I hear myself say the word, but truthfully I regret it. I check my phone again, a constant, furtive habit, searching desperately for messages.
None come. And I feel more alone than I ever have.
Why won't he just fucking text me? Oh, Cleave…
"If you lost the ability to brood, what would you do?" I look up, and Lady Ivy who's too regal to belong in this millennium places a tray at the bed-side table. It's filled with assorted little cookies and that ornate teacup I pay too much attention to. I mutter a thank you and stuff the phone behind my pillow. I don't mention the suicidal thoughts beginning to resurface. I wonder why I never considered medication. "Spontaneously combust?"
Spontaneously combusting sounds like a good plan. I file that away into my drawer of impossible deaths I wouldn't mind occurring.
In dead silence, I realize how awkward I am. I don't say a word, I just stare sullenly into nothing. Ivy almost reads my mind.
"You really don't cope well with things, do you?" She sits down beside where I'm laying I instinctively crawl away a little. I find, once I've moved around, that I squish something cuddly. What is—oh! Mister Snookums! Triumphantly, I clutch him to me and curl up. I've won a small victory. "Or, I'd guess you don't really cope at all."
I sneak an irritated look her way but raise the teacup to my lips and sip it. More of the chamomile stuff? What? Am I running a fever? My head's still healing, what is it, exactly? That little throb in the side of my skull still hurts. It practically burns.
Don't really cope? What does she mean by coping? I think I'm coping just fucking fine, thank you.
--Said Harvey as she almost reached for her cell phone. Nice save, Harv-cakes.
"Did the dizziness stop?" She's prying for conversation that I'm not willing to endorse. I keep my hands clenched in my lap, and my eyes staring dead-downward. My jaw jumps a little. It's an anxious habit. I don't know what to say, but her fingers snap, and my attention directs automatically toward the sound. "You're just magnificently riddled with ADD, aren't you?"
"Not so di-dizzy anymore." The words are more like a dry-heave sentence than an actual one. I force myself to talk. My mouth is dry. I gulp down some temperate (see: OHMYGODHOT) tea and clear my throat again. What do I do by this point?
After the fact that I can recollect her kissing me (see: things that turned me on uncomfortably), it's making it all the harder to choke out or stumble around speech. I'm not okay. In fact, I'm replaying the moment over and over in my head and turning a darker and darker pink with each passing moment. I haven't wanted sex in a very long time, so this is…a revelation, for me.
Hormones.
It's all the hormones.
The pregnancy hormones are making me go insane.
Damn the hormones.
Attracting me to women, now. Shame, shame.
"That cannot be normal." Blood-red lips remain in a set smirk. I can't help but think, absently, it's oh-so-attractive. I shake the thoughts from my head like snowflakes out of hair.
Doesn't the idea of karma exist anymore? I haven't been such a bad person, as far as I know my lifestyle warrants karmic retribution. A good night's sleep sans paranoia would do just fine. I roll over, and I hear her odd chuckle of a sound. It sounds halfway dark, raspy, almost masculine. Her voice is lower than the norm for a female, after all.
And I close my eyes.
I have never felt such relief in my life.