A muscle moves in his throat and he lowers his shirt back down. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you make it sound.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah, and the past is the past. Everyone has one.”
“Sure they do, but you don’t want my past to come back and haunt you.”
“This have to do with the military?” His expression grows serious.
My teeth grind together. “Kind of.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, or I can wait for whenever you’re ready.”
“I have to go.” I hang up the phone and drop it onto my bed. I scrub at my face and sink down on the mattress. He forgave me the first time I was eager to get off the phone with him. Whatare the chances he’ll forgive me again? No new calls come for the rest of the night. No new messages either. No more Henry.
While finishing my second Red Bull, I go to the couch and search through all the streaming services until I find something I can stand having on as background noise while I read. I grab my book from the coffee table, and position it against my knees as I lean against one of the arms of the couch, propping a pillow behind my back. The words grow smaller as I flip through each page, and they start to shake before going from blurry to black. I blink my eyes open and go to the kitchen to splash my face with cold water before returning to where I was.
It only buys me another hour of wakefulness, and then I’m dozing off again. This time I’ve lost the fight against my darkness. What if it takes me so deep I can’t find my way out? What if it needs me to bring him with me?
Fifteen
Henry
Tossing and turning in bed, I kick one of my pillows to the floor. I can’t sleep. I’ve lain here for hours and can’t stop thinking about how easy it was for him to end the call this time. There was no dragging out his goodbye, he just said one last thing and was gone. Why does it bother me so much?
We’ve met one time in person, and we barely said more than five words to each other then. We’ve exchanged so muchrecently, though. Two weeks of me calling for him and him answering. Two weeks of me catching him falling asleep during a movie on the days he was tired and hearing him sing along to Christmas songs. He started out as a stranger but then shared more about himself after I gave him a little more about me.
We know each other better than most friends do. He could tell anyone what my favorite color shirt is, what shoes I wear the most, and what I prefer for breakfast. My sister doesn’t know half the details about me that he does. He paid so close attention to all of them too, mentioning it all again later to let me know he was listening.
I turn over again, hugging my blanket to my chest. I close my eyes, but as I’m nodding off, a loud bang has me jolting in bed. I press my back to the headboard and reach for my phone, clutching it tightly, ready to call the police at any moment.
Breaths scattering all over the place, I hold still and wait for another noise to come. Nothing does, and I sink back under the covers, keeping my phone in my hand. Sleep takes me deeper this time until shattered glass has my eyes flashing open.
I’m frozen in bed, unable to move or breathe normally. Everything sounds too loud. My inhales and exhales. The heat kicking on. The large tree scratching at the window behind the bed. I lift the blanket over my head like I did when I was a child waiting for the monster in my room to leave. There might be a different kind here tonight. A much worse one that doesn’t go away after repeating a comforting song and counting to ten while your eyes are shut.
Minutes turn to what feels like hours of me shaking under the covers, and when I slowly lift them off me, my first instinct is to turn on the lamp beside me so I can see better.
I laugh, my eyes flicking up. That doesn’t help someone with my level of blindness. I place one foot on the floor, not setting the next one down until the first is completely flat on the smallrug. “There’s no one here,” I say to myself like a mantra as I take careful steps out of my room and into the living room. Did I leave a window open? I don’t remember opening one.
I flick on the lights on the wall beside the front door, only because it’s what I used to do. What others would do. It feels like nothing’s changed whenever I do little tasks like that on my own with zero issues. I grab my cane from the back of one of the kitchen chairs when I finally remember where I last put it. I tap it around before any new step I take and stop when the bottom rubber taps at tiny shards. There’s the glass. I back up to the pantry and grab the broom. Detaching the dustpan, I keep listening for any other noises around me with my heart beating out of control. There are moments while I’m sweeping up the broken candle holder that I forget to breathe.
It was an accident is all. I must have accidentally pushed it too close to the edge when fixing my hot cocoa or using the toaster. I sit in my living room for the rest of the night, keeping the remote warm while I’m unable to settle on a show or movie. Watching them isn’t the same without him, and I also don’t want to be too distracted in case someone tries to sneak up behind me. I don’t go back to bed until my alarm goes off at seven a.m.
I’m lifting one knee onto my mattress when my foot drags forward hitting something hard. I stiffen and then rub my toes over it, mapping it out. It feels like a book. I wonder how long that’s been there? Could have been there for years for all I know. I had issues finding a damn key. I don’t remember ever coming in contact with a book or anything other than dust bunnies under there, though. I shake off the irrational thoughts and climb under the covers, staring up at the ceiling. I used to connect the cracks there, making them different animals and shapes to help my eyes grow heavier whenever I struggled to fall asleep.
Closing my eyes, I imagine I can still see them, and then what I imagine Rafael’s smile would look like appears. The uncomfortable shift in my gut is back. I know it’s impossible to ever see it, but I still had the possibility of feeling it, and now that’s all gone. He ended the call after saying he had to go, and he never called back. I grab my phone from the nightstand to check, and the hole in my chest grows deeper when there’s no missed calls or messages.
Laying the phone on my chest, I go back to pretending to see stars and rainbows in the ceiling until sleep takes me. Rafael’s smile comes back too, and so do the two men he described kissing four days ago, with one whispering “Honey” against the other’s lips.
Sixteen
Rafael
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. I rub at my eyes but my view doesn’t change. I’m in his house, sitting in a teal chair in the corner of his room. There’s movement under the blanket on the bed across the way. My posture straightens when Henry’s face peeks out from the covers. His eyes remain shut as his face rocks from side to side, and he’s mumbling something in his sleep.
His features go from neutral to strained as he pushes his hands out in front of him and says something about the icy roads. He’s dreaming about his accident, his face contorting as he screams, “No,no,no.”
It takes everything in me not to run to comfort him, to stroke his cheek and tell him I’m right here. But that’d only make matters worse. It would only make him feel better if he’d actually invited me to be here, if he actually wanted another presence in the room.
