She looked down and felt around her chest. It was gone.
The left contact was still wedged in her eyelid. It felt awful. Her eye was watering.
“Did it fall out?” Wyatt asked.
“Yeah . . .”
“Let me turn on my flashlight.”
“No ...” Julia tried to adjust her left contact through her eyelid. She was holding her eye open and blinking fast. The contact fell out of her eye and onto her cheek. She caught it, for all the good that did her. “Damn it.I lost them both.”
“We’ll find them.”
“No—I can’t put them back in. My hands are filthy.”
“My friend Lucy rinses hers in her mouth.”
“Oh my god, no,” Julia said, rubbing her eyes. Rubbing even more mascara into them.
“Hey ...” Wyatt said, taking her forearms. “Don’t make it worse.”
She couldn’t help it. “It burns. It’s this stupid mascara.”
“Can I get you something?”
“No, I’m fine.” She was going to die of embarrassment, not red eyes. She tried to blink instead of rub. There were tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Maybe ...” Wyatt started taking off his overshirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Give me a second here.” He opened Julia’s Coke and scooped out some ice, dropped the ice into the shirt, squeezed it a few times, then shook it to the ground. “Here.” He held out his shirt. “Wipe off your eyes.”
She took the shirt. It smelled like laundry detergent and a little like body odor. (Would that embarrass Wyatt if he knew?)
“Try it,” he said.
Julia held the cold, wet, mostly-not-sticky flannel up to her eyes. She wiped them gently. One at a time.
“Is that helping?” he asked.
It was. A little. “Yeah.”
She pressed the shirt into her eyes.
“Don’t rub,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Do you want more ice?”
“I’m okay.”
“Here ...” He pulled his shirt back and got a new spot wet.
Julia blinked. Her eyes felt tender, and a little tacky. “Do I have mascara all over the place?”
Wyatt handed her his shirt. “Maybe? It’s too dark to really see.”
