Megan McKay
Mark had inherited our father’s massive, pointy, witch-like nose. I think this as I stare at him in his open casket. Thankfully, I didn’t get that nose. I wonder if he could smell better than me with that thing when he was alive. I don’t know, won’t know. Honestly, I’d rather not have a nose than that thing. I’d been blessed with a great nose.
There are significantly less people at Mark’s funeral than had been at my parents or grandparents, but more than had been at our sister, Alicia’s. People come to me after the funeral, hugging me, telling me they’re so sorry for my loss. I find this part dreadfully boring. I count the water stains on the ceiling to try and pass the time. All I really care about is which season of Friends I should watch next. I’ve been skipping around with it, never watching it in chronological order. I figure I’ll watch the season where Monica and Richard are together. I like that season—and Richard—I really like Richard. Something about them together makes sense. I think it’s Richard’s mustache that makes the most sense. I picture myself sitting with a jar of garlic filled olives, propping up my feet on my coffee table, and turning on the TV I took from Mark’s room the day after he died. It was nicer than mine.
One of Mark’s ex-girlfriends, Bertha, throws her arms around me and squeezes me tight. She smells like perfume you’d buy at a thrift store, like the signature scent of a woman who had died decades ago and had hundreds of bottles of this pungent, citrus scent. I find the scent repulsive so it’s perfectly fitting for Bertha. Bertha has so much hair, like miles and miles of frizzy, jet-black hair. I figure she could probably house an entire family of squirrels in that thing and never know they were in there.
“How are you holding up, doll?” she says, her bottom lip sticking out in a pouty kind of way.
“I think I’m more like a Lego than a doll,” I say. She stares at me then, not hiding the confusion in her expression. I make “C’s” with my hands and move my arms up and down like a Lego would. Again, she just stares at me. Her eyes look around like she’s a bit uneasy. I smile at her and say, “thank you for coming, Bertha.”
“Of course,” she squeezes my arms. “You call me if you need anything. Seriously, I’m here for you.” I want to laugh at this since I truly find it funny. I haven’t seen this woman since her and Mark dated in college over 6 years ago. I don’t even have her phone number. I promise myself right then that if I were ever in a situation where I need to turn to Bertha for help, I’ll simply kill myself.
I remember the time Mark came into my room after hanging out with Bertha one night – his face was all pale like he was about to be sick.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I’d asked.
“It’s Bertha,” he said.
“What about her?”
“She gave me a hand-job and had such a tight grip,” he shuddered then. “I thought she was gonna pull my dick off.”
“What did you expect? Her name’s Bertha,” I’d said.
I go home shortly after I thanked everyone for coming, I figure they can do the burial without me. I was bored and my dress smelled like death—or better known as lilies. I fucking hate lilies. I’d requested that no one get me any lilies but they just kept coming. I didn’t have enough garbage bags to fit them all. I decided to put all the lilies in my front yard with a sign that said, “Take a fucking lily, and for the love of god don’t give me any.”
My parents’ house, which is now mine, is massive, cold, and extremely rigid. I write down all the things I want to change about the house in my little pink journal. I want everything redecorated. My mom had liked the style that I deemed “rich person style,” which consisted of buying the most expensive things from furniture designers in Paris or LA. Things that you could never actually use or sit in, but they were there for when people came over and would say,
“Wow, that chair is amazing,”
“Oh that? it was designed by Jean-Paul Phillipe,” my mom would say.
“My god, John-Paul Phillipe? I hear he only designs one chair a year,” the person would say.
“Oh yes, yes I know,” my mom would say.
“And the waitlist? Aren’t they usually years long?” The person would ask.
“Yes, usually. But I know Jean-Paul personally,” my mom would say. She did not know Jean-Paul personally. My mom knew someone who knew someone who knew how to get to the top of the waitlist, but to my mom that was as good as knowing Jean-Paul personally.
Mom had bought this big chair that was the shape of a hand when I was around 8 years old. It was white leather, stiff and horribly ugly. Once, only once, I sat in it. I’d been eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese that the nanny had just made me. I’d thought how cool it would be to be held in a big hand like that. Mom came out of her room and saw me sitting there. Swiftly she moved towards me and grabbed me by the hair. She said, “do you have $30,000 to replace this chair if you get macaroni and cheese on it? No? Then don’t touch it with your disgusting little fingers.”
I put the chair on the curb with a sign that reads “free.”
I think everyone feels bad for me that Mark died. It’s like I can feel what people are saying, “such a shame, that poor girl all alone like that.” Meals and flowers are left on my front porch every day. I will admit, it’s nice not having to cook for myself. I can just curl up on my couch with a fat joint and eat Mrs. Morton’s taco soup or Mr. Rothbaums sirloin stakes, not having to do anything but push a few buttons on my microwave. There was a blissful silence in the house.
My parents’ estate got split evenly between Mark and I, which surprised me. I figured it would all go to Mark. Even with the money split, it was an egregious amount. I bought a Ferrari with a small portion of it. Mark wouldn’t get out of bed during that time. I’d opened Mark’s door without knocking. He was completely covered by his blanket, but I could tell by the shape of his body that he was curled up in a ball on his side.
“Get up, I need you to help me decide between either the blue or the red Ferrari,” I’d said from his doorway. He didn’t respond.
“Mark,” I said. Still no response. I walked to him, put my hand out and lightly shook him. “Mark,” I said again.
“Go away,” he said, his voice muffled under his blanket. So, I did. I walked out of his room, saying “fine, but you’re not allowed to drive it,” and shut the door behind me. I didn’t expect to see his brain splattered all over his wall the next time I went into his room.
I decided on the blue one.
I sit across from Mark’s estate lawyer. I’m wearing a yellow sundress with pink flowers which shows a lot of cleavage. Most people look terrible after a family members death, but I look better than ever. My skin is glowing, my hair is thick and healthy, my teeth are perfectly white, my eyelashes are long, accentuating my green eyes, and God, my nose. My nose is amazing.
I remember a time when Mark and I had run into his lawyer at a Brewers game, Mark later explaining to me who he was.
“Is he married?” I’d asked.
“Yup,” Mark said, shoving a hotdog in his mouth.
“Am I hotter than his wife?” I asked.
“Jesus, Eve. I’m not answering that.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Mr. Bleeker’s office is so clean I could lick the ground. I actually think about doing that, but I figure that might be weird. I just know I’d taste bleach probably, or some sort of lavender floor cleaner. I like the idea of being on all fours around this man, even if it’s just to lick his floors.
“Evelyn, I want to start off by saying I’m so sorry for your loss,” Mr. Bleeker says. His brown eyes look into mine and linger there. “No one should ever have to experience the grief and sorrow that you’ve experienced at such a young age.” He has a softness to his expression that I have learned to distinguish as sympathy.
I soften my eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Bleeker,” I make my voice shake when I say this. I feel it makes it more believable.
“Please, call me Jim,” he says. I nod because that name makes sense. He absolutely is a Jim. He is the kind of ugly where you’d see an article of a child predator that’s been arrested and they always look like Jim. His pants are 2 inches too small in the waist and two inches too short in the length and his hairline is receding in a way that makes him appear much older than he probably is. But he’s a lawyer, and I’m way out of his league. We both know that. Plus, I’ve always had this thing for ugly guys. I find them easier to control.
“Jim,” I say out loud, I want it to sound seductive but Jim is a hard name to say in a seductive way. The J is awkward and the length of the name makes it feel somewhat stilted. “Jim,” I say again, and hold it in my mouth to decide whether or not I like the taste of it. “Thank you, Jim.”
He goes over Mark’s estate, and when he turns papers to show me the amounts that will be passed to me, I lean in and push my breasts up a little to expose even more of my cleavage. I just want him to look. When he finally does, I push a piece of my hair behind my ear and smile at him. His face gets a little flushed.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have really pretty eyes?” I say. He doesn’t have pretty eyes; they’re just brown.
Jim is a quick and disappointing fuck. When he pulls out of me, he starts muttering things about how much he loves his wife.
“Please, don’t tell anyone about this,” Jim says while zipping his pants. I laugh so hard. Keeling over, holding my stomach, laughing so hard that tears stain my cheeks.
Once I finally compose myself, I say, “don’t you worry, Jim. I’ve got no one to tell,” and that was also nothing worth telling anyone even if I did.
I get an Oreo Mcflurry on the way home and it’s such a blissful experience that I drive back to the exact same McDonalds only 20 minutes later to get another one. When I get home, I decide not to shower right away. There’s something about smelling like a rich man’s cologne that I like. I also like knowing that Jim probably feels terrible. It comforts me in some way.
I watch the episode of Friends where Chandler, Ross and Rachel try to get Ross’s new couch up his staircase—I always laugh at that episode, even though I’ve seen it a million times. But today, for some reason, I don’t find the episode funny. It’s just something I’ve seen and felt before.
I go through some of Mark’s stuff later in the week and try to avoid looking at the blood stains on the wall. I throw most of his stuff away, but I keep his record player and record collection. I figure I can sell it. You could always tell Mark was home because music was constantly coming from his record player; music like Bowie, Lionel Richie, Nirvana, Sam Cook, The Beach Boys, John Lennon – his taste was all over, and in my opinion, kind of shit. But sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I’d hear a song that I liked, and I’d stand in the hallway, resting my forehead on his closed bedroom door until the song ended.
I can remember a short time when life felt normal. Me, Alicia, and Mark were all two years apart so for most of our childhood we played together. Well, I didn’t really play. I was always much bigger than Alicia, even though I was the youngest, so she was usually my target. Mark would come to her aid, but I wasn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with Mark either. He was always bigger, but I was scrappy, and ruthless. I’d scratch them or spit in their faces when I was pinned or cornered. I’d pull their hair and pinch their skin. To me, the game was never over until I won. I always won.
We would go out with our parents to the movies every once in a while. They’d buy Alicia sour patch kids and Mark a small popcorn and I usually never got anything because I’d misbehaved earlier in the day in some way or another. Sometimes they’d leave me home with the nanny while they all went together. When I was young, I’d sob and scream and beg for them to take me, but when I got older, I would cross my arms and say, “you actually think I want to spend time with you?”
My parents called Alicia their good girl. She was a good girl, always did the right thing. I thought she was unbelievably dull and uninteresting. I think I knew, even at a young age, that she wouldn’t survive long. She was too soft; crying over spiders in her room or dead worms on the sidewalk. Sometimes, on rainy days, I would collect worms and put them in her bed so when she pulled back her covers, there were hundreds of worms. I only did that a handful of times though. Alicia would sleep in our parents bed on the nights I did that. Mom had a soft spot for Alicia. I think it was because Alicia was someone who needed a protector, and that gave my mom some feeling of purpose. Mom would burst into my room and scream at me. She’d call me a terror, a menace, a bother, a pain, annoying, cruel, an agitator, and when she was feeling extra dramatic, she’d call me “the shame of the family.” Once she said, “how did you come from me? How did I give birth to a devil-child?” Those moments were often the only time my mom would speak to me the entire day.
There was a night during my freshman year of high school where I got home late. I’d shut the front door quietly and tiptoed through the house. I noticed that the TV was on, and when I got closer, I saw that mom and Alicia were sitting on the couch, both of their backs to me. Alicia’s head was resting on mom’s shoulder and mom was scratching her back. They were watching Napoleon Dynamite, the part where Napoleon dances on stage. They were both laughing. I stood and watched for a little while. I almost laughed a few times. I pulled out my phone and I took a picture of them; I figured it would be nice to have. I looked at that photo often, especially in the moments where I’d think my mom wasn’t that bad. I’d stare at it until I remembered how much I hated her.
When the cancer spread to Alicia’s brain, she’d already been sick for years. I’d stopped picking on her when she was diagnosed. She looked too tired, and I had outgrown it. I was in high school at that time; skipping classes to smoke weed under the bleachers or trying to fuck anyone who wanted to. I didn’t like being home then. There was this lingering scent of unease.
It had this way of seeping into my pours and making me feel heavy and tired. Anytime mom would see me then, she’d find something wrong with me that she needed to point out. Whether that was something about my clothes, my skin, my hair, how ugly the bags under my eyes were, or something about my crooked bottom tooth, she would always find something. One morning before school, she said, “God, Evelyn. Why are you wearing that? You look like you’re a slut.”
“You are what you eat,” I’d said, and walked out the door before she could say anything else.
I think my mom was jealous that I was prettier than her. When Alicia was sick, I became even more beautiful. It was like all of Alicia’s youth and beauty drained from her and went to me. I felt it in the way mom looked at me, that potent jealousy. It was the same way girls at school looked at me. They saw me as a threat, and I absolutely was a threat. I threatened their already fragile adolescent self-esteem by being really beautiful. I was much more beautiful than any of them. They knew it, I knew it, their boyfriends knew it, their dads knew it too.
Dad and I didn’t talk much. You’d barely know we lived in the same house. We’d pass each other in the hallway, me leaving for school and him coming from or going to another surgery. He would always leave enough coffee in the pot for me though, that was something I noticed. He worked all day, every day. Often, he’d sleep at the hospital in-between surgeries or fall asleep on the couch while watching TV. He missed my graduation because he’d scheduled a gallbladder removal for the same day. He’d texted me a few minutes before my name was called, Eve, can’t make it. Work. Dad was around for Alicia in her last few years of life, I noticed that too. I saw the compassion he was able to give. I saw his subtle softness towards her. He didn’t coddle Alicia like mom did, but he made it known that he was there. He was her voice when she started chemo and radiation. He knew exactly what questions to ask, what treatments to inquire about, knew the side effects to every drug. I watched this like a bird through a window.
Often, my dad and Mark would go golf together. I asked only once if I could go with them, to which my dad said, “Not a chance. I don’t have the energy to deal with you today.”
“You’re just afraid I’ll beat you,” I said.
“No, they’re afraid you’ll ruin the day like you always do,” mom said.
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
“Remember when you promised not to embarrass mom and dad at their 20th anniversary party and then you ended up fucking the waiter in the coat closet? Everyone at the party could hear you moaning,” Mark said and took a sip of his coffee. “Or the time that you opened all of our Christmas gifts before we woke up? Or the time that you stole dad’s Porsche and took out the Waltons’ and Clifftons’ mailboxes? Or the time—”
“Alright, alright. We get it, I’m an icon.” I said.
“How’d she turn out like this?” mom said to dad who shrugged his shoulders without looking up from the newspaper. “Do you want an award or something?” mom said. I grab the bottle of creamer in front of me and clutch it to my chest.
“God, this is so unexpected. I didn’t even prepare a speech,” I said. “I’d like to thank my parents for this award. I owe it all to them.”
“Dial down the dramatics,” dad said.
Mark vowed at a very young age that he would be a general surgeon like my dad. Because of this, dad always had a special bond with Mark. Mark would often shadow my dad at work, watching his surgeries, taking notes, asking detailed questions about his techniques. They had all sorts of inside jokes with each other. Sometimes when they’d get home from golfing or dinner or beers, I could hear them cackling like hyenas through my closed bedroom door. I would put my headphones on in those moments and turn the volume all the way up. I figured the joke probably wasn’t even that funny.
I didn’t visit Alicia much the year she died since I lived on campus at Loyola about an hour and a half away from home. I also hated having to visit her. Alicia also had nothing interesting to say during that time, so I found myself rolling my eyes when it was time to visit. It was a Wednesday night in March when dad called me. I was walking through the slushy melting snow of Chicago when his name popped up on my screen. I stared at my phone ringing in my hand. I knew, I just knew and because of that knowledge I didn’t want to answer. Once I finally did answer, he told me exactly what I knew he was going to tell me. So, I drove home to see her. I drove the speed limit and prayed that she would be dead before I got there. She wasn’t. She looked like some embryonic being. She had a blue hue to her skin like a baby born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. She looked alien and unearthly, death hovering above her like her own little spaceship.
“Hey,” I said, mom was sitting in the hospital room with her. Mom was holding her hand. I couldn’t remember the last time mom held my hand. Maybe I was a baby, taking my first steps, holding onto her pointer fingers as I tried to gain balance. I wondered if I were to hold her hand if she’d pull away from me. Would I hold it and feel like I was holding my own in some way? Would I clutch her hand with a desperate grip or just enough for the skin of our hands to hesitantly brush against one another —as if not to scare the other away? Either way it didn’t matter.
I also couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen mom without makeup on. The bags under her eyes were dark and looked heavy. Her sunspots and wrinkles painted her face, showing the age she’d always tried to hide. I thought, for the briefest of seconds, that my mom was stunning like that. It was the most human I’d ever seen her. Tired, undone, naked.
I had two cups of coffee in my hand. I bought Alicia one, even though I wasn’t sure whether or not she could have it. “Coffee?” I said to Alicia.
Alicia looked at me, and so did mom. She had an oxygen mask over her face, but I could see the blue in her eyes like they were sparkling. Mom responded, “You think she can drink coffee? Are you stupid?”
Alicia put her hand on mom’s arm, and only slightly shook her head. Mom took a deep breath like one would if they were in the middle of meditating.
“Coffee?” I asked mom.
“I haven’t had caffeine in years, you know this.” I didn’t know that.
“It’s decaf,” I said. It wasn’t decaf. Mom didn’t respond, just stared at me.
“Fine,” I said. “More for me.” Mom’s phone rang then, and she stood to answer it, walking into the hall.
Alicia pulled her mask down a bit to say, “Thanks for coming, Eve.”
“It’s no big deal. I already had all my homework done for the week,” I said. She nodded, putting the oxygen mask back over her nose and mouth, pointing to the chair mom had just been sitting in next to her bed. I sat down, sipping from my coffee cup, and looking at the hospital room my sister had been staying in for months. I put my feet on her bed and stretched my legs. I took off the lid to my coffee cup and watched the steam billow.
“This place sucks ass,” I said, looking anywhere but her. “It smells like rubber and plastic and piss.” She pulled her oxygen mask down again.
“I don’t think I’ll be here much longer,” she said.
“Yeah, probably not,” I said. She laughed a little and then started coughing. “Can I vape in here?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said once she stopped coughing. “But I also don’t care.”
I take a long drag of my vape and blow it up to the ceiling.
“I wish we’d been closer,” Alicia said.
“Yeah, right.”
“I mean it.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I always wanted to be more like you.”
“Fuck off.”
“It’s true.”
“Seriously Al, fuck off with this.”
Alicia died a few hours later, and then I drove back to school.
Mark handled Alicia’s death much better than he did our parents’. Mark and dad planned Alicia’s funeral so quick you’d think it was a race. Mark barely cried for Alicia, but he fell to his knees when the sheets were pulled back revealing our parents. He laid there, on the ground of the Milwaukee General morgue, clutching his knees and rocking back and forth like a child. He was crying so hysterically that he threw up all over my shoes. That’s when I started laughing. I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. It was an uncontrollable kind of laughter that made me fall to the ground, roll around, flailing, banging my palms on the floor. I couldn’t stop. I laughed until I, too, threw up, and that made me laugh even harder.
Mark and I drove home in silence, covered in each other’s vomit.
I hired the best home renovator in Milwaukee. Luke was shorter than me, big, bushy beard, long scraggly hair, ring on his finger.
“How long have you been doing this kind of work?” I ask while twirling my hair around my pointer finger.
“My whole life,” Luke says, not looking at me. “My dad owned this business and passed it down to me.”
“Ah,” I say. “My dad owned this house and passed it down to me.” He nods but says nothing else. I tell him all the things I want to change about the house, and he scribbles things in his notepad. He looks like the kind of guy who wouldn’t know how to write or read so I’m surprised when I catch a glimpse of his notes and see that he writes in cursive.
I show Luke the bedrooms upstairs. We walk into Alicia’s room first. The walls are colored lavender purple, with white flowers that had been hand painted by some Italian artist my parents liked. The curtains have a yellow hue from the sunlight. Her bed is perfectly made, no crease or wrinkles in sight. There’s even a sweatshirt of hers sitting on her bed, folded like it just came out of the dryer, ready to be worn by Alicia and Alicia alone since I’d never wear a sweatshirt that ugly. For one second, just one, it feels like she is still alive. That she’ll walk in and say, “What the hell are you doing in here?”
A few weeks after Alicia had died, I’d gotten home late from a party and was walking down the hallway to my room when I saw Alicia’s light was on. I was extremely drunk, leaning against the wall of the hallway to stay upright. I looked into Alicia’s room and saw mom laying on her bed, clutching Alicia’s favorite teddy bear. It was the same teddy bear I stole from her room when I was younger and hid in the basement for months so she couldn’t find it. Mom clutched it to her chest as she lay on her side, curled up. She was crying in a way that made me sure that she was trying not to. She didn’t see me standing there at first, but once she did, she sat up and quickly wiped her face.
“Why are you still awake?” mom said.
“I’m just getting home.” She looks at her watch.
“It’s almost 4 am.”
“I’m aware.”
“Where were you?”
“A party.”
“You get invited to parties?”
“Yeah, the guys like it when I’m there. I make things interesting.”
“What do you do?”
“Whoever I can.” She stood from Alicia’s bed and walked towards me. She paused in front of me, studying my face and tilting her head. She looked me up and down.
“What are you going to do when you’re no longer beautiful?” Mom asked.
“I guess I’ll be just like you.” Before I knew what she was doing, I felt her open palm connecting with my face, making a loud and perfect smacking sound. I’d put my hand to my burning cheek and stared at her. I was surprised by how much it hurt, even with how drunk I was. She hadn’t hit me since I was a child, and even then it was a rare occurrence. There was a silence then, long and drawn out. I stepped to her, our faces so close I could smell her breath and I was sure she could smell the tequila on mine.
“If you ever touch me again, I’ll rip your face off with my teeth,” I said in a clear, dangerously steady tone. I walked out of Alicia’s room and into my own.
I tell Luke I want Alicia’s whole room torn up. He nods and flips to a new page in his notebook.
I avoid going into Mark’s room because his blood and little chunks of his brain are encrusted on his wall. There was no way in hell I was going to clean it and every cleaning service I’ve called claims it’s too “emotionally disturbing” for them to do it.
“What if I pay extra?” I said to the woman on the phone from Frank’s Cleaning Service.
“No,” she said.
“Seriously, I’ll pay whatever, name your price.”
“We don’t want to put our staff through that.”
“Cunt ass bitch,” I said into the phone and hung up.
I decided to call one of my ex-boyfriends, Tucker, since I know he still lives in the area.
“Eve?” is how he answers his phone.
“Yeah, hi Tuck.”
“How are you?” he asks.
“Not good, Tuck,” I say, making the tremble in my voice noticeable.
“Oh, baby,” he says. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Actually, yeah,” I say. “There is.”
When I open the door, Tucker is standing with a bag full of cleaning supplies. He still looks exactly the same as he did when we dated. Shaggy brown hair, cargo pants, a hoodie, his small lips, his massive forehead a pilot could land a plane on. He puts the bag down and pulls me into a hug. I can’t remember the last time I was touched like this, so tender. It makes me feel like I’m suffocating so I pull away.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
“Always,” Tuck says. He puts his hands on my arms, and rubs them up and down. God, I always hated when he did this.
“Mark’s room is the third door to the right,” I say.
“I remember,” he says and smiles without showing his teeth. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“C’mon Eve. How are you, really?”
“I’ll feel better once that shit is cleaned up.” He stops rubbing my arms and nods.
When Tucker opens the door, he gasps.
“Holy crap,” he says. That was one thing about Tucker that used to drive me crazy; he never swore. He’d call people frickers instead of fuckers. It was so unbelievably embarrassing, and I’d respond with Fuckers, Tuck. Just say fuckers.
“Okay, so you’re good in here?” I say.
“You’re not going to help me?” he asks.
“It’s just too much for me right now,” I say and put my hand over my mouth.
“Of course,” he says. “Go make yourself a cup of tea or something. I’ve got this.”
An hour later, Tucker comes out of Mark’s room looking paler than when he arrived. He sets the cleaning stuff down on the table where I’m sitting with a glass of wine in my right hand, and a joint in my left. I don’t offer him a glass because I don’t want him to stay. He sits down, reaching over and plucking the joint from between my fingers and putting it to his lips. This action made me want to reach across the table and strangle him to death.
“It’s so quiet in here,” Tucker says, blowing the smoke out.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s nice.” I reach over and snatch the joint from his fingers. He stares at me as I take a long drag and blow the smoke up to the ceiling.
“I should probably go,” Tucker says. “I’m meeting my fiancé for dinner soon.”
I put my hand on his hand, stopping him midway through standing.
“You should stay,” I say, lightly stroking his hand in small, intrinsic circles. “Just for a little while.”
The next morning, I wake up early, make a cup of coffee and stand with it on my back porch. The sun is just rising behind the trees and painting the sky in a shade of orange that severely washes out my skin tone. A bee starts buzzing around my coffee and I swat at it, but each time it dodges me. The birds chirp aggressively, and I find the sound to be so insufferable that I stand abruptly, letting out a loud sigh of frustration. Once I’m inside my house again, I lean my head on the wall and bathe in the silence.