Annie wakes when the bed dips a little too aggressively. She's been getting better at sleeping through the night when she's with Ryan, but the prospect of being in an unfamiliar location brings up her old spy instincts. She stays stock still but moves her eyes to the source of the jostling.
Auggie. Right. In her bed. In a hotel in Sri Lanka.
"Hey," she whispers and her voice is raspy. Auggie takes a deep breath and lets it out in an exhale that shudders his shoulders.
"Hey." It's simple enough but he still doesn't turn around to look at her from his seated place on the side of her bed. "I shouldn't be in your bed, Annie."
She wants to laugh because he shouldn't be in Sri Lanka to begin with, but his life is so much different now than when she knew him. She doesn't think she can still joke with him like she used to, their constant teasing that always bordered on flirtatious, even in the beginning. Those times are laughably simple now.
"Your room was a fucking disaster. I'm surprised you could even find your bed," she counters smoothly and sits up. "Also didn't realize whiskey was your choice beverage."
He snorts a laugh. "It doesn't have any memories with it. Vodka is Tash's. Patron is yours. No one claimed whiskey, so I figured I could use it to get rid of any thoughts of..."
Auggie trails off and Annie pick up on the lost connotation. Whiskey doesn't remind him of her or Tash.
"Were you planning on drinking yourself to death?"
"Oh, god no," he states confidently. She feels her heart plummet because his tone is not a kind or gentle one. "It would take too long for my liver to give out. I wanted to blow my brains out, but it's a bit more difficult than you would believe to try to find a gun when you're drunk all the time."
"How fucking dare you?" Annie abruptly stands, suddenly both exasperated and angry at everything in sight. "After all the shit that you've gone through, a girl leaves you and you suddenly want to die? Get a fucking grip, Auggie."
Auggie turns to face Annie's direction and she wishes they could have a normal conversation like they used to. The sentiment almost knocks her to her feet. She's missed him so much and the last thing she expected to find was this parody of Auggie's old self.
"Really, Annie? You're giving me a lecture on properly handling my emotions? You don't even know what I've been through. If you knew half the shit I went through, you would personally load the gun for me," he sneers and it's an ugly look on his face.
"Why don't you enlighten me, Auggie? Nothing but the truth, right? Or did that only apply with dead girlfriends?"
It's a low blow and they both know it by the way Auggie flinches back. "That's just great, Annie. I forgot how great of a friend you are."
He stands and heads for the front door before Annie grabs his bicep and shoves him against the wall of her hotel room. She's closer to him than she has been in ages and suddenly she has no idea what to do.
Her instinct is to kiss him, but that would be ridiculous and completely uncalled for. It wouldn't do for anything, because she's with Ryan. She chose Ryan and she would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Right?
"You need to let me go, Annie," Auggie says with nothing but steel in his voice. "I really appreciate you checking in on me, but go and tell Barber that I'm doing just peachy."
"I didn't say it was Barber, you know," Annie counters but takes a step back anyway.
"It was Barber," Auggie acknowledges confidently. "Though why he didn't just find me himself is beyond me. Guess he's busy, like those folks with jobs sometimes are."
So that's the root of his problems, Annie thinks. "What's your problem, Auggie? What is your actual problem? And don't say it's me showing up, because we both know that's not it."
Auggie runs his hand through his hair and focuses his glare above Annie's left shoulder. "My problem is that this is it. I've got nothing left and I'm somehow supposed to cope with that."
She's startled at his honesty; she really thought he would brush off her question.
"You cope how you always do. You put one foot in front of the other, every single day, and soon enough, it'll stop being so shitty." She would know, she's been doing that since she came back from Hong Kong. Arguably, she's been doing it her whole life.
Auggie brushes past her and she's worried that he is planning to leave, but he just collapses back onto the bed. The dark circles under his eyes and his unkempt hair make him look a thousand years old.
"I'm just tired of walking, I'm tired of moving my feet, and I'm tired of waiting for things to get less shitty," he confesses and she understands, painfully so. He rolls over on the bed and she figures that's the end of their conversation for now. But at least he's still here. She realizes that he doesn't have his cane in her room anyway, and maybe not even his room key. Definitely not any whiskey, which is probably the only good thing about being in the room.
Annie starts to walk to the shower when Auggie's voice rings out. "Do you love him?"
She only hesitates for a moment. "More than I've ever loved anyone else."