11 - Johnny
11
Johnny
Pain.
My world was pain.
I woke up in the middle of the night, turned to the side of my bed, and immediately vomited. Miraculously, there was a small trashcan on the floor right where I intended to spew.
Turns out, it wasn’t so miraculous. When I stumbled out of bed the next morning, wincing at the light streaming through the trailer window that made it feel like I had a screwdriver being jammed into my temple, I found a note on my trailer window in marker.
Kept you alive last night. You owe me.
-Elijah
I scratched at the writing. It wasn’t coming off. There was a permanent marker sitting on the counter beneath the window. Motherfucker.
Ugh. The last thing I wanted was to owe that man a favor.
No, scratch that. The last thing I wanted was to leave my trailer.
I chugged water, took a shower in the trailer, then went back to bed. A few hours later I repeated the process, forgetting that I had already taken a shower and running out of hot water halfway through. The water heater attached to the trailer wasn’t exactly robust.
Still dripping water, I sat on the chair in the trailer’s kitchenette. My dog, Dusty, came over and licked the water off my legs. I was too sluggish to move, so I just scratched him behind the ear. It felt like my brain had been replaced with a big wad of cotton. Even the smallest tasks, like getting dressed and putting on my boots, felt impossible.
And that’s how I ended up at a coffee shop downtown, next to a YMCA. I didn’t drink coffee, but I was desperate for any elixir that might cure my pounding headache. After three sips of my latte, I’d gotten so nauseous that I had to put my head down on the table.
I was such an idiot.
Sophie was wrapped around my brain like a python. It had been a while since I’d crushed on a woman this badly. So when she gave me an opening at the bar last night, I’d seized on it without thinking.
And now I was paying the price.
The worst part about it all? It hadn’t changed anything. When I rested my head on the table and closed my eyes, it was Sophie’s heart-shaped face that appeared. It was her melodic voice that filled my ears. Hell, I could almost smell her perfume or deodorant or whatever, her scent , just beneath the smell of my coffee.
“How are we feeling this morning, cowboy?” she suddenly asked.
I slowly raised my head and found the woman in question standing in front of my table. My gaze drifted upward, taking in her long, smooth legs, then her black compression shorts that were molded to her hips, and the neon green sports bra hugging her chest in a way that made my heart race. Instead of hanging long, her blonde hair was tied into a ponytail that somehow made her even sexier than before.
I guess I hadn’t imagined her scent after all.
“Do you have to yell?” I replied.
She flashed a perfect white smile. “I’m not yelling. This is my normal indoor voice. Why?” She cocked her head to the side. “Does your head hurt?”
I gritted my teeth. “I think you know the answer.”
Wood scraped against the floor as she pulled out the chair and sat across from me. “I owe you an apology. I didn’t play fair last night.”
My brain was already barely functioning, but sitting across from Sophie made it even more difficult to think. “I don’t understand how you can drink that much and still look like a supermodel the next day.”
She blinked in surprise, like the compliment caught her off guard. “I just got back from the gym. I look like a drowned rat.”
“Not to me,” I muttered, lowering my head to the table again. “Can you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Go buy a gun, come back here, and shoot me in the head.”
Her laughter made my headache worse, but it was still like music to my ears. “As I was saying, I didn’t play fair last night. I was using a special liquor bottle. There’s a second compartment inside, behind the label. When I pushed on the nozzle, it dispensed a non-alcoholic liquid.”
I sighed. “Yeah, that makes more sense.”
“Three of the shots I took were real,” she confessed. “But, yeah. Sorry.”
“Serves me right for harassing a beautiful woman on the job,” I said.
Sophie was silent, so I raised my head off the table. She was looking at me thoughtfully.
“If you’re not going to get a gun and shoot me,” I said slowly, “then can you leave me here to die slowly? Not really in the mood for chit-chat, Sky Eyes.”
She reached across and patted me on the shoulder. “Rest up, cowboy. I’ll be rooting for you tonight.”
As she got up and left, I couldn’t even muster the energy to turn my head and watch her go. That’s how bad I was—I knew her ass probably looked incredible in those compression shorts, yet I was too defeated to look.
But her comment about rooting for me tonight? That made my hangover a little more bearable.