by Brea Brown
To be fair, it’s only midnight in my mind. But that means when Jude stops by this evening to get me, it’ll be 1 p.m. to me, and I won’t have had any sleep.
Well, don’t panic. I decide to try to sleep again in a couple of hours. I still have plenty of time to get in some rest. This is exactly why I took today and tomorrow off. As soon as the excitement wears off, I’ll crash. My circadian rhythms will kick in. It’ll be fine.
I was just dozing off when the pet relocation service came by to deliver Sandberg, who then spent the entire afternoon ignoring me. And when I finally decided to stop trying to get back in his good graces and take a nap, he decided he wanted to play. Now it’s 6:30, Jude will be here within the hour, and I can hardly keep my eyes open.
I’ve tried jogging in place, sticking my face in the mini-fridge, and drinking several cups of coffee. But I’ve hit the wall. For good.
Or not.
I was worried about not being able to adjust to such a big time change, so I bought and packed some mild over-the-counter uppers, the kind popular with cramming college students. Digging them out of my suitcase, I read the instructions and take the recommended dose. Then I go into the bathroom and try to use makeup to hide the outward signs that I haven’t slept in thirty-three hours.
I’m just lamenting the dark circles under my eyes when I hear the knock on the door.
“Frack,” I mutter, quickly blotting the green concealer. “Coming!”
When I open the door, Jude smiles charmingly at me. “Cheers. I’m a bit early. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Not at all,” I reassure him. “Sandberg and I were just resting.”
“Jet lagged?” he asks, wincing.
“Me? Nah!” I lie. “Adjusting just fine.”
He peers past me into my room and eyes Sandberg. “And how about His Nibs? Not giving you too hard a time, I hope.”
I laugh. “At first, yeah. But he got over it faster than I thought he would. Of course, now I’m going to leave him again, so I can probably expect a present waiting for me when I get back later, but oh, well.” I grab my messenger bag from the chair next to the tiny table that’s supposed to serve as a desk and dining table in one. “Where are you taking me?”
He looks from me to the cat and back again. “Well, if you don’t mind ordering in at my place, you can bring Sandberg.”
After going back and forth for a while about the logistics of such a thing (and my obsessively making sure it’s really okay), we load the cat into his carrier and set off on foot, at Jude’s insistence that he lives minutes away. In a surprisingly short amount of time, we’re standing outside his apartment door.
“You have to promise not to laugh when you see this place,” he says, turning the key in the locks. “It’s quite posh. I rather hate it, actually.”
“It doesn’t look very fancy from out here,” I declare in the politest way possible. The hallway we’re standing in is actually kind of dim and dank and smells like mothballs.
But as soon as he opens the door, it’s like we’re stepping into an entirely different building. I noticed the huge windows when we were on the street, but they’re on the second floor, and since he led me to a ground-floor door, I didn’t think they were part of his place. But they are.
I stare open-mouthed at them. “Holy shit,” I breathe, taking in the industrial-chic kitchen, white furniture, and metal stairs leading up to a loft with a giant bed in its center. It’s not his style at all, but I would know blindfolded that he lives here. It smells like him: cinnamon Altoids, shaving cream, and laundry detergent.
“I know. Please don’t think less of me for being the kind of prat who lives in a place like this. It seemed like a good idea four months ago, but…” He sets the carrier down and releases the catch on the door. Sandberg immediately jumps onto the pure-white couch and makes himself comfortable.
“No, no, buddy,” I tell him, picking him up.
Jude takes him from my arms and sets him down where he was. “He’s fine.” Obviously unconcerned, he steps away and goes into the kitchen, where he opens a drawer and pulls out a stack of paper menus. “Let’s see… Chinese, Indian, Thai, kebabs, pizza, fish and chips… what’s your fancy?”
“I think it’s only right that I have fish and chips, don’t you?”
He shrugs. “Sounds fine. I’ll just go upstairs, call them, and change my clothes.”
He presses a button next to the stairs, sending blinds down from a slot in the ceiling to cover the windows. Then he bounds lightly up the stairs, leaving me alone to look around.
This place is eerily similar to the London maisonette of my fantasies, complete with one entire wall of crammed bookshelves reaching to the ceiling. A catwalk connected to the loft and a ladder allows access to the higher shelves. I wander over, perusing the titles at eye level. I’ve never seen these books before in Jude’s possession. They’re all British classics. Heavy on Dickens and the romantic poets.
I stifle a grin and move on to his music collection, an old-school assortment of vinyl, CDs, and even a few tapes thrown in. When I’d questioned why he’d dragged all of this stuff across the Atlantic when it could have fit on a tiny device in his pocket, he’d shrugged. “I like having physical copies of stuff. Same with books and blueprints. Digital files are convenient, but you can’t touch them. You can’t smell them.”
I’d teased him about sniffing CDs, and he’d distracted me by sniffing my neck and murmuring that he’d never replace me with a digital Libby, so why should his music be any different?
I shiver at the memory and snap back to the present.
Everything seems to be mostly the same as it was in Chicago, with a few oddballs thrown in (Neil Young? Johnny Cash?). Unable to resist, I pluck an old Snow Patrol CD from the rack and turn it over to read the song titles. Not a bad song on the entire album. By design, it’s been forever since I’ve listened to anything by them.
“Put on whatever you’d like,” he calls over the railing above, startling me so much that I drop the CD with a clatter, and the front of the case pops off and skitters under the coffee table. I drop to all fours and fish it out, suddenly feeling nervous and jittery.
Even though I suspect it’s dangerous, I nonetheless insert the disc into an ancient CD player that was probably state-of-the-art and extremely expensive when it was originally sold. The notes to the first song blast at me from surround-sound speakers in every corner of the room.
“Aaaghh!” I groan, frantically searching the front panel with shaking fingers for anything that could be the volume control. But without my having touched anything, the music softens.
Sandberg gripes at me from the couch, where he’s crouched into a defensive position.
“Sorry!” Jude says from the loft, where he’s adjusting the volume with a remote. “I tend to keep it a bit loud. Food’s on the way!”
I want to reacquaint myself with the lyrics to the first song, but I’m distracted by my racing heart. My eyeballs feel like they’re jiggling in their sockets.
Jude trots barefoot down the stairs in shorts and a t-shirt. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Water?” I suggest unsurely, blinking rapidly. Sweat breaks out at my hairline.
“Really?” he asks, surprised, standing in front of the open refrigerator. “I have all manner of beverages in here. Just no food.”
“Really,” I reply, trying to take a deep breath and slow my heartbeat.
“Okay,” he says, pulling out a bottle of beer and a bottle of water, prying off the top of his beer bottle on the edge of the counter.
I meet him halfway between the kitchen and the living room and take the water from him. He sits in a chair at a right angle to the sofa. I take the loveseat cushion not already occupied by Sandberg, who’s dozing.
For lack of anything better to say, I point out, “He’s getting dark gray fur all over your couch.” My leg starts bouncing. I stare at it, wondering why it’s doing that and why I can’t stop it.
Jude finishes a long pull on his beer with a thwong. “Would you stop worrying about the bloody furniture? If anything, he’s making it more interesting.” Looking completely relaxed, lounged back in the low-slung chair with his hands resting on each arm, his legs spread wide, he smiles at me.
“You must have taken your sofa selection duties too lightly when you bought this furniture. Sounds like you needed my help. Huh-huh!” The nervous laugh that jumps from my mouth startles both of us.
He looks suspiciously at me and says, “Yes... That would have been nice… if I had wanted to search and search and never decide on anything. Are you okay?”
Even though I’m pretty sure I’m not, I lie and say, “Yeah, yeah. Fine!” I put both hands on my leg to try to still it, but it’s no use, so I fold them in my lap and smile tightly. “Just fine! Why?”
“You’re acting like you’re on one,” he states bluntly.
“No, I’m not!” I hastily object. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about taking drugs; you know that!”
Laughing, he imitates my blinky, twitchy, jumpy behavior. “What’s all this, then? Tweaker.”
I blush, making the sweat come harder and faster. Then I start hysterically laughing. Gasping for air, I manage to say, “I’m not a tweaker!”
He sets his empty beer bottle on the floor by his feet and leans forward. “Then what the hell’s going on with you?” It’s said with a smile.
I can’t bear to sit anymore. Jumping up, I cross the room and turn to face him. “Uh, nothing! Well, I mean… That is…” I scratch at a spot on my arm that doesn’t get less itchy, no matter how hard I scratch. It’s worse to have him think I’m on drugs than to just admit, “I took some, um, pep pills before you picked me up.”
“Pep pills.” It comes out more like a statement than a question.
“Yeah. Caffeine. Concentrated.”
He laughs, standing and walking over to me. “Oh. I wouldn’t have done that if I were you. Why the bloody hell did you do that?” He grasps my shoulders, which makes me giggle like Leslie, which reminds me about what I need to tell him.
“Oh, shit!” I blurt, ducking away from him. I practically run into the kitchen, keeping the island between us when he follows me. We circle it a few times before the level-headed one of the two of us stops in front of the refrigerator and opens it for another beer.
“You’re going to be up for days now, you know,” he informs me calmly. “You should have just let your body get naturally used to the time shift.
“I was!” I defend myself. “But I couldn’t sleep last night, and Sandberg wouldn’t let me sleep this afternoon, so by 6:00, I had been up 32 hours, and you were about to show up, and I was falling asleep on the toilet!”
Beer sprays from his mouth onto the floor and island in front of him. He scoots back and bends at the waist, cupping his hand under his dripping chin. After he mops up the worst of it with the front of his shirt, he grabs a dish towel and says, “Well. That was unexpected.”
“Sorry. I’m just telling you, it was necessary. I had to do something if I was going to hang out with you tonight.”
He mops up the beer and tosses the towel into a machine in the kitchen that looks like an old-timey dishwasher but upon closer inspection is a combined washer and dryer for clothes.
“Whoa! That’s weird! A laundry machine in your kitchen?”
“Focus, Foster!” he demands, taking advantage of my being distracted and catching me by the hand. “Why didn’t you just call me at the office and tell me you were too cream crackered to do anything tonight? I would have understood.”
His sympathetic tone hits another chord with me. I look up into his face and catch myself puddling up. “I know. You’re so understanding.” I sniffle and push on. “But I wanted to be with you tonight. I mean, hang out. Talk. You know.”
“Yeah…” he says, trailing off and leaning closer to me, gazing into my blinky eyes. “Libby?”
“Uh huh?”
A buzzing noise gets our attention. Whereas I don’t know what the source of the noise is, Jude curses under his breath and moves away from me. He digs his wallet out of his pocket and goes to the door, where he presses a button and says into the speaker, “Yes?”
“Food delivery!”
“Right. It’s open.” He turns to me. “Sorry.”
After he pays for the food, he sets the bags on a tiny table tucked under the metal stairs. He gets a fresh beer for himself and a fresh bottle of water for me. I search through the cupboards for some plates. But he comes up behind me and puts his hands on my hips, murmuring near my ear, “Why don’t you have a seat and let me handle the breakables?”
What would have normally been a tiny shiver manifests itself in my current state as a convulsion. My shoulder comes up and bangs against my ear. “Ow!” I hiss, spinning around to face him. I’m trapped between him and the counter, my head against the top cupboards.
After what feels like forever, he backs away and frees me to go to the table. I do and furiously begin to unpack the bags, as if we’re in a hurry.
Shaking his head, he joins me with the plates and cutlery. “I really wish you had asked my advice before taking those pills. You’re going to regret it.”
Irritably, I answer, “Well, I didn’t think I needed a second opinion. I needed to stay awake; I took the pills. End of story. They’ll wear off; I’ll crash. It’ll be fine.” When he continues to smile and shake his head, I say, “What? Have you taken these before, or something?”
He nods as he distributes the food. “I’m not sure if you took the same kind, but yes. I have. Once. That’s all it took. Never again.”
Great. I try to pretend I’m not concerned, though, repeating, “It’ll be fine.”
“In the meantime,” he says, “what’re you gonna do with all this energy?”
I cut into my fish. “First, I’m going to eat. Then… I dunno.” My leg jounces under the table. “We’re gonna talk, right?”
“If you insist,” he mutters, then looks up at me and smiles, saying more loudly, “Absolutely. But talking’s not going to tire you out.”
He has no idea what kind of monster conversation awaits him. My nervous giggle is back. To my dismay, I flirt. “What do you suggest, then?”
His fork stops midway to his mouth. He places it on the edge of his plate and sits back. “We could, uh, go for a walk. I don’t know… maybe drop into a pub? Maybe alcohol would counteract the effects of the pills.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t want to start some kind of chemical warfare in my body. One substance is enough, thanks.”
He shrugs. “You might change your mind in about twenty-four hours when your eyelids feel like they’re glued open and all you want to do is sleep.” At my horrified expression, he laughs. “Try not to think about it, though. Let’s talk about something else. Such as… Who at work are you going to miss the most?” he asks, a twinkle in his eyes.
Without hesitating, I answer, “Lisa,” eliciting a comically indignant response from him.
“Uh!”
I set aside my water. “No offense.”
“Some taken, sorry. I can’t believe you’re going to miss Lisa more than me!”
I don’t tell him I hope there’ll be no need for me to miss him. Instead, I defend my answer. “She made me laugh. And stood up for me.”
He starts ticking things off on his fingers. “Well, I bought you sweets and made you laugh and made you… well, I guess we can’t count that, because I never did that at work, but still…”
I roll my eyes at him. “Here we go. It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”
“For me, yes. It’s important.” Clearing his throat and the table, he takes our dirty dishes into the kitchen and places them in the sink. Then he turns around and braces his weight against his hands on the edge of the counter. “So, who are you going to miss the least? I guess I shouldn’t assume it’s not me.”
I’m not ready to utter her name
yet. Twirling a piece of my hair to the point of pain, I say coyly, “It’s not you.”
“Marvin?” he guesses. When I shake my head and look down at the table, he tries again. “Gary? No? Ah, Leslie!”
My head snaps up, giving me away. He laughs. “Ah, yes. Lezzzzzlie. You and she were a bit like oil and water, weren’t you?”
“She’s a horrible person, Jude,” I insist, adding, “Really!” when he waves dismissively at me and chuckles.
“She’s harmless. Just an insecure little girl with daddy issues,” he claims.
This is it! Say it! I scream at myself. Get it over with, so you can relax… or relax as much as it’s physically and mentally possible to do on these stupid pills. But I can’t. I can’t bring myself to tell him that the past six months have been a waste. That our break-up wouldn’t have stuck if I hadn’t been so gullible.
So, I chicken out. I let him keep talking.
“Plus, the only reason she was like that to you was because she was jealous. You’re lovely. Inside and out.”
It’s such a simple statement, but it almost brings me to tears. I think it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I let slip as soon as I think it.
He shrugs and smiles shyly. “It’s true. It’s a shame no one’s ever told you that.” The next minute would be filled with awkward silence if not for the sound of my foot tapping against the table leg.
Then we both speak at the same time:
“Would you a fancy a walk?”
“I still love you.”
My declaration definitely takes precedence over his question.
He blinks at me. Blushing, sweating, shaking me. When he doesn’t respond right away, I say, “I mean, it’s probably obvious, so I thought I’d toss it out there. Just, uh, for your information. But, yeah. A walk sounds fine. If it’s not raining. Is it always this rainy here?”
