t w e n t y – f o u r
“Hey. Hey, wake up.”
It’s the day after the day after tomorrow. It is, isn’t it? I haven’t been keeping track but I know it. I feel it.
“I don’t want to wake up.”
Mikaela’s sticking her face awfully close to mine, and behind her I can see the window of my bedroom, pink and grey and blurry.
“Micky, what is the fucking time?”
“It’s five-thirty. Listen, there’s someone on the phone for you.”
“Tell them to fuck off.”
“You don’t even know who it is.”
“I want everyone who could possibly be trying to contact me to fuck off right now.”
I’m fairly lucid today. My bones aren’t hurting. I feel different. I look at my meds, lurking unsuspectingly on my bedside table, and I frown at them. They don’t frown back. They’re doing their job, slowly and stoically, pulling me back every time I’m near the ocean, stabilizing my thoughts, stuffing normalcy down my throat when I’m not even sure I want it.
“Eve, please. He sounds awfully desperate.”
He. What a fucker. I dreamt about kissing him last night, but his hands started growing eyes in the middle of it, blinking as he touched me, and I woke up and felt like vomiting.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter, sitting up in bed. “He knows.”
“Knows what?”
I stand up. “He just knows.”
Micky’s smiling. Jesus Christ.
“Not even gonna ask why you’re smiling,” I say, walking to the living room. Before she can answer, I pick up the phone and press it to my ear. I don’t say anything.
He’s breathing into the receiver like a horny bastard. I wait.
“E-Eve?”
I click my nails against the edge of our telephone table and observe the chipped polish on them.
“Thought they gave you the gift of vision, not sixth sense.”
He’s quiet for a second, and I know he’s controlling his laughter.
“Come see me.”
“No.”
“Eve, please. Please. Or I’ll come see you.”
“You won’t.”
He will.
“I will.”
I squish the receiver to my ear and I close my eyes. I wrap my arms around myself. I want to be somewhere alone. I pretend that my arms are his arms, that his breath in the phone is in my ear.
“Close your eyes,” I say, and it comes out like a whisper.
He does. I don’t know how I know, but he does.
“Okay.”
“I’ve closed my eyes too.”
“Does that make you feel better?”
“It does.”
He’s quiet. I’m quiet. Silence feels better in darkness, like we’re both in the same quiet room, breathing into the same telephone.
“You said that you’d tell me…someday.”
I know I did. I said that on the beach with that couple huddled away under the paisley-patterned umbrella; I’d said someday and I didn’t know it would be so soon, or that it would ever come.
