Chapter 13 – “In The Air Tonight” — Phil Collins
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HENRY
“IN THE AIR TONIGHT” — PHIL COLLINS
Oh dear god. The massive drum solo from “In The Air Tonight” hammers inside my head, my brain throbbing with my pulse. Why?
Oh, right.
Julian.
When I have a headache this bad, Julian is always the answer.
The night comes back to me in little flash-bangs, bringing bile to the back of my throat with each image.
Sky cursing. Sky crying. Sky laughing. All of us laughing.
More shots than I have fingers and toes.
I haven’t pieced together the fuzzy gaps between Julian stripping onstage and me ending up in bed, but I’m sure it’ll worm its way to the surface eventually.
I can’t remember the last time I slept this late. Good to know I don’t need Kait for a long night’s rest, just enough alcohol to drown a horse. Given the side effects, I’ll take the credit card bill for her services and pay it happily.
Her voice drifts around the negative space in my brain. Her giggles, her whispers, her amusement. Her—no. No. I did not call her last night. Nooooooo. No.
As if my phone can feel my panic, it leaps out of reach, tumbling to the floor and skidding under my bed.
Or I might’ve dropped it, but we’re blaming the phone this morning.
And my absurdly low-to-the-ground bed. We’re blaming my phone and my bed, not my hungover body or pounding head.
I have to use a broom to get to it. The phone, not the bed.
Like some demented game of Twister with me on my knees, boxer-clad ass in the air.
I catch the phone with the broom a little too aggressively, and it ricochets off the wall.
I’ll be lucky if it even works after this.
Or maybe I’ll be better off without it since I can’t be trusted not to drunk dial.
I scramble for it, breathless, covered in a sheen of sweat by the time I’m able to unlock it. Recent calls. Bedtime Stories. 138 minutes.
This is not good.
“Hi, Henry,” she screams. “You’re up early. I can’t believe I get to talk to you twice in one day.”
I turn the volume down until I have to strain to hear her, her perkiness amplifying the ache between my ears. Luckily, it only hurts when I exist. “Good morning, Kait.”
“Does your head hurt?” There’s a tease hidden under the concern. “Is that why we’re whispering?”
“I may have a hint of a hangover.”
“Why on earth would you have a hangover?” she asks, all innocence and curiosity. Or, rather, faux innocence and curiosity. “You were just spicy tipsy.”
I can almost smile, despite the pain. “Extra-special spicy tequila tipsy,” I say, still squinching my eyes in the hopes of dimming the sun. “Enough that our conversation last night is a bit… blurry.” Or nonexistent, to be precise.
“Now, that hurts my feelings,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s genuinely sullen or still making fun of me. “You finally tell me your middle names, and you don’t even remember? I’m hurt. Hurt.”
It’s possible. But unlikely. I take a gamble and use her words against her. “You are a lying liar of lies.” Did I get that right? Thank the heavens I don’t have to work until Monday. I might be capable of coherent thought by then.
After a painfully long pause, she huffs. “Fine. All we did was get you to bed, Henry Spicy Hungover Sterling.”
Thank the tequila gods. There were so many worse things I could’ve told her—the fantasies I’ve had about her? That alone would’ve been enough to make me lose her number and move to a different planet. “What did we talk about?”
“Apparently, you Sterlings enjoy spicy naked men,” she says with a laugh. “But that’s about it.”
Relief. Pure relief. Hindered only by the blinding pain in my head. “I didn’t embarrass myself?”
“I didn’t say that.” Another laugh, but then she says, “You gave me a verbal striptease at one point.”
Could be worse. “Was there anything else?” I ask, heart and stomach in my throat.
If she tells me something truly awful, maybe I’ll throw up and pass out.
What a mercy that would be. “I can take it. If it’s terrible, I’ll curl up and die.
You won’t even know I’m dead. I’ll just decompose until the neighbors investigate the smell. ”
She laughs softly. “That got dark fast.”
“I woke up wondering if I had a brain tumor, with my tongue feeling like the shag carpeting in a 1978 party van. Life is dark this morning.”
“Fair,” she says, another laugh slipping out. “You swore, Henry. More than once. It was wonderful.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks, though I’m not certain why. Of all the things she could’ve said, that was, again, much better than it could’ve been. “I apologize for that. I don’t usually use colorful language.” And I can practically hear her rolling her eyes at me.
After a pause—heavier than I’d like, one that feels ominous—she says softly, “You also told me you suck at love and that you’re defective.”
That’s… not ideal. But not inaccurate either. “Well. I suppose that’s not something we’ve addressed in the vagina of verisimilitude. But it’s true.” The heat on my skin has turned into a five-alarm fire, but there’s nothing to be done for it now.
“Henry,” she whispers, somehow more firmly than if she’d shouted. I turn the volume up on our call in time to hear her say, “You’re not defective. You’re a goddamn delight.”
Sweet Kait. Always seeing the best in me, even when I tell her outright the truth of things.
“The jury’s still out on that.” When she sounds like she might disagree, I add, “My last girlfriend had a knack for buying me a tie and then taking me out to show it off—and letting me pay for the privilege.” I swallow some water with a quartet of ibuprofen before going on.
“Or the one who wanted to move in after she saw my town house. The one who wanted a threesome with me and Declan and kept grabbing his crotch under the table at dinner with my parents. Oh my gosh, I shouldn’t have said that out loud. Now I really am going to vomit.”
“Brothers. Eww,” she mumbles. “Just, no.”
“Let’s not talk about that. I never thought I was in love with any of them, but had, at one point, thought I could be eventually.”
“Henry…” she says, probably readying her counterargument.
“But I’m defective. Being single is easier.
” After a beat, I mutter, almost without thinking, “It’s no wonder I have to pay a smart, kind, funny woman to talk to me.
” I’m not sure if there are stages of hungover like there are stages of grief, but apparently, I’ve entered the maudlin portion of my recovery.
Shouldn’t that have happened last night? Or maybe it did. Who can say.
“Let’s get something straight, Sterling,” she barks. “You are the highlight of my days. Highlight. My fellow phoneys make fun of me because I get so excited when you call.”
How does she do that? A handful of words, and my pity party is over. “I can’t tell if that’s because I’m so great or your client list is so awful, but I’ll take it,” I say, laughing softly as I shuffle back to my bedroom.
“My clients are a mixed bag, but you’re my unicorn, and I want to know you, warts and all.”
“I’m wart-free, to my knowledge,” I say, trying to gloss over the rest of what she’s said. This is her job, but it never feels like it to me. Especially when my stomach flutters from her saying things like that. And not in the vomit-inducing way from earlier.
“I wish all my callers could say the same, but that’s a discussion for their doctors, not me.”
I fiddle through my closet, pulling out jeans and a vintage Live Aid T-shirt as the first genuine laugh of the day slips out. This woman is amazing. It almost doesn’t hurt. “I suspect you could say that about a lot of your callers for various reasons.”
“You’re not wrong,” she says. “What are we doing today, Henry Penelope Prudence Phillipa Sterling?”
She’s decided to let the previous topic drop, and I’ll let her.
Gladly. “I need a shower and to scrape the fur off my tongue so I can be presentable for a visit with my parents this afternoon. Ibuprofen, hydration, maybe one of those hangover clinic IVs so I can stand to be in the car with my siblings carrying on for hours at top volume.”
“Do they still live in West Soybean Armpit, Illinois?” she asks, her little giggle brightening my mood even further.
“I never should’ve told you that,” I say as I pull some socks from the drawer. “I can’t tell if you write these things down or if you have the memory of an elephant.”
“Only when it comes to you, Henrypoo.”
I suspect that’s not entirely true, but I have no way of proving it. “Anyway, there will be five of us in the car. God help me. I’m driving because I have a third-row seat, and I can’t take hours of ‘he’s touching me’ from grown adults.”
I grab a towel and take my things to the bathroom but stop short of turning on the shower. I’m enjoying talking to her too much. “When did we land on Henrypoo? I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Do you prefer Spicy Tipsy?”
“Shut up, Kaitypoo.” The memory of our conversation slams into me with that silly nickname, and I can’t decide if I want to laugh or fall to the floor and weep. “Kait E. Poo.”
“It’s coming back, isn’t it?”
The smile in her tone is malicious and teasing at the same time. How did she know? Did my breath hitch? Did I whimper? I probably whimpered.
“Thank you for putting up with me,” I mumble, fresh humiliation washing over me.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, and I swear, if we were face-to-face, she would wink at me.
“That’s a yes. Now I need to take my shower and wash the memory off.”
“Be thorough. Maybe use a loofah. There’s a lot to scrub off.”
“I hate you,” I say with another laugh. “I’ll call you when I get rid of my family.”
And with that, we hang up so I can rush through my routine before I pick up my ridiculous siblings and make the ridiculous drive to the ridiculous West Soybean Armpit, Illinois.