“Ryan.” When I turned and looked at him, he hadn’t seemed mad at me. He reached out and with the pad of his thumb, he swiped under my left eye. “Why aren’t yousleeping?”
“Oh, I just haven’t been able to sleep the past few nights. I think I’m excited about learning stuff with you and am more anxious and wired when I get inbed.”
He looked me in the eyes for a what seemed like eternity until I looked away. He knew, didn’t he? He fucking knew everything. I rubbed the back of my neck and ran my finger along the handle of the flogger that was in front of me. He moved away from the table and stood behind me. I stopped touching the flogger and pulled my hand to mystomach.
Russell put his hands on my shoulders and started to massage his thumbs into the muscles. Fuck, it feltgood.
“How bad are thenightmares?”
He knew. I knew it. Lying or trying to dance around the subject only made both of us lookstupid.
“Usually not as bad as they have been. Last night was bad. I couldn’t go back tosleep.”
It was easier to say that to him without him looking at my face. He continued to rub myshoulders.
“You’re tense,Ryan.”
“Can you beat me?” I blurtedout.
“Ryan, it’s not the answer for this. I know that you enjoy writing screenplays and scripts, but have you ever written down things about yourdreams?”
I shook myhead.
“I want you to try. When you wake up from these, I’d like you to try to write things down. They don’t need to be sentences. They can just be bullet points. It can be whatever you feel like doing at the moment. The point is for it to be an outlet foryou.”
“I don’t know if I need an outlet. I mean, it’s beenokay.”
I went back to touching the flogger. The more he massaged my shoulders, the more tired Ifelt.
“Ryan, trust me. You need anoutlet.”
He gave my shoulders a few slaps and when he let go, somehow my body leaned backwards in the direction of his hands. I caught myself as he placed a hand in the middle of my back and let out a quietchuckle.
“You need to sleep,Ryan.”
I nodded. As he walked me to the front door, he sidestepped into his den and came out carrying a notebook that was wrapped in plastic. He pulled the plastic off, flipped through the pages, then handed it tome.
“This will work, Ryan.” I held the notebook in my hands and was impressed with the quality of this notebook that he just had laying around. “But remember, you have my phone numbers. Twenty-four hours, seven days a week, those numbers are for you to use foranything.”
Anything. That’s the unconditional friend thing, isn’t it? We really were friends. I nodded and thanked him for the notebook before Ileft.
“Ryan, go home, eat something, shower, and call me when you’re in bed,” he called after me from hisporch.
“Okay, I will!” I hollered back tohim.
Eat, shower and call. I was eager to get home and call it a night. I quickly had some soup and crackers and then took a quick shower. Within half an hour of being home, I was fed, showered and inbed.
“Hello,” Russell said into the phone when Icalled.
“Hey, it’sRyan.”
“Ryan, that was fast. Did youeat?”
“Yep, I had soup andcrackers.”
“And?”
“That was it. It wasgood.”
