I needed to shut it down. I need to crawl back inside my beast cave. I needed to shut everyone and everything out.
“I need to go,” I said. The strange sense of panic I’d grown accustomed to since the accident threatened to overwhelm me. “I can’t be here. I don’t want to tingle.”
“Oh shit, did you say tinkle? Please, not on my new couch.” She came back into the room, this time holding a small glass of whiskey.
“Tinkle? No, Flowers, I’m not a five-year-old girl. I… I said…I can’t breathe.”
She could see my breathing was labored and she knelt down on the carpet in front of me.
Geezus, don’t fucking kneel.
“Hey, easy. You can do it. You know how to breathe. In and out. In and out.” She did this with me a few times until I settled down. “Panic attack? I get them too, sometimes.”
“I have to leave,” I repeated.
“Nah,” she said. She took the water glass that was dangling precariously from my hand and replaced it with whiskey. “Sit here for a few minutes. I’m going to turn on some bad TV. You’re going to eat mac & cheese until you barf, and then you’ll probably pass out. If you wake up early and want to escape, that’s fine. If you want to show up at the office tomorrow and pretend this didn’t happen, that’s fine, too. But you’re safe here, E.G.”
“Safe, yes,” I breathed. Finally, someone understood. “That’s why I came.”
She tilted her head and smiled softly. “I figured.”
I hated her fucking smile. I hated it.
“That’s okay.”
Wait, did I say that out loud?
She stood up and put my drink on a small round table situated on the side of the couch. Then she reached for my sneakers.
“Don’t do that,” I told her.
What I meant to say was that I didn’t need to be treated as if I was a child.
“Sorry, you want to put your feet up on my couch, you take your shoes off. Also, if you tinkle on this couch, I will kick your ass.”
“Fuck you, Flowers.”
“Back at you, Bossman.”
She turned the TV on and made me watch something calledThe Great British Bakeoff. I did put my sock covered only feet on her couch. I ate, what she told me was a whole box of mac and cheese, whatever that meant, and I ended up crashing out as she predicted.
I did not throw up or piss myself. Because I was a grown man.
It was after three am when I finally woke up, sober. Also, as she predicted, I was ready to sneak out. However, I couldn’t, because I couldn’t leave her door unlocked.
“Shit,” I muttered, running my hands over my face to wipe away the remnants of sleep.
I pulled on my shoes and stood up. Quietly, I made my way to the small kitchen, found a glass in one of the cabinets, and filled it with water to hopefully drown the stale whiskey taste in my mouth. By the time I finished, I did in fact need to take a piss.
The bathroom was across from her bedroom. I was less quiet as I flushed, put the seat cover down – because I wasn’t a total asshole – and washed my hands, hoping she might hear me and wake up on her own accord.
The door was slightly ajar and I wondered why she did that. Left her door open at all. When I peeked inside, she was sprawled out on her stomach, her arms stuffed under her pillows, her hair a mess around her head.
Allison used to sleep on her back and I thought it was insane. Every night she would finagle her hair into a loose braid, put no fewer than fifteen different lotions on her face, before getting into bed, on her back, her head nestled into the down pillow.
I used to tease her that she slept like a vampire.
I waited for the rush of grief, but it was no longer September 28thnow, and I needed to get out of Flowers’ space now.
