Twenty-Six #3
It’s Kai who clears his throat. ‘I’ll get some blankets.’
‘I’ll help,’ Imani adds.
Matilda doesn’t even offer an excuse – she just follows the other two into the tiny bathroom that’s barely big enough for one person, and is not where my blankets live.
The door closes behind them with a soft click, and it’s like they take all the air in the room with them.
I don’t particularly want to breathe. I think, right in this very moment, drowning under a heavy, unreadable gaze, I would actually quite like to suffocate – I think it would be a far better fate than this.
Heath tugs on my wrist, and I close my eyes.
He murmurs my name again, and I breathe deeply through my mouth.
He tugs again, harder this time, more insistent, and as the couch rustles beneath him, I find myself with no choice but to do as he silently asks and drop down to a crouch lest he try to rise to my level and finds himself face-first in my coffee table.
I regret it immediately. Within a single split second, barely that. Because the moment I’m in real reach of his clumsy, clammy hands, they’re on me. Touching me. Tracing the contours and divots of my face, like he has any right to do that.
And I don’t do a damn thing to stop him.
A finger traces my bottom lip, and I suddenly so vividly remember raking my teeth across the calloused pad.
He palms the curve of my jaw and I feel the ghost of a tiny mouth-made bruise.
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, rubs the soft strand between his thumb and forefinger, and sighs with fucking relief. ‘Hi, pretty girl.’
My fingers itch with the urge to return the favor. To graze the buzzed hair that looks a little longer than normal. ‘Hi, drunk boy.’
He smiles, just for a second, until the curve of his knuckle brushes beneath my left eye and comes away glistening. ‘Why are you crying?’
Lips parting with surprise, I swipe at the tears I didn’t even feel falling. ‘I’m not.’
Too drunk to press the matter, Heath hiccups. ‘You didn’t show up.’
‘Where?’
‘The party. Kept calling you and calling you and you didn’t come.’
‘You didn’t call me.’ I stared at my phone the entire hour leading up to the countdown, until my vision went askew, wishing he would – so fucking weak.
‘Did,’ he argues, as strongly as someone in his state is capable of. ‘I said your name, like, a hundred times.’
Against my will, a faint smile curves my mouth. God, he’s drunk. ‘And I didn’t magically appear? How rude of me.’
Heath huffs. ‘Exactly.’
I smile a little harder. God, he’s cute. ‘I’m gonna get you some water.’
When I stand, he pushes himself upright too, peering over the back of the sofa as I make a quick trip to the kitchen.
He tracks my every move with a goofy smile on his face, makes a goofy noise when I return with a full glass and painkillers for the morning because I know he’ll be in a sorry state, and I guess he’ll still be here – I only worry about that inevitable confrontation for a second before getting distracted.
The moment I’m in reach, Heath pulls me down again. I don’t sit this time; I just crouch awkwardly at his side because it feels a little safer, a little healthier, not being quite so close.
Yet still close enough for him to invade my every sense; it only gets worse when he twines my hair around his forefinger and uses it to tug me just a little closer. ‘Tried to find you.’ He hiccups. ‘At midnight. Was gonna tell you.’
Gently, I free myself from his grip. A millisecond later, he fists the cuff of my hoodie. ‘Tell me what?’
‘Too many things.’ He yawns, eyes screwing shut as he seems to think hard about something. ‘Can’t remember them all.’
‘Must not be very important, then.’
‘They are.’ That ever-moving grip shifts once more. He holds my hand now, so tight and so tangled, I can barely tell where he stops and I begin. ‘You are. To me.’
Liar, some bitter little part of me accuses, while every other inch wishes so badly for that to be the truth. ‘Time to get some rest, okay?’
He pouts. Eyes still closed, he blindly pats himself down until he finds his phone in his pocket. Almost the second he fishes it out, it falls to the ground. My lips curl upwards as I dip to fetch it.
They flatten immediately when I catch a glimpse of his lockscreen.
Weeks ago, he changed it to a picture of me. One of the many he took that night when he taught me how to make pasta; the one he posted online, along with the caption luckiest man alive. Me, holding a glass of wine, dusted with flour, nose scrunched, a small, real smile twisting my mouth.
That same picture stares up at me now.
Swallowing hard, I set his phone face-down on the coffee table. When he whines and makes a grab for it, I push him back down.
He protests, thrashing against my palm, too drunk to actually put up any kind of a fight. ‘But I wanna show you something.’
‘Show me tomorrow.’ Dipping into the wicker basket under the table where my blankets actually live, I tuck one around Heath. ‘Go to sleep.’
He sighs. Right before he obeys, he claims, ‘I miss you.’
Maybe, if he were sober, I’d believe him.