by Lexy Timms
She said something so quietly he couldn’t understand, but it sounded something like “I need you.”
“Is she your friend?”
“She’s not here anymore, don’t you understand?” The sudden shouting shocked him.
“I don’t understand, because I don’t know her at all, and I don’t know you very well. But I want to.”
Ignoring what he said, she dug her fingernails into the edge of the mattress. Her knuckles turned white. “I never let myself be sad about her.”
“What happened?”
“I lived with her above the nightclub, and she told Reg to make me a drink, and then she saved me when the bad things happened.” Her voice was garbled behind the fresh slew of tears, and Cayden didn’t try to translate. That wasn’t what he had been expecting her to say.
“Where is she now?” His voice came out just a hint timid, and it surprised him. It wasn’t easy to make him feel uncomfortable, and somehow this small neighbor he barely knew had managed to do it in five seconds.
Lillian’s bedroom suddenly got cold and deathly quiet.
“She’s dead,” he heard her whisper, so softly he wasn’t sure if he heard right. “My best friend is dead.”
Oh, shit. He was positive he wasn’t ready to handle this kind of heartbreak, but Lillian was very adamant about wanting to live independently and not wanting him to spend more time around her than he had to.
It made him want her more.
He lost track of his thoughts for a moment, processing the vulnerable information she had just shared. He heard himself saying “I’m so sorry, Lillian,” and suddenly he was kneeling beside her bed, brushing the hair back from her sweaty face. And she wasn’t protesting. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked innocently. In a situation like this all he should be thinking about is how beautiful Lillian was, drunk and sleepy or not, but the memories of his friends calling him “whipped” and worse crept into the back of his mind.
I just want to make sure she’s okay. Focusing was hard. Alongside these thoughts, his eyes kept wandering to the empty side of her bed. She was hanging halfway off this side. There was so much space next to her. He knew he would fit perfectly into it.
She nodded, her eyes mostly closed. He almost blushed; she looked so peaceful despite the emotional turmoil that she had been going through. Hopefully it had just lasted for today, and wasn’t something that plagued her all the time. He saw how fragile she was on the outside and figured she was much stronger on the inside, but that didn’t detract from his wanting to see her happy and healthy.
“Can you unlock your phone for me? I’m going to put in my number, and you text me or call me if you need anything.”
Weakly, she reached over and unlocked her phone with her fingerprint. “You aren’t going to have a party tonight?” She looked him in the eyes, and the depth of their feeling pierced through him. How did she manage to make him feel so vulnerable?
He quickly put his number in her contacts and set the phone back on the bedside table. She was still looking at him. “Nah,” he replied at last. “No party tonight. I’ll come over later to check on you.”
Lillian closed her eyes and smiled. “You’re sweet, you know? Very sweet.”
Chapter 4
For the past hour, she’d been lying in bed in a half-asleep/half-awake state. In her half-sleep she dreamed of Amelia, and vaguely recollected bits and pieces of what happened earlier. Cayden had been at the house, she knew that much. Her nose was clogged but that didn’t keep her from catching the ghost of his presence—and his musky scent. She couldn’t tell what actually happened and what was fabricated in her mind; she was still far too tired to try to sort it all out.
But in her half-awake state, she remembered he’d put his number in her phone. At first, when the realization came back to her, she didn’t believe it. It must have been a dream. In any normal circumstance she would never hand her phone to someone, especially him. Her phone held her life: everything from her work files and contacts to personal photos and videos. All her notes were on there, her diary...everything. No possession of hers was more personal than her phone.
I must’ve been really drunk, she thought through the haze. I think I still am. Everything feels weird. She felt herself going downhill into a semi-panic attack, obsessing over doing something out of character, and reminded herself to take deep breaths.
On breath number six, she faded out and heard Amelia.
Why not? Her favorite phrase.
Yeah, why not? Lillian reasoned with herself at the same time the other part of her shouted, Go away, Amelia. You’re ruining everything I’ve not only planned, but also brought to existence. I did what I set out to do.
She opened an eye and saw that both cats had left; she was lying there alone in her big, soft bed.
Slowly, painfully, she stretched her arm towards the bedside table and felt for her phone. It took too much energy to turn her head and see where she was reaching, so she flopped her arm down until she felt the familiar shape.
The screen lit up. No notifications. No emails, nothing. She’d been asleep for several hours; in some faraway place of her mind she remembered there was sunlight when she went onto the back porch. Everything afterwards was a blur, but she couldn’t have been out there for too long.
The first thing she saw when she unlocked it was the last thing that had been pulled up: her contact information.
Cayden Manos. She stared at his name. It wasn’t registering fast enough. Did I really let him give me his number? Seriously? This was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid. When he moved in, she vowed to do everything in her power to make sure he didn’t get the wrong idea. A love interest was the last thing she needed right now. Not at the peak of her career, especially.
The alcohol hadn’t worn off yet, and she knew the hangover would be much worse. I need to take advantage of my clear mind now. Clear-ish, I mean. Normally when she started freaking out, she listed a bunch of reasons why something wasn’t a good idea. All the new clients. Extra workload. The cats might not like him.
Who was she kidding?
The cats definitely like him. She didn’t want to admit it. Her mind wasn’t clear at all, as much as she wanted it to be. But she wasn’t sober enough to start using her brain like she normally did. Her feelings were still fresh in her heart.
Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. Mustering up a tiny bit of energy, she rolled over with a grunt. The glass of water was still there, more proof Cayden had been here. A drop of sweat still lingered on the outside of it, but only one. It had been sitting a while. She glanced at the time on her phone. It was midnight now, after all.
She drank the whole glass in one go, savoring every swallow like she hadn’t touched water to her lips in a week. Feeling more alive but also more tired, she edged the glass back onto the table and let her arm collapse halfway off the bed.
What the hell. With one hand, she unlocked her phone and stared at his name again. Time began to blur, probably because she wanted it to. While she typed the message, she felt herself fading out. She didn’t have the energy to read it before she dropped off into sleep again, still holding her phone.
“I THOUGHT YOU WERE dead.”
She knew it was a dream, but she wanted to stay in it. This place is perfect. There was sand between her toes and a vast ocean in front of her. The sun was setting behind mountains in the distance, and she could feel the breeze on her skin.
“What?” she asked, smiling at the orange sky.
“I thought you were dead. Well, not actually, but I was worried.”
The voice was different. She knew it, but couldn’t place it. Looking around, she tried to spot the person attached to the voice, but there was no one in sight. “Who are you? I can’t find you.”
A deep chuckle filled the whole space and suddenly she jolted when a hand touched her arm. The dreamy sunset and beach disappeared in half a second and her eyes were wide open, staring at Cayden’s
hands folded together on her bed. He was kneeling on her floor so his head was about at the same level as hers.
“You all right? Looks like you just saw a ghost.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why do you always ask me that?”
She wanted him to be annoyed at her resistance, but the hangover was just beginning to set in and being stubborn was far too troublesome. “I have to ask it.”
He stood up, stretching his arms to the ceiling. His back popped, and he smiled at her bookcase. “I’m surprised you actually texted me. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Can’t resist a late-night text message, can you?” She tried to scowl but it didn’t work, so she just shut her eyes tight.
“Nope, especially from a girl who’s home alone sick.”
Taken aback she gaped at him, and a smirk crossed his face. “Forget that. It was definitely an unintentional reference to a booty call.”
I wish I had never listened to myself.
“Pardon?”
She looked up. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Never mind,” she grumbled. “You can go home now. You’re probably tired from not having a million people over to have fun.”
“So you’re my keeper now? I knew it!” He did a victory clap, and she was appalled that his biceps caught her attention so easily. “First my gardening schedule, now my sleep schedule? No wonder you’re so good at helping people organize their lives. I couldn’t have hand-picked a better neighbor, Lil.”
Nickname? Did he just give me a nickname? “Let’s give up this passive-aggressive—”
“Flirting?” he finished.
Her words balled into a hard lump in her throat, and she couldn’t even hear her thoughts. The air got very still. Cayden stood there at the foot of her bed, his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest, with one eyebrow raised. He looked so comical, but also serious. It wasn’t a joke. He had meant it.
Finally she found her voice, but it was reduced to a whisper. “I didn’t mean to text you.”
“Are you glad you did?” He didn’t move his feet, but he put his hands in his pockets.
Her skin got hot. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
They looked at each other for a little while. Lillian wished desperately that the cats would come in and give her some distraction, but there was no sign of them. It was just her and Cayden there, and she was in the bed undoubtedly looking far from her best, and he was much sexier than anyone she had come into contact with in a long time.
As they stared, the feeling of him picking her up and carrying her in here earlier came back, so real that for a second she got lost and thought it was actually happening again. She wanted it to happen again. No amount of alcohol or additional clients crammed into her routine could hide that. For a long time, many years, she had secretly prided herself on being able to bury anything she didn’t want to remember or anything that hurt her, and it would never rise to the surface again.
All that, in this moment, was shattering, and she could almost hear the pieces falling and hitting the ground.
“So...I did some yard work earlier.”
Is he trying to make small talk? “Oh, fun,” she replied, trying to go with it.
“Yeah, I got a little carried away and ended up working on yours, too.”
“You did my yard again?”
He winked, and nodded proudly.
“This is too much, Cayden. You can’t keep doing this.”
His face fell. “Why not?”
“Just...because.”
“Because you like to do everything alone? Drink alone? Live alone? Let your yard decompose alone?”
She tried not to frown. “My yard is fine, it’s just not pristine like yours.”
“You let it grow however it wants,” he muttered under his breath.
Ignoring him, she protested, “And I don’t live alone. I have my cats.”
“Do you ever feel crazy talking to your cats so much, like they’re people?”
Lillian stared at him blankly. “No.”
“None of that addresses the issue of you drinking alone and being severely hungover at random times of the week.”
“What are you talking about?” Her defensiveness turned to pure confusion. “This is the first time I’ve touched alcohol to my lips in forever.”
Cayden put his hands on his hips. He towered over her bed and she suddenly felt very small. “I see you get in your car to leave in the morning, or take the trash out, or work on your flowers. On random weekdays you stumble around like you can’t find your feet, or you walk like an old woman.” He raised his hands in surrender. “You can pull a ‘we don’t even know each other’ or whatever, but I’m getting worried about you.”
Oh, shit. He’s been seeing my flare-ups and when I’m not on my pain meds. “I’m not drinking alone!” Lillian blurted out, hitting her fist on the mattress. “I’m sick!”
His face was swept clean of the frustration twisting his brows. “With what?”
She felt her heart thud. “I don’t want to talk about it. But I promise you, those aren’t hangovers. You don’t need to worry. I’m fine.” Desperate to get away from the stress of this discussion, she hugged her knees and looked down at the blanket. Cayden sat down beside her on the bed, and she couldn’t manage to ask him to move.
“What are you not telling me, Lil?” The tenderness in his voice broke something inside her and tears suddenly filled her eyes.
“I don’t even know you,” she whispered, unable to think of anything else.
“Bullshit,” he said, and moved his hand to her shoulder. “We know each other at least a little. And if seeing you hungover isn’t breaking the ice, I don’t know what is.”
She couldn’t find any words in her throat.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
That’s what I am, she thought. Her head started to hurt. Afraid of being sick, of being alone, of falling in love. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she wished she could shrink. She saw Cayden’s big chest and wanted so badly to be held tight against it to feel safe. With a cough-sob, she threw herself at him and buried her face in his chest. He hugged her close like they had known each other for years. Like they had done this many times before.
Indeed they had, but only in their minds.
He didn’t move until she stopped trembling. When she did, he loosened his grip and pulled back to look at her.
She was embarrassed at losing control like that. She wasn’t thinking about how humiliating this would feel when she just wanted to be held, but it was hitting her hard now. Barely managing to meet his eyes, she muttered, “I’m sorry.”
“It felt like you needed that.”
She nodded so slightly she barely felt it.
Without saying anything, Cayden stood and took her glass out of the room.
I’ve done it now, she thought, and pulled the sheet over her head, curling up into a fetal position on her side. That was so lame, Lillian. So lame.
His footsteps came back; she heard ice clinking against the glass and the tiny lamp in the corner switch on. The sheet slowly came off her head and piled at her waist. He didn’t sit down or touch her, but stood there calmly.
Please, let me disappear for a while. I can’t handle what just happened right now. Not hungover.
“Let me know in the morning how you’re feeling, okay?” He walked out, turning the overhead light out on his way.
THE HANGOVER WAS AS bad as she expected it to be. A long time had passed since her last one, but she remembered as clear as day how it felt and how to handle it. However, she was older now, and the dealing with it part wasn’t as easy as she remembered it being before.
Most of the day, she rotated between the bed, living room—drapes covering all the windows, of course, but it still wasn’t dark enough—and a few times the bathroom for a soak in the tub to rinse off the sweat. Her hangovers before had never made her have such
intense hot flashes. Then again, she hadn’t been sick back then like she was now.
“This is miserable,” she grunted to the cats, who had followed her to the bathroom and were lying in the doorway. They looked at her sleepily, but with that intensity that meant they wanted something.
Suddenly she realized that, in her foggy mind, she had totally forgotten to feed them all day. It didn’t register because, when she woke, there was food in their dishes, and she realized that Cayden had fed the cats sometime last night when he was over.
I didn’t hear him feed them. She tried her best to recall all the sounds she could, but no cat food noises were brought to mind. Really, all she could remember from the whole evening and night involved Cayden.
Let me know in the morning how you’re feeling.
She couldn’t help but feel guilty. Sliding down so her face was almost entirely submerged, she listened to the water hitting the sides of the tub and watched the drops slowly run down her exposed knees.
He wanted me to call this morning. Last time she looked at the clock, it was 4 pm, and that must have been nearly an hour ago.
A sigh louder than she expected echoed against the tiles. She heard the cats stalking away, upset she wasn’t paying them the attention they thought they deserved. I’ve been busy, she tried to convince herself. I haven’t done the whole hangover thing in years, and I’m busy trying to take care of myself so I don’t get really sick again. She didn’t want to think about having another flare-up alongside this worn-out feeling.
Her phone was on the edge of the toilet seat; stretching forward, she grabbed it without sitting up. She was emotionally exhausted from yesterday’s realistic flashbacks of her time with Amelia, not to mention her unsuccessful efforts to not harbor feelings for Cayden. First it was his cleaning her yard, and last night he happened to show up just in time to carry her drunken self to bed and even pour her ice water.
