I lie in her bed and hold her and stare at the ceiling, thinking about the lie I just told and the truth I'm going to have to give her and the fact that when I do, she's going to look at me with those gray-blue eyes and see the man who knew everything and said nothing and fucked her anyway.
The pill bottle on the nightstand is empty. She took the last one this morning.
Tomorrow, the withdrawal starts for real.
Chapter Twelve: Grace
IwakeupandCarmelo is gone.
The bed is cold on his side. The sheets are pulled back, and the pillow has the indent of his head and there's a glass of water on the nightstand that wasn't there when I fell asleep. He left it for me. He left water and he left, and the apartment is empty and quiet and my body feels wrong.
Not wrong in the way it felt last night when I screamed in a language I don't speak while a man was inside me. A different wrong. Physical. My head is pounding, a low, persistent throb behind my eyes that started the second I opened them. My stomach is churning. My hands are shaking, not the deep bone-tremor from last week but a visible shake, my fingers vibrating against the sheets when I hold them up.
I sit on the edge of the bed, naked. The clothes from last night are on the floor. My work pants, my shirt, my bra. My underwearis tangled in the sheets at the foot of the bed. The pill bottle is on the nightstand next to the water.
I pick it up. Empty. I knew it was empty. I took the last one yesterday morning before my shift. I was going to call Linda again, get the refill, pick it up this week. Linda hasn't called back. Linda hasn't texted back. Linda hasn't responded to six calls and two texts in five days, and the bottle is empty. My head is splitting and my hands are shaking and I don't know what happens when I don't take the pills because I've never not taken the pills. Not once in eleven years.
I drink the water and then go to the bathroom and turn the shower on, stand under it as it burns my skin, but the hot water doesn't help the headache. The headache is behind my eyes and in my temples and at the base of my skull and it doesn't respond to water or heat or the two ibuprofen I take from the bottle in the medicine cabinet.
I get dressed and pick up my phone and call Linda.
Voicemail. "Hi, you've reached Paul and Linda. Leave a message."
I don't leave a message. I call Paul's cell, which I almost never call. Straight to voicemail. Not ringing. Straight to a dead line.
I call Linda again. Voicemail.
I text:Linda I really need my prescription. Please call me back.
I stare at the phone. Nothing. No typing bubbles. No read receipt. Nothing.
For the first time, a thought forms that I've never had before. Not about the pills. About the silence. Linda has never gone dark on me for five days. She's gone quiet, sure. Weeks without a call when I don't initiate. But when I reach out, especially about the medication, she responds within hours. Always. The pills are the one thing she's never been casual about.
Five days. Six calls. Two texts. Nothing.
Something is wrong.
I put the phone down and sit on my bed and the headache pulses behind my eyes and my finger taps my thigh, fast. I need to get to work. I need to function. I need to put on my apron and carry plates and smile at Arthur and Helen and let Javi make jokes about The Rhino. I need to not think about the fact that last night I screamed in a foreign language during sex and this morning my pills are gone and my foster mother has vanished.
He vanished too, but I don’t have time to think about that. Not with the pain in my Goddamn head.
I eat half a granola bar. It comes back up in the bathroom ten minutes later. Nausea. Great. New symptom. The headache, the shaking, now nausea. Three things that weren't there a week ago and are all here now and the only variable that changed is the pill count dropping to zero.
The walk to work takes longer than usual because my legs feel heavy and my balance is slightly off, a mild vertigo that makes the sidewalk feel tilted. Rosa says something to me when I pass the bodega, but I don't stop. I can't stop. If I stop moving, I'm going to sit down on the sidewalk and not get up.
The restaurant is warm as I push the door open and walk in, but shoulders don't drop today. My shoulders stay exactly where they are, up around my ears, tense, and Javi notices the second I walk through the door.
"You look like shit," he says.
"Thank you."
"I'm serious. You're gray. Are you sick?"
"Bad night."
"How bad?"
I tie my apron. My hands shake while I do it and the knot takes three tries. Javi watches from behind the bar, polishing a glass he's already polished, which is what Javi does when he's worried and trying not to show it.
