” Bas smiled back, but then his eyebrows danced with confusion. “Didn’t you set an alarm like you normally do?”
He was right. With my hours beings so sporadic, I always made sure to set an alarm. Checking over my phone, I huffed. “I forgot to set it when I got home.” That was so unlike me it was really getting under my skin. All of this just because of the tandem thoughts of Troian and Qwill had me so out of sorts?
Fussing with my hair, I stood up and ambled over to my dresser, pulling out a pair of black denim shorts and a t-shirt with a picture of Sailor Moon on it. Bas grinned back at me when I turned to face him again.
“In Usagi we trust.” We said, miming the sign that Catholics did when they prayed.
Rolling my eyes with a smile, I waved him off. We’d always bonded over our mutual love of Sailor Moon. And now, Bas hadgone and gotten Kroven so obsessed with it that they now had a kitten named Diana.
We walked out of my bedroom and made our way into the living room, Bas pausing to make a display of leaving his key on the bar of the kitchen.
“Is everything alright?” Bas said to me as I flopped down on the couch. I suddenly realized that Bas had gotten most of the furniture here in the apartment when we’d first acquired the lease. Panic drummed through me at the thought of him wanting to take everything with him to Kroven’s, essentially leaving me with nothing. I smothered those thoughts. If Bas wanted the furniture, he was welcome to it, but since he hadn’t said anything when moving out, I figured I was in the clear.
I really needed to get a hold of myself and quit forgetting shit I already knew. I fully wanted to blame the excess sleep for my brain not wanting to work correctly today, and until further notice, that’s exactly what I was going to do.
“What do you mean?”
Bas pursed his lips as he took a seat next to me on the couch, his eyes scanning over me as my mind throbbed with the initial whirring of a headache.
“You just seem…off.”
I sighed. “I think it’s just the change is finally settling in. You moving out, Troian being in town. And now with my damn cowboy routine popping off and gaining a cult following.” I scoffed, rolling my eyes again. I had approximately zero mental bandwidth to even bring up what I’d been dealing with at work.
“That’s a good thing, right?” Bas muttered with interest. “I mean, the routine is bringing in new people or keeping people interested in returning means more money, right?”
He was right. I just didn’t know if I could appropriately explain myself, not with this headache forming like dark clouds thundering in my mind. Attempting to try and rid myself of thedark storm gathering inside my soul, I looked at my best friend and former roommate with a somber expression.
“It’s all a good thing. You moving out to be with Kroven isfuckinggreat. I love you and only want the best for you, and him. Kroven makes you happy and now you’ve got a cat together.” Bas smiled, but let me keep going. “Having a stable routinedoesmean more money for me, for the club in general. It’s getting Downpour’s name out there more, Evangeline is getting exposure which gives us more time to earn. Even Troian coming back, claiming he’s different and changed and wants to mend things between us is a good thing. All I’m saying is it’s a lot of changing the way things look around me and that’s really scary, even if it’s for the better.”
“Ahh, I see.” Bas stated, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder as his arm snaked around my frame. “Change is scary, I get it.”
I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about going back to group, just to talk things out like I used to.”
Bas titled his head. “Is all the change making you feel out of control, like when we first started going to the grief group?”
A sob lodged itself in my throat, but I refused to let it out. Tears tickled the edges of my eyes, again keeping them locked under the scrutiny trapped behind my eyes. Bas must have noticed, because I felt his grip on my shoulder tighten, giving me a gentle squeeze. I just nodded, not wanting my voice to shake and betray any lie that wanted to pry itself from my lips.
Back when my parents had died and I’d met Bas at one of the local grief groups, I’d explained that I tended to recluse into myself when I was feeling out of control. That’s exactly what I was feeling now that things were altering around me, scaring me back into the mindset of the scared little boy I’d been at eighteen. I didn’t want to regress back to that version of myself.
“I just think it might help me to get a refresher.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Staring at Bas liked he’d just spoken Korean and I’d suddenly lost the ability to recognize it, I stared splintered daggers into his blue eyes. I always envied Bas for his baby blues, a strike contrast to my dark ones. Refocusing my thoughts, I shook my head.
“You don’t have to do that, Bas. I know you’ve got your own stuff going on. You have more responsibilities now.”
