I don't see him for twelve days, exactly.
"You have a casserole."
These are the ingenious first words I say to him after seeing to trace of him for over a week. Brilliant one, Myk.
"Um, yeah. Yeah, I do. My mom made it." He avoids looking me in the eye and holds out the casserole dish.
"Thanks." Taking it from him, I pause. "Do you wanna come in?"
He rubs the back of his neck. "Uh, sure, I guess."
I awkwardly turn and walk back up the stairs. He awkwardly follows. Awkwardly. There's nothing about the situation that isn't awkward. I put the casserole in the freezer. "Do you want something to drink?"
He coughs, "Um, yeah, sure. Mountain Dew?"
"Ha. Water or milk?"
He smiles. "Water, please."
I pour him a Mason jar full of water with a ton of ice and set it in front of him.
"This is a jar," he observes.
I laugh again. "Yeah, it is. Your point?"
"It's not a glass."
"It's made of glass."
"But it's not A glass."
"So?"
"So people don't drink out of jars."
"Says you."
"Say I."
That's when I realize that our faces are inches away from each other. I note that his eyes are completely the purest blue I have ever seen. It's almost like he's staring straight through me, and before I even know what's happening, he leans the slightest bit forward and presses his lips against mine.
It shocks me. I freeze, then push him away with an index finger to the chest. It's not like I'm not enjoying this beautiful boy coming onto me, but I haven't gotten up the nerve to break up with Ryan yet.
"Chase, this is not okay."
His face falls. "Yeah, I figured. I just…I don't even know…I'm gonna go now." He stands up and runs down the stairs and out of the apartment, closing the door behind him, leaving me standing there not knowing what to do.
After an extremely long moment standing frozen in the kitchen, I wonder out loud, "Is this real life?"
Dad, from the other room, replies, "Yes, honey, it is!"
I sigh and, aggravated, dump the glass of water into the sink. I don't even bother going back to what I was doing, which was trying to hook up the DVD player and Xbox. Instead, I slump off to my room, turn my headphones up, and take a nap. I'm asleep before I even hit the pillow.
When I wake up, it's dark. A look at my phone tells me that it's quarter to midnight. My stomach rumbles, and I realize I haven't had anything to eat since noon. When I head out to the kitchen for a snack, there's half a pot of macaroni and cheese sitting on the stove. There's a sticky note on the lid where Dad has written 8:15, which I'm guessing is when he made the mac. He knows how I get about dairy that's been sitting out too long. I turn the stove on and reconstitute the noodles a bit, then eat them with a wooden straight out of the pot.
That's when my cell phone rings.
Looking at the caller ID, I sigh, then answer it. "What do you want, Ryan?"
"Zat a'yway da tack tuh da luvaya life?" There's something off about his voice.
"Dammit, Ryan, are you drunk?" I demand.
"Mayber jus a little," he slurs.
"Ryan, you've got to stop drinking. Especially with your meds," I remind him. He's been taking a new experimental mood stabilizer to tame his hypomania. Most of the time, it isn't a problem, but sometimes it gets a little out of hand and he gets…controlling…aggressive…pushy…whatever you want to call it.
"Iown't e'en care, bisch." His slurring is getting worse.
"Ryan, you can't talk to me like that," I tell him calmly.
"No!" He yells. It's the first clear word he's said the whole conversation. "Don't dellme whatta do!"
"Ryan!" I exclaim frantically. I'm losing my patience with him. "You cannot treat me like this! It's over!"
"A wuh?" It's not even a word that I can decode. It's his confusion and drunken angst all wrapped up into a sound.
"Ryan," I repeat more calmly. "It's over. We're done. I can't do this anymore. I shouldn't have let it go on this long, but I did. And now I'm done."
He starts to say something, but I cut him off by ending the call and tossing the phone across the room. It lands on the carpet and slides, tapping the baseboard with a dull thwack. That's when I realize I'm crying, sitting on the living room floor against the kitchen wall, and I don't know why. I feel like I'm drowning in the silence of the apartment, like my oxygen is being cut off and I'm gasping for breath. Gently, I fall to the side, curled up into a ball, and fall asleep once more.
Hey! I hope all of you are well!
This is probably the weirdest chapter I've written of this thus far, but I dunno, I like it. I had fun writing it.
Let me know what you think! (That means review, please!)