Chapter Twenty-Four
Itold the office thatI had the flu; that I wouldn’t be coming in all week.Staring at the mirror, at sallow skin and eyes sunk in dark circles, the lie almost felt like truth.
I’d almost exhausted the easy pickings from the kitchen, when what little appetite I had emerged.Knew that, eventually, I’d need to restock the fridge, but couldn’t bring myself to think about it as anything more than a theoretical problem.Most of the days I spent either in bed or, if I’d summoned the motivation to go downstairs, under a blanket on the couch.Sleeping when my body wanted sleep; staring out of the window with unseeing eyes when I was awake.At night the darkness seeped into the house, unrestrained by the lights and lamps I left switched off.
I thought about him sometimes.About Kai, the way he’d look at you and smile knowingly.How his body looked, in the briefest pause before he arched gracefully into the water.How he’d felt wrapped around me.
I was all cried out.There was only sorrow left.
At first I’d found myself staring, hungrily, at my cellphone on the table.Wanting it to light up with a message.After a while, though - wishful thinking resolutely unwilling to manifest as fact - I’d ignored it.Now, I was pretty sure the battery was dead, and had been for some time.
It was only the guilty thought of some emergency call going unanswered that made me plug it in to charge again.As it glowed back to life, I forced myself to read through the emails and messages filtering through in drips and starts.Mostly junk and a few group mails from work.
And then one from a name I hadn’t allowed myself to hope I’d see.
Clumsy fingers tapped the screen, impatiently waited for the text to load.That took longer than actually reading it did.
“Tate, I hope you’re okay.I don’t like how things ended between us that night.Please, let’s talk.”
Less than twenty words, and yet my heart was hammering in my chest.He’d sent it yesterday, according to the timestamp.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.Uncertain what to say, and how to say it.Fearful, too, that his message had all been polite concern: the paternalistic ministrations of a doctor-to-be. Did he really want me to reply?
I bit my tongue, cursed my overthinking.If ever there was a time to take something at face value, this was it.If ever there was a moment to deny the paranoia, it was today.
Less thinking, Tate, more typing.
“I’m really sorry.I didn’t charge my phone.And for how I behaved, too.Do you want to come over sometime, maybe?”
I hit send before the second-guessing could start.Set the phone down on the table, feeling some weird mixture of relief and absolute horror, and then jolted as it buzzed with a new message.
“I’ll come over now.”
Shit.Shit, shit, shit.
He was meant to be back at school.
I looked around the room.It resembled a badly managed youth hostel, the kitchen a particular eyesore.Of course, I realized, that was nowhere near my most significant problem.I hadn’t so much as glanced at myself in a mirror for the past few days, so I could only imagine how much of a mess I was now.
“Give me 15 to shower, okay?”I hurriedly tapped out in reply.Paused only long enough to see his “ok” in response before rushing to the bathroom.
It was like the Tate staring back at me from the mirror was from some shadow world.The grimy, unpalatable version of the person I usually would be.He looked tired, and overwhelmed, and definitely not suitable for public consumption.
I dragged a razor across my face, then threw myself into the shower.No time to dawdle over thoughts of the last time Kai and I had been in there together.In maybe two minutes flat I was scrubbing myself with a towel and trying to find clean clothes among the pile of laundry I hadn’t bothered to put in the machine.
