“You need to sleep. You do this every night, tossing and turning and then getting up and sitting in the bathroom. Your body needs rest. I need rest.”
“Sorry.”
I wasn’t sorry. Not when his hand was on my arm. Stroking gently from my shoulder…all the way down to my wrist. On my bare skin. And I hadn’t realised that he’d noticed me getting up in the night. Sitting in the bathroom, letting the waves of nausea wash over me.
The T-shirt collar around my neck was suddenly too tight. Everything too warm.
Please don’t touch me.
Please don’t let go.
“I mean it, Oliver. Whatever it is you’re going through, please know that you can tell me. I may not be able to help, but I am medically trained. I have certain knowledge. Also, I’m your friend. I want to help you if I can.”
No, he didn’t. Not when his fingers were no longer on my skin. Not when I was lying here falling apart.
Not when nothing made sense anymore and everything was too much, and my life was just such a shitshow and I didn’t know where I would go from here.
I couldn’t go back. Not anymore. But the future was too frightening to even think about. So I didn’t.
It scared me. Everything did.
“Sweetheart,” he said.
Just a little word. His hand back on my shoulder. Fingers against fabric. That pinky against my bare skin.
I clung to that touch like it was a lifeline.
It wasn’t enough. It never would be, and I fell, helplessly, silently screaming into something I no longer could control.
My arm grappled with the shirt on his back. Soft jersey being fisted in my clawlike grip as I buried my face into his chest. Tried to breathe in everything that he was.
I tried to find it. The calm. The peace. The scent of feeling safe. It was all there, but I couldn’t get enough of it. My mouth breathing openly against the way his chest moved against me.
I held on tighter, fighting his urge to push me away. Because he must have done.
“I…I need you,” I managed to get out. I couldn’t even have explained what that meant. And I certainly wasn’t ready to admit to any of my many failures as a human being. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never. I wasn’t doing well, and things were not getting better.
“I’m right here.” His voice suddenly felt too close. Like he was in my head. Lips against my hair. Shushing noises. He was holding me now, and I was pressed up against his chest.
Small moments of sanity that finally made sense.
“Shhh,” he said. Arms tight around me as he rolled onto his back, taking me with him. “There. I’ve got you.”
If I was uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have noticed, pushed up into his armpit. Head resting against his chest. He kept rearranging me, small adjustments to my arm. My fingers against his shoulder. My hair under his chin. That big, strong arm over my back. His hand on my face. Small strokes. One after the other.
I never wanted them to stop.
“Sleep,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
I didn’t think I would, and I didn’t. I was still awake when the light started glittering through the cheap blinds. I was still awake when the sound guy came and rattled with our microphones outside the door. The clicking noise of him hanging them up on the assigned hooks. The distorted noise as he tested them.
I was awake.
He wasn’t. And somehow I wanted to panic, wondering how I would ever come back from this. On the other hand, I didn’t want to.
But this wasn’t real.
I knew that.
