Silas
I wakeup sweaty and uncomfortable. My neck hurts and my back hurts, a twinge in the place where I’ve got two herniated discs, my right knee starting to protest and oh, fuck, I’m using Kat as a pillow.
Double fuck, it’s her leg. Her inner thigh. My face is on bare skin, the hem of the shorts ridden up and thank God, thank God I’m facing her knee and not the other way because Christ on a waffle, she’d behead me. Which she might anyway. After last night. After waking up like this. Jesus. Fuck.
I sit up, disoriented even though I know where I am. My tongue feels too big for my mouth. My hands feel oddly far away and I swallow hard, trying not to remember what happened last night.
At least I wasn’t drunk, I tell myself. At least I tried to end the fight instead of starting it.
Neither has always been the case, but it’s hard to feel accomplished right now, in the half-dark of right-before-sunrise, trying to fight back the rising tide of anger and panic and disgust at myself after sleeping on the person who had to take care of me last night.
The feeling wraps around me like a tentacle—what’s wrong with you? It’s been years—and I take a deep, shuddering breath before I open my eyes and look at Kat, praying she’s still asleep and can’t see me like this, still inches from falling apart.
She is, and thank fucking God because I can only imagine the look she’d give me, the way her eyes would flick up and down, first with derision and then—worse—with pity. The tentacle around my chest tightens and I swallow, rubbing a hand over my mouth, looking at her, trying to weigh my options.
There’s a red spot on her leg where I was sleeping and despite myself, it snags my attention, my gaze hanging there like a scarf on a bramble. It’s barely visible in the pre-dawn, but I can’t tear my eyes away: an irregular red spot on the inside of one thigh, midway between knee and hip. A swirl where my ear was. Tiny indentations where my stubble grew in overnight—
No. That’s ridiculous. It’s too dark to see detail like that so I must be imagining hair-width divots marring her skin. Her soft, pliable skin, where I took advantage of her, of the relationship we’re pretending to have by making her take care of me—
Fuck.
I grit my teeth and swallow hard and stand. My right knee and hip protest and there’s a familiar twinge in my lower back, but I get upright. Kat’s half-sprawled on my couch, sitting up and turned sideways, bottom leg bent under her, cheek against the back of the couch. Last night she fell asleep in the middle of a movie so I took her glasses off and put them on the coffee table.
I grab an ugly fleece blanket and spread it over her lap gently as I can, removing that red spot from my line of vision and preserving the rest of her modesty. I wonder if I should wake her up and tell her that her chore is over and she can leave, or whether it would be kinder to let her sleep.
I kissed her last night. Unplanned. I stood up on a shitty karaoke stage and sang Sweet Caroline and the whole room sang along with me, a tidal wave of drunken adoration and camaraderie, and when the song ended they cheered and shouted and I let it buoy me to where she sat, and I kissed her. And she kissed me back. And I spent the next thirty minutes wanting to do it again.
But then I had an episode and she had to calm me down and get me home and Jesus, she had to wash my hair and dress me and make me tea and the second she wakes up, she’s going to regret the kiss. She’s going to regret having tied herself to me. She’s going to wish she’d conned someone else into being her boyfriend for the month, because if there’s one man who’s not making a single damn person jealous, it’s me.
I put both hands over my face and squeeze until my bruises hurt.
“MROWW!” Beast shouts, and I look up, startled. She’s pacing back and forth, between me and her food bowl like some unholy union of muppet and lynx.
“Shh,” I tell her as I walk to the kitchen, glad to find that my body still works even though I still don’t quite feel like I’m part of it.
“RRRRAWMR,” she responds, tail twitching, because Beast doesn’t give a single shit for my mental state if her food bowl is empty, and I’ve never loved a creature more in my entire life.
I would die for Beast. I would stand in front of an eighteen wheeler for her. I’d face down a pack of wolves. There aren’t many people I’d say that for—my best friend, Levi; my sister, June; Gideon, Javier, and Wyatt—but I would defend this cat from anything, and she doesn’t care. Beast has never pitied me. She’s never been disappointed in me, or disdainful. She’s never wondered why I can’t man the hell up and get my shit together.
Beast just wants breakfast. I wish I’d gotten a cat a decade ago instead of last year.
I go about my routine like an automaton: water, coffee, phone. Levi and Gideon texted, Levi to say that I can come over, I can always come over, Gideon to say he heard my nose got fucked up and he hopes I’m okay. From him, it’s a love letter.
I skip the gym. I drink my coffee black because to do otherwise feels too hard. I scroll through my phone by the light over my stove, reading work emails and trying to fight the rising waters of panic and anger and self-disgust.
But you can’t stop a flood once it’s coming. You can only mitigate the damage. All the tools I’ve learned are nothing but sandbags, so heavy to lift that they don’t always feel worth the effort.
Beast finishes her breakfast, gives herself a bath, and leaves the kitchen. I try a sandbag—breathe in for four, hold for four, out for six—and it doesn’t do shit. A few minutes later I hear rustling and see that Kat’s now stretched full-length on the couch, Beast in loaf position on the coffee table, staring at her face from a foot away.
Seriously, a whole pack of wolves for that creep.
Before I know what I’m doing I find myself pulling the blanket over Kat and giving Beast a few ear scritches. She blinks slowly, which I’ve been told is a sign of affection. Sure. I wonder if the same is true of Kat, if the way she stared at me last night was something, when I was certain she was going to kiss me between bad movies but then she didn’t, just declared me okay.
Of course she wasn’t going to,I think. Not after she had to wash your hair.
Now it’s a flash flood, a burst dam, the panic and anger rushing in with a roar, threatening to drown me. The tentacle’s back, squeezing me, threatening to pull me into the depths.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I’m stripped down to a handful of ugly words to match the ugly feeling, the revulsion and self-disgust coming on hard and God, I have to leave. I need to get out of here, go to Wildwood, spend the day finishing the paving stones around the firepit and collapsing onto my camp bed after dark because I can’t be here when she wakes up.