I told myself one drink would numb me. One, small glass.

But then one small glass turned into two, and by the time the fifth glass was filled and poured down my throat, I stopped counting.

I tried to paint, but I couldn’t paint what was inside me. It was black, roundish, encompassing. Like a black hole, swallowing up everything it could reach.

When the bottle was empty, my hands were clumsy holding it and it rolled across my uneven floorboards, its sound hollow in my living room.

I managed to crawl my way to the chair, and dug my hand under the seat, hoping absently for one of the many baggies I used to hide in the rip of the cushion. But everything smelled stale, highlighting my own long-term absence from the place. There wouldn’t be drugs in the seat. The chair was as unfulfilling as I was.

I sighed and slithered to the floor, my head resting on the cushion. I was one miserable fuck, and now drunk off my ass. First drink in a long time, and I’d had no contrl over it.

My phone rang, but it was all the way across the room and nothing—not even a baggie of pills—would entice me to travel that far in my current state. I watched as it buzzed again, moving across the counter as if it was trying to work its way closer to me.

I watched it until it fell to the floor, and then I lost interest in it entirely.

I stretched my arms out to my sides, traced my scars with my eyes, and then, with the coordination of a newborn, I used my fingers to trace the six scars that were the most prominent, the ones that Six had helped me clean up.

Six. His name was an exhale for so long, but now it was an inhale. Like he was a mirage that I was trying to swallow had and fast, liquid warmth. He’d been gone so long. And I was tumbling down a slippery slope.

He wanted me to take care of myself.

Well, he could cross that one out as incomplete.

Six wanted me to get a pet.

I got a human and had taken care of her as best as I could until she left me. Because that’s what people did; they left. It was funny to me that people could do that so easily, walk away over and over again like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.

Six wanted me to run.

The only thing I was good at running for was when I was running toward alcohol. I didn’t have Jerry’s number to see if I could get a quick hit. No, he went through burner phones faster than he went through his supply, and I hadn’t even seen him outside the Dry Run in weeks.

Because I’d looked.

Six wanted me to get hobbies.

I had, not realizing that taking care of people was not permanent when they weren’t yours. Was that why people had kids? To have someone to take care of, someone to love them unconditionally? It wasn’t why my mom had had me.

Six… The x hissed off my tongue, melting into a sigh when I closed my eyes and reopened them, his image appearing before me.

He was beautiful like this, all blurry and dream-like. Distorted, with soft edges. But hard edges around his beautiful eyes, his frown. An oil painting, come to life.

Sleeping, I reached for the mirage, but he was too far away. I closed my eyes because when I was as drunk as I was, effort had to be concentrated to work. My eyes closed and that gave me the strength to focus on my fingers beckoning the dream closer.

Delusions were a cruel kind of magic, especially when the delusion affected more than one sense. I smelled the leather, the spice, and made a sound with my throat. I’d stopped smelling that scent in his apartment months earlier. I ached for it now, and smelling it again was the cruelest trick my mind had ever played on me.

Or, so I thought. Because seconds later, warmth filled my hand, traveled up my arm until my jaw was surrounded in that warmth. Another sense betrayed by my mind tricks.

But then, the sound of his voice. “Mira.” It echoed, rattling off all the empty space he’d left inside of me. “Mira?”

Now that my attention didn’t need to be concentrated on my hand, it was safe to open my eyes, to see right into his.

But now, this close, he was all hard lines. No blurring between his skin and his clothes.

I squinted when his image was duplicated before me. “Six.”

“I’m here.”

His hand moved to the back of my neck, lifting me up off the floor until I was sitting up. The sudden movement caused vomit to rise into my throat, which made me cover my mouth with the back of my hand. The warmth left my body and the scent left my surroundings and I hunched over, tears pricking the corner of my eyes.

It wasn’t real.

I was empty, so empty, and the only thing real about me was how profoundly depleted I was. So much for hoping alcohol would numb me.

My eyelids slid open again and lazily, I turned toward the kitchen, where my phone had fallen off the counter. His name formed on my tongue, on my lips, but when I opened my mouth, only a croak came out. How could my heart hold so much power but my tongue could not translate that into anything more than a pathetic moan?

I reached for my phone futilely. There was no way I could make my arm ten feet long. But still I tried, because the mirage of Six had been enough to remind me how much I needed him.

It’d taken me slipping back to rock bottom to feel that, a fact that made me hate myself all the more.

I wanted him here. I wanted him so badly. My skin was tight with the need for him, with how it stretched me from the inside out. I was almost empty of Six, my desire for him filling in his vacancy. But only his presence would suffice the hole inside of me, when I was stretching far past what I knew I could fill.

“What are you doing?”

I turned, but my vision was blurry. I’d imagined the voice. I must have.

“Mira.”

Could I imagine him that vividly? Hear that low growl of his voice, that undercurrent of frustration, so plainly as if he was next to me, whispering my name into my ear?

“Stop it.”

I heard it a few times and plugged one ear with my thumb as I pressed the other side of my head against the floorboard. I wanted to smother the fucking voices. Suffocated them, deprive them of the senses they used to taunt me.

Warmth closed on my wrist and then yanked me from my position.

My instinct was to fight. And I did, until I was pinned, weight pressing me into the uneven flooring.

“Mira.” The voice wasn’t hollow like before. It was whole.

“I don’t know what’s real,” I choked out. There was nothing more crippling than losing yourself to your own brain. Hot tears spilled out of my eyes as I was pinned to the ground, eyes closed in my own shame.

“I’m real. I’m here. Open your eyes, Mira.”

I did.

Six was staring down at me, his facial expression tight.

“Six?” I asked.

A deep line that stretched across his forehead in worry.

“That’s you?”

He pursed his lips. “Were you expecting someone else?”

It was hard to tell given my current state, but I thought he was forcing humor he didn’t feel.

“No. There’s no one.” I reached for him too fast, but my limbs felt glued to the ground below me.

Six moved off of me, and the warmth receded again along with his scent. But this time, my eyes followed. He was really, really here. I could have choked on the relief that flooded me full to the brim.

I tried to move to standing, but the room tipped like a cheap amusement park ride and sent me sideways until I was lying again on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, my eyes still trained on Six.

“Do you have any food?” He scowled into the refrigerator.

“Dunno.”

He muttered something, but it was hard to hear anything over the furious beating of my heart. I took a deep breath, and one tear slipped down the side of my face, pooling under my cheek. He was angry, that much I could tell, but he was here.

“Can you come here?” I asked him, and hoped my arms reached for him. But I wasn’t sure. The alcohol had dulled just about every sense, that I was surprised I could feel anything at all.

“Not yet.”

And then I blacked out.

* * *

“How are you feeling?” he asked me as I exited the bedroom the next morning. The light was too bright, the floor too cold, but Six was in my kitchen and my hangover couldn’t ruin that.

“Like trash,” I said. “But I guess it's no less than I deserve.” I looked sideways at him, where he was in the kitchen, and my eyes drifted over him—not quite believing he wasn't a mirage. “What time did you get back to San Francisco?”

“Last night.” He glanced at me, took me in as if he wasn't sure that I was even alive. “You drank a lot last night.” It wasn't a question, because there was no way I could deny it. “How do you feel about that?”

I ran my tongue over my teeth as I thought about how to approach this conversation. Gone was the cheesy romantic reunion. There’d be no Mira running into Six’s arms at the airport. That wasn’t me, that wasn’t us. So, why did I mourn it like it was? I swallowed and said, “I think I just told you how I feel about it.” I wrapped my arms around my middle, pulling my sweater closer to myself. “What are you doing here?”

“I could leave if you prefer. I know I crashed your party last night, uninvited.” His words were as tight as the muscles that flexed through his shirt. He was keyed up; he couldn’t look at me.

This was all wrong. This was not the warm and fuzzy homecoming that I had envisioned for months. And it really had been months. I sat in my little chair pulled my knees up to my chest and slid my sweater over them. I watched as he poured orange juice into a tall clear glass and carried it over to me.

“Here. If you're not feeling nauseated anymore, this will help.” He handed me the glass, careful not to brush his fingers against mine.

“Was I nauseated last night?” I scratched my head as if that alone would draw the memories to the surface. But, obviously it didn't work. “Sorry if I puked everywhere or something.”

“No, you didn't, you just kept telling me over and over that you were going to. I kept waiting for it, but then it just never happened. So, I talked you into bed.”

But the other side of my bed was still made when I’d left it that morning, which made me think that he hadn't slept with me. I looked around the living room, searching for any signs that he had bedded down on the floor. But nothing. In fact, he looked like he was in different clothing than the fuzzy shirt I vaguely remembered him wearing the night before. And he looked much more refreshed than I probably did. “Where did you sleep?”

“I…” He paused, looking over at me with his eyes squinted like he was trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. “Went back to my place for a while.”

I kept scratching my head, wanting to remember anything from the previous night. I was angry with myself for getting as drunk as I did, but I didn't want to focus on that; I wanted to focus on the fact that for the first time since Six and I first got together, he slept somewhere other than with me after a night like the one I’d had.

“I needed fresh clothes anyways.”

I turned toward the window and looked outside. The littlest bit of frost gathered at the corners of the glass and then my brain finally woke up. “Is it Christmas?” I whipped my head toward him.

“Yes.”

“Oh, well, then Merry Christmas.” I was sure this was not how he expected or wanted to spend his favorite holiday, but the fact that he was here in my apartment after so many months without him, it was hard for me to think about anything but the fact that he was here. It was as if everything else turned off, and all there was room for in my brain was, repeated over and over, Six is here. Six is here.

“Do you have plans today?” he asked tightly.

I scrunched up my nose in confusion as I looked at him. “Was that a serious question?”

He took my empty glass from me and set in the sink. “Yes, it was.”

“Have you ever known me to have plans? On Christmas, of all days.”

“I’m not sure that I know you as well as I thought I did.” It was a quick thing, an off-the-cuff comment, which were the most honest kinds of comments, weren’t they? But his eyes met mine. “Why were you drunk last night?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?”

“And now you're just being evasive.” He was wearing a T-shirt, despite the cold weather, one that exposed all of his biceps. And whatever other muscles occupied those arms. They were also defined, and I wondered if he had done a lot more working out since I last him, or if this was just my Six-deprived brain gobbling him up. 

I stretched my arms over my head. “I'm not being evasive. Excuse me for not wanting to discuss this so soon after waking up, with a hangover.”

He leveled me with a gaze, and I knew that he was not in the mood for banter this morning. But I wasn't in the mood for his judgment either, even though I knew I deserved it.

“So, are we going to talk about things?”

“It’d be easier if we talked about this.” He picked up the empty bottle that had rolled away from me last night and held it up, my sin glittering in the morning light. “Before we get into everything else, I’d just like to know, why?”

I held his gaze even though I was uncomfortable. “Because I was alone. Because I wanted to feel numb again. Because sometimes I'd rather feel, but lately, I don't want to feel anything at all.” I shrugged and pulled my knees closer to my body. “I thought that if I had just one drink last night, it would be enough.”

“How did that work out for you?” He raised one eyebrow and my first reaction was to turn my back on him, to walk away from this. Because there was no doubt in my mind that he assumed this was my every night activity for the months that he was gone. This wasn't just a one-off situation to him; I could see from the look in his eyes what he thought of me.

This wasn't going to go well, I knew. And I was too hungover to give it the attention it deserved.

“Well, it worked out great, until you arrived.” It wasn't the truth, but if he was going to try to hurt me, I could hurt him back. And if he pushed me, I would hurt him even worse.

But he wasn’t going to play with me. “I can leave if you'd like. I don't need to be here,” he said.

Six never left. I did. I ran, I kicked him out, I did horrible things to him. Things he didn’t deserve. But Six never left. He wasn’t my mother. He wasn’t any of my other boyfriends. He wasn’t Brooke. And I knew if I tried to hurt him, as was my inclination, he would leave me.

I sucked in a breath. I couldn’t allow that. Six couldn’t leave me. Not so soon, not when I just got him back.

This was spiraling away from me quickly, faster than I could roll back up. I did not want him to leave, even with his judging eyes. Because I knew that underneath all of that judgment, was care. And for the first time in a long time I realized that I wanted him to care about me. I didn't want to push him away, I wanted to be the one pulling. I wanted to fight, as I’d promised him I would.

It was a revelation for me.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. But for me it just made me desperate. “Please don't leave,” I said in a hushed whisper. I wasn’t sure why I felt like I needed to speak softly. There was no one else to hear me. To witness this. So, to prove to him that I was going to humble myself as much as possible, even lie across the door if need me, I said it again. Louder, a voice that echoed off of the walls that surrounded us both.

I wasn't sure if what I had said had moved them in any way, because he kept such a tight grip on himself when he was this angry. It was near impossible to decipher his emotion besides his current frustration. But in that moment, it seemed as if there was a crack in his anger. I just needed it to grow wider. Dig my hands in, and pull it wide enough so I could climb in.

“You might not believe me, but last night was the first time since you left that I've gotten drunk. I haven’t had even a sip of alcohol. It just got away from me too quickly, and then I stopped caring that it did.” I pulled my arms tighter around my knees. My oversized sweater was the only armor I had, but it wasn’t needed around Six. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry you saw me that way, that you felt you had to take care of me. I'm sure you get sick of taking care of my messes.” I took a deep breath, but it crawled up my throat with a tremor. He could leave me, and this time would be different than the last time he left. Because even though we left on not so good terms before, I hadn't doubted him while he'd been gone. But I knew if he walked out the door in that moment, there would be a finality to this that wasn't there before.

“You wanted to be numb? Numb from what?”

I wanted to be relieved that he was speaking and not walking away, but it scared me that I couldn't read him as easily as I usually could. Had our six months apart softened me, weakened me? “I wanted to feel numb so that I wouldn't hurt from missing you.” I closed my eyes for a brief moment. He'd been gone for so long, and now he was here, and I had to tell him all of my pain, I had to give him the cliff notes of it. But I didn't know how to make such a big thing so small. “I hurt, a lot. More than I knew how to handle.” I pressed my hair back from my face, needing to do something with my hands since I couldn’t touch him. “After Brooke moved on, my hobbies were depleted.” I pointed toward the window. “It’s cold again, and I have shitty smoker lungs, so running is out. I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” And I was. “I missed you. And now you’re here, and this is not what I wanted you to come home to. I know it's not an excuse, or at least it's not a good one. But it's all I have. I am sorry. I know that this day is important to you.”

He was shaking his head and I imagined my heart rattling the same way, cracking in pieces, bracing for him to leave. But then his eyes met mine, and I saw the anger and relief filled me again. Because the anger meant more than indifference could.

“This day is important to me?” he asked, his voice loud.

I welcomed it. Bring on the loud, I thought. I could handle the loud. I could not handle the quiet.

He continued. “Fuck this day. I came home because I wanted you. I came here because I wanted you. Not just because it's Christmas. Because, goddammit, Mira. I missed you. I missed everything about you that pisses me the fuck off. Everything, except for the shit of last night.”

I didn't feel like I could take enough deep breaths to satisfy my body. I tried again before he spoke. “I'm sorry,” I said again. It wasn't enough, I knew that. But I tried to put myself in his shoes, tried to imagine coming home to somebody that I missed, only to find them engaging in self-destructive behavior again. It was new for me, trying on another's emotions. But we'd come to a fork in the road, and I couldn't be selfish anymore, not about this.

I stood from my chair and my knees were cool in the cold, but I walked across the room toward him wrapped my fingers around his wrist and lifted it so that I could slide between his body and the counter he was braced against, so that he was pinning me there. So that I was trapped.

He smelled so good. It was all I could do not to bury my face into his chest. For that sense to fill me from the bottom up. But he hadn't made a move to touch me back, so I knew that my apologies had not sufficed.

I loved him so much. I knew I loved him. I knew I’d missed him. I knew more than either of those things that I needed him. But then, in that moment, everything was all encompassed by how much I loved him. It amazed me that love couldn’t bottom out, that there wasn’t an end to it. That the space allocated for love was infinite.

I thought of the eight Six had traced onto my skin. Was this what he meant?

I’d put him through so much. And still, he stayed.

A glint of light out of the corner of my eye had me turning my head. My fishbowl was on the counter, a tiny little orange thing swimming around in the tank, happily. There were purple pebbles on the bottom. “Henry,” I said, reverently.

“The fifth, I think.”

My stupid fucking fish. He’d found my empty tank, he’d filled it with Henry. He’d filled me in the process, too. My skin stretched as I tried to contain all the warmth he’d just given me.

“Six.” I waited until he was looking into my eyes. “On a scale of one to ten,” I watched him draw in a breath and I mimicked the movement before continuing. But, unlike Six, how I delivered it wasn’t playful. It was serious. It was significant. “How much do you love me right now?”

Well, he wasn't going to make it easy on me. He waited a solid ten seconds before he opened his mouth. I watched as his lips formed a small circle, before they relaxed again. “Seven.”

All the breath I couldn’t hold any longer rushed out of me instant.

I didn't deserve this; I didn't deserve him to love me as much as he did, even when I did things I knew he hated. I thought the first time I'd answered that same question for him, and my number had been eight. And he was just one below that, even after we'd gone so many months not seeing each other. Even when he'd come home expecting one kind of Mira and encountering another. How could he love me so much? And why did that make me want to love him even more?

“I can work with that,” I said, tossing his words back to me, but once again my delivery sucked. Because my words were weak, spoken with relief.

When he had left me months before, I told him I was at a four. I was at a four, when he was angry with me for something wrong that had been my fault. I almost couldn't wrap my head around the kind of love that somebody would possess for me, to be at a seven when I didn't deserve a one.

“Can I touch you now?” I whispered then because everything about me was more fragile than it’d been seconds before.

He waited three full beats before nodding once. My arms went around his middle before he even finished nodding, pulling him tighter to me, pinning me harder against the countertop. The pain bit into my back, but I was glad for it. I didn't want to be numb anymore.

“I love you,” I told him, and I knew it was the first time I’d told him so frankly, the first time I hadn’t echoed it in response to him saying it first.

He sighed and then he reciprocated the hug.

* * *

Six made mother fucking bacon and eggs and I burned some toast. Our Christmas dinner wasn’t traditional, but it was us. I even sat at the chair at the table he’d built, scooted as close as possible to him.

“What do you normally do on Christmas, you know, pre-me?”

“I go to my mom’s.”

“Oh.” I thought of Elaine, felt a little guilty—but not too much because I was still me—for stealing her son from her on the holiday. “What does she do when you’re at my house,” I picked up a piece of black toast, “eating such delicacies as my buttered bread?”

“I’m not sure this still qualifies as bread.” But he humored me by eating a bite of it anyway. “She goes to her sister’s in Colorado.” I watched him swallow and then immediately reach for his coffee to wash away the black ash he’d just consumed. “I saw her already.” His eyes met mine briefly.

“So.” I nibbled on a piece of bacon. “Are we going to talk about Cora?”

“Andra, now.”

“Come again?”

“She’s known as Andra now. Wipe Cora from your brain.” He stopped, gave me a crooked smile. “I know that’s probably impossible. But, it’d be better if you’d think and refer to her as Andra.”

“An-dra,” I said, trying the name on in my mouth. “Weird name.”

“She picked it.” He picked up a piece of bacon just as I noticed I was out of bacon. I watched him hesitate for a second before he placed one end of it just between my lips.

“Wow,” I said, after I’d thoroughly chewed the piece of bacon. “If I doubted your love before, that sold me on it.”

“But did you doubt?”

I had many doubts, but I wanted to be honest with him. “I’ve never had a single doubt about you.”

He held my stare, quiet.

“I feel like I learn a lot about how to love someone by the way you love me.”

“Oh?” His jaw ticked.

“You don’t love me because it’s easy. It’s not an easy love, what we have.”

“What kind of love is it?”

I pursed my lips as I looked at him, mentally examining all the feelings I had for him. Lust and love battled with rage and heartache, but every time they fought, love won. “Mad love.”

He took that in, his eyes looking me over as he considered. “That’s right.”

He was looking at me in a way that was almost painful though, like he could fix every part of me if I let him. But I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to be a project he could fix, because when he did—there’d be nothing left between us.

“So,” I said, swallowing. “Andra.”

“Andra,” he echoed. “There’s a lot that I want to tell you about her, but a lot of it is private.” He rubbed a hand over his head.

“Your hair is longer than usual.” I reached over, cupped his chin in my palm. “This too,” I said as I rubbed his facial hair. “You look like you just chopped down a tree and carried it into your cabin.”

He laughed, a rare and beautiful sound from him. “Anyway. The gist is that her uncle is an abusive piece of shit. He had custody of her after her mother’s sister died. She tried to get away from him by using the proper channels, but, well, it didn’t work out.”

“So, you got her out.”

“I got her out.” His hand closed over my wrist, bringing it to the table in front of him so he could play with my fingers as he talked. “Everything I tell you stays with us, Mira. Do you understand?”

“I’m not a snitch.”

“I know.” He rubbed his thumb along the lines of my palm, one of his many techniques to relax me. But I didn’t need relaxing then. Maybe he was relaxing himself. “But this is important.”

“I know,” I assured him. “You care about Co—Andra.” I corrected her name at just the last second.

“I brought her to Colorado.”

“That’s when you saw your mom?”

He nodded. “She’s safe there. It took a while to get everything sorted out, but it’s good now. She’s in a good place. And more than just physically.”

“That’s good.” I forced a happiness in my voice that I didn’t fully believe. It was hard for me to feel genuine relief when I’d never met the girl. But because I knew she was important to Six, who was important to me, and because he was finally fucking home, I was happy. “I’m guessing you’ll have to visit her from time to time.”

“Yeah.” He stared down at my hand, which looked so small when cradled by his. “I had a place in Michigan, it’s for sale now.” He lifted his eyes. “Just thought you should know.”

“Okay. You used to live there?”

“Yes. I spent a lot of time with Lydia and Andra. When Lydia died, I started coming to the City and staying here more and more. And, after I met you, I stayed here long enough that this became my main place of residence.”

“How can you afford to support both of your places and mine? San Francisco isn’t cheap real estate.”

“I do well enough. But the house in Michigan was my mom’s. I lived in it after she moved here.” He shrugged. “The weather is better here than there. For her, at least.”

“Was it your childhood home?”

“It’s just four walls,” he said. “A home is only a home if the people you love live there.”

“And now, there’s no one you love in Michigan.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Well,” I said, standing and stretching. “Selfishly, I’m glad that Andra is in Colorado.” I pushed him lightly, encouraging him to back away from the table while still in the chair. When he was far enough away from the table, I slid into his lap. “Because that means, hopefully, you’ll be gone less than you have been. And when you do have to leave, you’ll be closer to home.”

“Are you saying this is my home?”

I looked around my apartment, lifting my shoulders noncommittally as I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I’m saying I’m your home.”

“I already knew that.” He glided a hand down my spine. “Why don’t want you us to move in together, again?”

“Because I like having my own space.”

“I kept your apartment while you stayed at my house.”

“But that’s because me staying at your house wasn’t the long game. It was short term. It made sense to hold onto this place.”

“And it wouldn’t if we moved in together?”

I shook my head. “No. Because if I were to move in with you, I wouldn’t want you to give me an easy out.”

“Why not?” He looked perplexed.

“Because giving me an easy out means I’ll take it. I’ll leave, because—unlike you—I like easy. I get scared and I run from you or push you away and if—big if—we do this, I need to not have an escape plan. Because I know myself, and I know what I’ll do.”

“Leave me.”

“Yes.” I leaned into him, savoring his spicy scent and the way his hair grazed against my cheek. “And I don’t want to leave you.”

“You want to fight.”

“I do.”

“Good.” He leaned back and tucked my hair behind my ear. “You’ve grown a lot since I’ve been gone.”

“I haven’t grown a single inch. Still short.”

“You know what I mean.”

And I did. But this was unchartered territory for me, and I didn’t know how long it could possibly last.