Hours of sitting in the dark didn’t help. The pain was omnivorous, tearing through her brain, her face, her shoulders, her clothes, the air. It bit into the ground beneath her as she crossed the pea-gravel porch with the burned-out twinkle lights. She pulled herself onto the bicycle pressed against the side of cabin one and pedaled three miles to town, in the rain, as her brain ate itself alive.
Water trailed her into the pharmacy like the train on a wedding dress. Her eyes squinted under the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescents. She was soaked and shaking when she charged up to the pharmacy window. Banging on the closed partition, she yelled out, “Ernie. It’s an emergency. Ernie.”
“Christ almighty, Elaine,” the older man said, opening the window to reveal himself.
“I need to pick up my refill. Davis.”
“I know who you are,” he said, bristling. “I can’t give you your refill, because your beau already picked it up for you the other day.”
“No, he didn’t.” She refused to believe it. She’d made it all the way there. She was wet and cold, and her skull was cracking open, and she wasn’t fucking leaving without her refill.
“Well, you are going to have to,” he spat, indignant, because apparently that last thought had escaped the confines of her mind. “Do you need to purchase a towel?”
With an inhale through her nose, she turned and walked straight into the rack of foot creams. She righted herself and trudged back through the aisles, out the store, and all the way to the bike racks on the sidewalk.
“You should always lock your bike,” a man said. She turned and found Larry Pometti.
“You only lock your bike when you care if someone steals it,” she responded. “And my life cannot possibly get worse, so…”
She swung her leg over her bike, wondering if it would make more sense to be hit by a car, because at least then someone would have to drive her someplace.
She considered Larry again. The man whose easy money she’d turned down. Standing beside him—too broke to fix her car, without the medication she needed, and now in need of a new phone she couldn’t pay for—she tried to remember the last time she felt so desperate. So painfully alone.
With her pulse in her eyeballs, she faced Larry and asked, “Are you still good for that seventy-thirty split?”
Chapter 19
The Bed Smells Like a Bennigan’s
2 Days until the Longest Day of the Year
There was aman in her bed.
“Lainey. Lainey, when was the last time you had water?”
She didn’t answer. Hours had passed, and she wasn’t processing questions at the moment. Fingertips brushed back the hair at her damp forehead.
“Lainey, I need you to drink this.”
A glass bumped against her lips. An assault. “Why would you do that to me?” Her voice was flat and garbled. She’d like to say she didn’t recognize it, but she did. This was her empty voice when she no longer saw the point in being understood. She was merely a log, hollowed out by pain and rot.
The rim of the glass lowered to her chin. “Come on. Just one sip. Please, I—Jesus. Why is your pillow wet?”
“Tots melted.” She pointed weakly at the bag of defrosted food above her head she’d used as an ice pack.
“If you don’t drink this right now, I’m picking you up and taking you to urgent care again.”
She blinked open her eyes to find a muscled thigh perched onthe edge of the bed. “Please,” Elliot whispered. His hand pulled the glass back from her face as she slowly propped herself up on her elbow and took the water from his hand.
He let out a long breath, like he’d been holding it in, waiting for her to look alive.
She took a sip, wanting to ease his mind the only way she could muster. His eyes stayed glued to her as he bit the side of his thumb.
“I’ve been keeping water down all day. It’s just the pain.” She burrowed back into her tot-soaked pillow.
“Why didn’t you pick up your phone? I called you so many times.”
“Screen is cracked,” she replied. “Can’t use it. Where’s my medicine?”
