Scott comes to in the bathtub.
He doesn’t remember getting into the dry tub, still fully-clothed and with a blanket tucked tight around him, but he suspects the mostly-empty bottle down by his feet has something to do with it. The shower curtain is drawn, dimming the light and cutting him off from the rest of the world, and something is vibrating insistently underneath his back, making it impossible to drift into unconsciousness again.
He flails his arms, making an attempt to grab for it without moving, but his limbs aren’t really as coordinated as he needs them to be, and he just ends up banging his wrist on the tile wall. Groaning, he flips over onto his side and feels around on the floor of the tub. He finally finds his phone and lifts it to his face; it’s glowing brightly, too bright for the darkness of the room, and the words are blurring in front of his eyes. He tries to decipher the letters, chanting Carter, Carter, Carter in his mind, but Carter isn’t the name that appears. It’s Isaac, and Scott’s heart sinks in bitter disappointment.
He feels sickly guilty a moment later. Isaac is one of his best friends. His brother. He loves Isaac. But the thought of even texting anyone else, anyone not Carter, is unbearable...like the mess in his head will spill out into his letters, obvious no matter how much he tries to hide. He can’t deal with any questions right now. There are no answers to give.
He lets the phone ring itself back to sleep and thinks that he probably couldn’t have touched the right buttons to answer it or type out a text anyway. He feels like he’s in some kind of cloud, but thicker. Maybe underwater. The close sides of the tub, the oppressive darkness of the closed curtain, and the thick blanket tangled around his legs are the best things Scott’s felt in a while. There’s more room here than inside his head, but not too much, not so much that he feels alone and adrift.
He floats for a completely unknowable amount of time. At some point, he thinks about how strange it is to be floating in a tub with no water. It should make him smile, but it doesn’t. He’s not sure his muscles remember how to do that anymore, that stretching pulling thing that turns bared teeth into happiness. It’s a stupid, childish thought, but then again, he’s a stupid, childish excuse for a man. He pulls the blanket up over his head and blocks out the light completely. It’s too warm and stuffy, but it feels like he’s being held, like Carter’s breathing on him as they sleep.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when his phone vibrates again, but it jerks him awake and he finds it tucked against his side. He glares at the screen until it comes into focus, and he’s frustrated again when the letters don’t form Carter’s name. But Isaac doesn’t usually try him twice, and Scott swipes clumsily at the screen, just to make sure something isn’t really wrong. If Isaac really needs him and he’s been ignoring his calls, Scott’s never going to forgive himself. He touches something that makes the phone stop vibrating and brings it to his ear, hoping that he’s answered and not just hung up.
“Mmmrph?” he says, in the vague direction of the receiver.
“Where the fuck are you? I’ve been ringing your doorbell for, like, twenty minutes,” Isaac says loudly. Scott jerks upright, the blanket falling from his head, and smacks his free hand down on the edge of the tub. He must make some kind of noise because Isaac says, “Scott? You there? You all right?”
“What?” Scott asks groggily. He knows Isaac is telling him things, asking him questions, but they aren’t processing in his head.
“Are you home? Where are you?”
“Bathtub,” Scott mumbles.
“Jesus. Answer the fucking door. Let me in.”
Isaac’s never like this, bossing him around like everyone else does, using that exasperated tone he’s so used to hearing from managers and ex-girlfriends and even his parents, way back when. Scott bites his lip and presses his fingers hard against his eyes. Something must be wrong. Scott hopes it’s nothing too serious. He doesn’t think he’s gonna be much help right now.
Scott forces himself halfway out of the tub and flops over onto the floor with a pained groan. The phone clatters to the floor and he fumbles for it, shouting, “Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry.” When he finally gets the thing back up to his ear, he hears Isaac saying his name over and over. “Dropped the phone,” he explains. “Sorry.”
“Scott. Come let me in, okay? Come on,” Isaac says. He sounds kind of worried. Scott wonders if something happened to Sophie. He needs to be a good friend, needs to be there for Isaac. He rubs his eyes and shakes his head, trying to clear his vision.
“Okay. Okay. I’m coming. Hold on.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Isaac says suddenly. “Don’t hang up. Talk to me.”
“Yeah, okay. Okay. Coming downstairs.”
It takes Scott a while to get out of the bedroom, but by then he’s sort of steady on his feet, and the stairs are easy because they have a railing. Scott decides he likes railings. He trips off the last step and stumbles into the entryway, and he can see Isaac, blurry through the fogged window, standing outside. He opens the door.
“Can I hang up now?”
Isaac’s hand, the one holding his phone, drops to his side. “Fucking hell, Scott.”