I flick through the pages, finding the emergency contact information and digits newly scrawled beneathmyfucking name. We’re grouped together, like a package. Like it’s impossible to think of one of us without the other.
At least, it seems that way to me.
I tap Mal’s number into my phone, resenting every digit. Messaging would suit me most, but I can tell by Jack’s face he wants me to call.
Fuck my life.
I do it. But only because I love him. Jack, not Mal. And the call connects, ringing, both in my ear and somewhere else.
Somewhereclose.
I rise and follow the sound out of the kitchen and into the hall, all the way to Mal’s room where his phone sits on the windowsill by theopenfucking window, my number lighting up the screen with no way of me taking it back.
Irritation flares. I don’t want my number in his phone. Not because I don’t want him to call me, but because I know he never will. Why would he? We’re not friends. We’re barely housemates given how often I see him. AndI don’t want my number in his phone.
I don’t want to puke my dinner up either, but it happens the moment Jack goes back downstairs.
It’s the first time in a while, and I hate the raw feeling it leaves behind. The sense of failure that’s more profound than not eating in the first place. Because it can’t be fixed. Not now, or in that terminal place oflater.It’s done. It’s gone. And the cycle starts again. Forever and always, it starts again.
I take refuge in the shower, for once not hiding from the minimal signs Mal lives here too. His toothbrush in a glass. That cedar-wood soap. The way he hangs the towels to dry with perfect angles.
His running shoes are in here too—again, tucked in the corner. Does he come in here the second he gets back? I haven’t been around enough to know, but I find myself wishing I did. Wishing I knew everything that made him tick, all the while accepting he’s the kind of man no one will ever know everythingabout. The kind that can turn love to hate with a few taps on a cracked phone screen.
I shut off the shower, dripping water the only sound in the room, save the forlorn rumble in my belly.
Eat something.
No. Not tonight. The fresh start comes tomorrow. For now, there’s just this—there’s justme—and the company is shit.
I need music.
The sanctuary of my bedroom.
After nineteen hours in A&E, I needquiet.
It’s perverse that music helps with that, but it’s how I’m wired. Maybe because I was born into carnage and metal, and I still crave that chaos. Still find comfort in nasty bass and violent guitars, even though it holds some of my worst and best memories.
My AirPods are in my work bag. I dig them out, throw some sweats on, and absolutely do not glance into Mal’s empty room as I venture out for water to choke down some supplements.
The pills fester in my hollow stomach. I go back to my room and find myself at my window, scanning the frothy tempest the ocean has become tonight.
Still no Sol.
No Mal.
I should check on Jack.
I want to.
But wherever his head is at right now, he’ll spot the spiral in mine and I can’t placate us both.
Sleep.
Right. Not happening. I feel as wired as Mal the other night, his brain firing every synapse at once, a thousand thoughts a minute. I don’t know how my presence made it better. We’re abrasive when we’re together.When we’re not touching. And then?
Fuck.
I don’t need those thoughts.