I shook my head. “I don’t want to get sober. I want to stay drunk. I just don’t want anyone to ask me about it.”
“Then why not stay home? Alone.”
I sniffed. That made entirely too much sense. But since she’d invaded my home a few months ago, something had felt different about the space.
Bigger, more cavernous. Empty.
“Didn’t want to do that, either. Drink with me?” I held the bottle up for her.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t drink that much, and especially not before noon on a Sunday.”
“That’s good. I don’t drink either. Much. It’s just that today is the 28thand you won’t ask me about it.” I let my head fall back against the railing.
“No, I won’t,” she said softly. “If I let you keep drinking, will you promise to eat something? We can hang on the couch and watch Netflix movies until you pass out. That work for you?”
She was in her non-work clothes. Right. Because it was Sunday. She was wearing jeans and a simple t-shirt. Her long brown hair was loose around her shoulders, where she normally wore it up at work. She looked different, but also the same.
My Anna.
No. Not at all. Not my anything.
At least she wasn’t wearing those infernal leggings that showed off long lean legs and her tight ass. Or the tank top that barely contained her breasts. I wasn’t supposed to know she had breasts. That wasn’t a thing I should know.
I was thirty-six and she was twenty-three now. She told me she’d had a birthday at some point. I don’t remember saying happy birthday.
“Happy Birthday,” I announced.
Her forehead furrowed and she got that indent right between her eyebrows. A mark carved into her skin too early for her age.
“It’s not my birthday.”
I waved my hand in the air. “No, for when it was.”
“Three months ago?”
“Never too late.”
She laughed. “Uh, I think, yeah, it is. Can I just say E.G., you are full of surprises?”
“Good. I don’t like to be predictable.”
The door was open and she’d already put her bags inside.
“You’re too big for me to lift, so you’re either going to have to find a way to get to your feet or humiliate yourself by crawling inside.”
“Ha,” I thought. The joke was on her. “As if crawling would be the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done.”
Still, I did manage to push myself up onto my feet. I gave myself a minute to see if I could walk, then I stepped into her apartment. It was a fairly spacious one bedroom. Limited furniture except for a couch, an oversized purple bean bag chair, and a moderately sized television.
Women. They never understood priorities.
I remembered the couch purchase, because I’d walked into her office one day only to find her dancing to a song called:
“That’s right, I own my own couch now, bitch...”
She’d explained she was author of said song.
Not to be confused with her other great hit:
