Chapter 13 #3
Was I? How do you define okay? Having friends who you trusted to have your back, I suppose, was a good sign.
Having a boyfriend who didn’t cheat on you or try to kill you.
I’m sure most people thought that was quite essential.
Having a family that … knew you were alive and vice versa.
Yeah, I’d imagine nine in ten respondents would put that near the top.
Well, I had a needy German shepherd and two antisocial cats.
It wasn’t much, but it was more than some.
“I’ll be fine. I need to sleep now,” I said and hung up.
I went upstairs and crawled back into bed – switching my phone very much off. “Let sleep take me,” I whispered under my breath, and by some miracle it did.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Jake Gyllenhaal was about to take off his loincloth in the Colosseum.
“Yeah, c’mon, Jakey, show us the goods,” I said.
Mm, it was so lovely and warm on this summer’s day in Rome. I should have come on this trip years ago.
Bang bang bang.
“Quick, Jakey, before the Visigoths attack the city,” I said, basking in the warmth on my skin.
Bang bang bang.
“Arden! OPEN UP! I know you’re in there!”
Hmm. Those Visigoths had strange accents, best to run back towards Jakey and that nice warm sun … Wait, why was the sun going away? Why? Why was it suddenly cold?
“Arrrooooo!” came the Visigoths.
Bang bang bang.
I opened an eye. There were no Visigoths.
I was in my room. The sun – well, my source of heat, which was an emotionally traumatised Alsatian-cross, had departed his position spooning me and was now barking and clawing at the bedroom window.
He was more interested in whoever was downstairs banging on my front door.
And Jake Gyllenhaal was nowhere to be seen. It was that last part that smarted the most.
“Alright, al-fucking-right!” I grumbled as I stood up and then almost fell back on the bed again. A huge rush to the head saw me stagger around the room for a few seconds. Yikes. Okay, been asleep for some time then.
It was daylight, still morning, if the sky was to be believed, so it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so since I went for my nap. God, I needed a piss so badly I thought I was gonna rupture something.
I staggered out the door and managed to make it to the stairs. The banging persisted. “I am fucking coming!” I yelled. Well, tried to, but my voice came out as a strangled choke.
“Ahem,” I said and tried to clear my throat. I peered outside the window and saw thankfully that the paps had gone. That was weird, they were there an hour ago.
I opened the door, and a belligerent Scotsman looked at me.
“Simon, hi, to what do I owe the pleasure?” I kept the door ajar, trying to block out the ball of melting hot yellow hate-fire in the sky that was trying to singe my retinas.
“Do you ever answer your fucking phone?” Simon barked and pushed past me to come into the house.
“Erm, usually, well, kind of. Sometimes. There are a lot of people I avoid if I’m being honest.”
“I’ve been ringing you and you’ve not answered.
“How? You were in the press conference.”
“A—” He stopped and looked at me with his head askew. “Arden, what day is it?”
“Tuesday,” I answered.
“It’s Wednesday.”
“Wait, no it’s not. I just got up. I went for a run, I watched the press conference, and then I had a nap. I— Are you sure?”
He held up his phone with the date on his lock screen. It clearly said Wednesday. It was also 7 a.m., so at least I hadn’t … Jesus, I hadn’t quite slept twenty-four hours. Just twenty or so.
Oh.
The pain in my bladder was getting worse. “Excuse me,” I said and ducked into the toilet under the stairs. “Can you hum or something?”
“What?” came his voice. Aggressive.
“I need to pee, and you’re standing right there. I get shy.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Fine. I’ll take your dog out.
C’mon, boy.” I heard the door slam. A second later, sweet relief began.
I let out a contented sigh. And then looked down …
Jesus, there was a lot of it. I really had been asleep for a day.
How had I managed that? And how the hell was I still weeing?
Oh my God, I was still going. I heard the door open again, and Simon muttering under his breath.
“You’re still pissing? I can hear you!”
“I … I don’t know. I’m quite concerned. I think I’m a medical miracle.”
“Whatever, I’ll feed your dog.”
“His name’s Kennedy!” I yelled, turning slightly, and driving my persistent stream up the wall. “Shit!”
“What did you say? Don’t tell me you need to take a shit as well. If that’s the case, then I’m going. You’ll be in there until next month!”
“I …” He had a point. “Don’t be vulgar!” was all I could summon up. Eventually, through the grace of God, I finished. “I think I’ve lost weight,” I muttered. I washed my hands and left the toilet a new man.
Simon was standing in my kitchen – glaring.
“Good morning,” I offered meekly.
He pointed to a Tupperware container. “Do you want a blueberry muffin?”
“You brought me muffins?”
“No, Mrs Hetherington brought me muffins, and I have no room in my house, so I brought them to you. You’re skin and bone.”
“Am not,” I said.
“Then take a bloody muffin, so my kitchen stops resembling a refugee collection centre.”
I took a muffin. “Um, not to be rude, but why …” I cleared my throat and changed tack. “How are you?” I remembered how bad he’d looked on Monday and then again at the press conference. Which was yesterday. Christ.
He looked away. Shrugged. It was a tense, angry gesture. “I’m … I don’t know, to be honest. I’m okay. Do you wanna put some clothes on, by the way?”
Looking down I realised I was standing in my underwear and nothing else.
“Oh, shit.” I ran upstairs. “Sorry, gimme two seconds.”
In my room, I grabbed some clothes only to notice with horror that I’d not properly shaken off after peeing and had been standing there talking to Simon with a big wet patch on the front of my light blue boxers for all the world to see.
“God, I’m a mess,” I muttered. But who the fuck turns up pounding on someone’s door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday? Like a … a terrorist.
I threw on a clean pair of underwear, a T-shirt and some shorts that weren’t too smelly and checked my breath. Foul. I rubbed the sleep gunk out of my eyes and tried to fix my hair.
Nope, still looked shit. Sheepishly, I left my room and came back downstairs. Simon was at my dining table and had cut up our muffins and laid them out covered in butter, on plates.
“Lovely, thanks.” I tried to look anywhere but him.
He made a noise of impatience. “Arden, we’ve had sex, can you not be embarrassed that I saw you in your pants? You were half asleep. I’m not under the impression you were flaunting yourself at me.”
He wasn’t wrong there; we did have sex. He had been inside me. I had once come on his chest hair. So, he was right; it pretty much meant any sort of embarrassment was null and void. However, that didn’t stop me. God loves a tryer.
“So, um, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” I said, eagerly devouring my muffin. It was nice and moist, and I was starving. Which was not surprising considering I’d been dead to the world for a day.
He exhaled and looked down. For several moments, he said nothing. The only noise was my loud chewing.
“I need your help.”
Err … did he need to write a book or something? Did he want advice on dating and breakups? Did he want Polish lessons?
“What kind of help?” I said, aiming for breezy and arriving at something near paranoid.
“God, I said in the texts … do you ever look at your phone?”
“Oh, I turned it off before my nap.”
“Your … day-long nap?”
“Yes,” I said. Keeping my chin up.
“Is that a common occurrence?” he asked, his brow creasing. “Are you okay, you know …” He gestured at his head. “Mentally?”
I glared at him and took a long time to respond.
“Yes, I’m fine, mentally,” I said through gritted teeth.
I tried to tell myself he was in the military, which meant he was probably a Neanderthal at anything involving the psychological, so his lack of tact was surely not his fault.
This explained all those soldiers going around with PTSD, but hey, that was the army’s problem and not mine.
“Okay …” he said, clearly not believing me. Well, I was. I was fine. Except for the ex who tried to kill me, and the tripping over dead bodies wherever I went. Fine. Totally fine.
“So.” I brushed off my muffin crumbs and eyed a second in the Tupperware container. “What do you need my help with?” Please don’t say funerals, please don’t say funerals.
Simon played with the strap of his watch and took a long time to respond.
I watched him intently, the crease between his brow, the trickle of sweat running down behind his ear from the heat that was already building up outside, the sun-kissed freckles along the back of his neck.
It wasn’t long before my eyes slinked down to his large shoulders, which were straining the T-shirt he was wearing, or his arms that stretched the seams on the sleeves.
He was only average height, but there was a definite built-like-a-brick-shithouse air to his physique.
But then he spoke, and my attention snapped back.
“I want you to help me find who killed Riz.”