“I just need to sleep.” I’m too exhausted to work on my lies. I’m hoping that lying here in the dark, maybe finding a few minutes or even an hour of rest, will help matters upstairs in the brain pain department.
“Okay. Should I turn out the light? Do you want anything else? A cold cloth? Some crackers? Mints? For me to stop talking? For us to be able to get this divorce already? To be magically transported back to the city?”
“Just. Rest.”
Darby looks like she wants to stay. Like she’d like to do something. Tuck me into her girly bed under her flowery quilt? Kiss away the sting? I want to laugh, silent and inside, so it doesn’t hurt my head, but the thought of her doing that makes me feel strange. And not the bad kind of strange that I should probably feel either.
She gives up on that without saying anything else. She then nods and waves, wriggling her fingers at me again before she,thank god, at last, kills the lights and shuts the door.
I sprawl out on top of the bed, sure as shit not going for the blankets in the hot, sticky, humid room. Grabbing the glass of water, I spill half of it down my front while trying to get some in my mouth. I swallow like I’m parched and fevered. I swipe my good hand up to my forehead to check, but it’s a regular temperature. I just feel like I’m going up in flames on the inside, then.
I’m sure there are a lot of people at work who wish they could tell me to go to hell. I, on the other hand, wish I could tell all of them that some days, I’m already there.
6
LEON
When I open my eyes, I’m disoriented. The blinds are shut, but I can tell that it’s dark—dark outside and in the room.
The pain in my head has fractured into a thousand shards and is racing through my bloodstream, infecting every inch of my body.
This is bad.
I thought rest would help. What I think now is that I actually fell asleep. Not a common occurrence for me, but sometimes, exhaustion wins out.
I don’t think I’m ready for full-on light, and there isn’t a lamp in the room. By fumbling around, however, I do find my phone on the nightstand, and it’s plugged into a charger. I don’t remember doing that. I switch on the screen, turning it away from me right away, and slowly open my eyes to stare at the room. The phone’s screen light goes off, but I swipe it again and make my way over to a small dresser. It’s been painted pink to match the rest of the room, and it has a tiny mirror. I study myself in the glass, backlit by the phone.
I look like a wreck. My hair is tussled and smushed to one side, and I have about eight days worth of beard growth going on, which is appalling to me because I can’t stand not being freshly shaved. When I grow facial hair, I look too much likehim. It’s only a day’s worth of growth in reality, but my stomach still churns. I need to find my bag, get a razor and my toothbrush out, and make myself look human. There are dark smudges under my eyes, which look totally unfocused from the pain. My skin is paler than it should be, and even though I haven’t eaten since…uh…well, for a while, my stomach is tied into hard knots that are anything but hungry.
I hear a noise outside the bedroom, and I freeze. I relax when I realize it isn’t anyone barging in here to turn the light on. It’s the sound of the washer opening, the soft noise of clothing being tossed in, then the dial spinning and the water trickling in. Light footsteps recede. All of it is magnified a thousand times until the pain makes me close my eyes and stick out an unsteady hand to grip the dresser. My stomach lurches, and acid climbs up the back of my throat.
I’m still standing there when the footsteps get louder, and this time, the door opens. The light doesn’t flick on, but golden tendrils creep in from the hallway. I screw my eyes shut before they can get in and accost me. I have enough demons in my skull already, thank you very much.
However, the pain still finds me. It’s worse than ever, and I know I have to do something about this. It’s seriously not going to be okay. I am going to implode, and Darby is going to know. She’s going to know, and I’m her boss, and she’s never going to forget. I’m not going to be able to hide this from her, no matter how much I want to.
“Oh,” she gasps. “You’re awake.”
I need to sit down. That’s what I need to do before I pass out. My god, it hurts so much. Everywhere. Everything. It’s consuming me. And I can barely see.
“Leon?”
“Just…need a second.” I put out a hand. The words are gritty, and my mouth tastes foul. I force myself away from the dresser and stumble over to the edge of the bed. I just about miss finding the edge, but I catch myself and make myself sit.
The bed dips beside me with Darby’s slight weight, and I can hear her worry as soon as she speaks. “You were…I was…scared. You slept all last night and all of today.”
My eyes fly open, and I nearly let out a groan. Rapid movements right now aren’t smart. “I’ve been asleep for over twenty-four hours?”
She bites down on her bottom lip and nods. “I was worried there was something wrong, but I remembered you saying you hadn’t slept in three days, so I thought maybe you just needed to catch up. I came in and checked on you every couple of hours since this morning. I…I checked to make sure you didn’t have a fever.”
Her hands. Her hands brushing against my forehead. I don’t remember it. For some reason, the thought of her touch, those soft, gentle fingertips, makes me want to cave in. It threatens to undo something that is already rattling around in my chest ever since yesterday morning. It makes me feel worse, not better. It’s another ache, another brittleness that I can barely handle.
“I wasn’t being creepy or anything,” Darby rushes on to say. “I just…you were sleeping for way too long, and you said you weren’t feeling well.” Her soft, blue eyes take in my appearance. I’m still in my rumpled clothes from yesterday. “You look worse, honestly.”
“Right next to the ‘you have constant resting buttface face’ that my sister gave me last year, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
She sighs, clearly frustrated. I know I’m an obnoxious asshole. It’s easier to be that way, to be hard and cranky on the outside, than to allow people to get past that. “I want to take you to the clinic in town, but it’s not open until morning.”
“No.”