“I need to pee, and you’re standing right there. I get shy.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Fine. I’ll take your dog out. C’mon, boy.” I heard the door slam. A second later, sweet relief began. I let out a contented sigh. And then looked down … Jesus, there was a lot of it. I really had been asleep for a day. How had I managed that? And how the hell was I still weeing? Oh my God, I was still going. I heard the door open again, and Simon muttering under his breath.
“You’re still pissing? I can hear you!”
“I … I don’t know. I’m quite concerned. I think I’m a medical miracle.”
“Whatever, I’ll feed your dog.”
“His name’s Kennedy!” I yelled, turning slightly, and driving my persistent stream up the wall. “Shit!”
“What did you say? Don’t tell me you need to take a shit as well. If that’s the case, then I’m going. You’ll be in there until next month!”
“I …” He had a point. “Don’t be vulgar!” was all I could summon up. Eventually, through the grace of God, I finished. “I think I’ve lost weight,” I muttered. I washed my hands and left the toilet a new man.
Simon was standing in my kitchen – glaring.
“Good morning,” I offered meekly.
He pointed to a Tupperware container. “Do you want a blueberry muffin?”
“You brought me muffins?”
“No, Mrs Hetherington broughtmemuffins, and I have no room in my house, so I brought them to you. You’re skin and bone.”
“Am not,” I said.
“Then take a bloody muffin, so my kitchen stops resembling a refugee collection centre.”
I took a muffin. “Um, not to be rude, but why …” I cleared my throat and changed tack. “How are you?” I remembered how bad he’d looked on Monday and then again at the press conference. Which wasyesterday. Christ.
He looked away. Shrugged. It was a tense, angry gesture. “I’m … I don’t know, to be honest. I’m okay. Do you wanna put some clothes on, by the way?”
Looking down I realised I was standing in my underwear and nothing else.
“Oh, shit.” I ran upstairs. “Sorry, gimme two seconds.”
In my room, I grabbed some clothes only to notice with horror that I’d not properly shaken off after peeing and had been standing there talking to Simon with a big wet patch on the front of my light blue boxers for all the world to see. “God, I’m a mess,” I muttered. But who the fuck turns up pounding on someone’s door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday? Like a … a terrorist.
I threw on a clean pair of underwear, a T-shirt and some shorts that weren’t too smelly and checked my breath. Foul. I rubbed the sleep gunk out of my eyes and tried to fix my hair.
Nope, still looked shit. Sheepishly, I left my room and came back downstairs. Simon was at my dining table and had cut up our muffins and laid them out covered in butter, on plates.
“Lovely, thanks.” I tried to look anywhere but him.
He made a noise of impatience. “Arden, we’ve had sex, can you not be embarrassed that I saw you in your pants? You were half asleep. I’m not under the impression you were flaunting yourself at me.”
He wasn’t wrong there; we did have sex. He had been inside me. I had once come on his chest hair. So, he was right; it pretty much meant any sort of embarrassment was null and void. However, that didn’t stop me. God loves a tryer.
“So, um, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” I said, eagerly devouring my muffin. It was nice and moist, and I was starving. Which was not surprising considering I’d been dead to the world for a day.
He exhaled and looked down. For several moments, he said nothing. The only noise was my loud chewing.
“I need your help.”
Err … did he need to write a book or something? Did he want advice on dating and breakups? Did he want Polish lessons?
“What kind of help?” I said, aiming for breezy and arriving at something near paranoid.
