He’s sitting in the same spot I left him.
In the same clothes as yesterday.
I’ve got to do something to snap him out of this funk. It’s been two weeks, and every day he seems to become more and more depressed.
“Hey.” I throw my keys on the counter and pick up the bottle of Oxy, quietly counting how many are still in the bottle to make sure he’s not overmedicating.
“Hey.” No emotion. No anything.
Three pills are missing. I can handle that number. Just one less thing to worry about when it comes to him.
“What did you do today?”
“Same shit. Different day,” he replies, sarcasm tingeing its tone.
I approach where he sits in his chair facing the window and run a hand through his hair, my fingers scratching gently at his scalp.
“How about we get dressed and go get something to eat?” I suggest, just like I did two days ago.
“I’m not hungry,” he grunts.
“How about we watch a movie?”
“I’m sick of watching TV.”
I walk in front of him, hands on my hips, and look down at him. He doesn’t lift his head. He doesn’t meet my eyes. It’s as if I’m not even present.
Frustrated, worried about him, and needing to feel close to him somehow, I try the only thing left I can think of.
“I’ve got an idea,” I say, the smile playing on my lips and suggestion lacing my tone. Placing my hands on both arm rests of his chair, I dip down to give him a kiss.
“No.” His hand on his good arm flies up and pushes me away.
I stumble back a few steps. Embarrassment stains my cheeks, as tears burn hot in my eyes. My chin quivers as I fight back the humiliation and struggle with remembering that he’s not himself and doesn’t mean it.
But it still hurts.
“I know you’re struggling with this, Easton. I know you’re pissed off at the world and your body . . . but I’m here. I have no idea what to do anymore to help you.” He finally lifts his eyes to meet mine. They’re flat and lacking all emotion. “Your body I can help heal”—his laugh is loud and condescending—“but your mind? I can’t help you there without you telling me what you need from me.”
“I don’t need anything from you.” And those words only serve to cut me deeper.
“You refuse to go anywhere near the windows when I’m home. You say you don’t want to be reminded of what you’re missing, and yet every time I come home, you’re sitting there, staring at exactly that. You won’t go out. You won’t talk to me. You won’t do anything. It’s been two weeks since the surgery and I’m still sleeping in the guest room.” I’m whining. I know I am, but it’s only because I’m worried, and I miss him desperately, but feel completely helpless.
“You don’t understand,” he finally says, gaze still fixed on the view beyond.
“You’re right,” I say, dropping to my knees in front of him. “I don’t. So help me understand. Please, Easton. Just let me in.”
“I told you I don’t need anything and I meant it.”
His words sting regardless of how many times he says them.
“I think you should talk to Finn and consider the offer,” I say, trying to get him to focus on something other than what he’s lost.
“You also think taking a walk outside will make everything better. Why don’t you just kiss my boo-boo while you’re at it? I’m sure that will work miracles and heal me. Right?”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Then don’t act like my mother.” His eyes meet mine. They’re hard and angry and unrelenting.
“I think I’m going to sleep at my place tonight.” I choke back the sob threatening to come out.
“Good idea,” he sneers and then looks back toward the window, effectively dismissing me.
I stand there for a beat, hoping against hope that he’ll apologize for being a prick, that he’ll ask me to stay, but he does neither so I leave.
When I exit the building, I stop in indecision but ultimately decide to walk the several blocks home to clear my head and dull the hurt. While I know he’s having a difficult time adjusting to the fact that he busted his ass to get back to the game to have it ripped back away just as he was making a killer comeback, I don’t know how to show him the bright side of things.
I need to get him out of his funk.
With each step, I realize I might have an idea how to help him. I dial my cell. “Scout?”
“Hey, Drew.”
“How’s the asshole?”
I laugh because he has no clue how right he is. “If you want to know the truth, right now he’s been upgraded to fucking asshole status.”
“Ohh. That bad, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, knowing I sound like I’m playing around. The hurt is still real, though. “I think he needs some testosterone intervention.”
“We tried. I called him yesterday to get him to come out with us after the game. I even offered my chauffeuring service to him but he declined.”
“That’s cuz you drive like a maniac.” I laugh.
“Every man’s got to have one wild streak.”
“Oh please.” I glance around as I approach the backside of the stadium, the halfway mark between both of our places. “What if you take the party to him? He won’t leave the house. I’m not sure if he doesn’t want people to see him with his sling or if he truly is pissed at the world . . . but he keeps pushing me away and . . .” My words fade off as I try to fight back my tears. I’m certain he can hear them in the waver of my voice, though.
“You okay, Scout?” Concern floods his voice.
“Yeah. I will be. We had a fight, and I just need a break for the night.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Yes. I’m fine.”
“Go home. Go out with friends. Do something and leave the fucker to us. I’ll call Tino and JP and round up a few others. We’ll head over. He won’t be able to refuse a pack of us. Besides, we have a long plane ride tomorrow to sleep it off.”
I’m distracted by something to my left through the narrow opening of the exterior wall. For an instant I think I see Cal and Santiago talking in the stadium’s parking lot.
“Thanks, Drew,” I say, distracted as I step back to look again.
But when I look again, it’s just Cal, hands on his hips, and an expression I can’t make out from the distance.
I jolt awake. I’m disoriented. I’m on the couch. My couch. Not Easton’s. My pulse races as I try to figure out what I was dreaming about.
And just as my heart starts to calm, there’s a clink on my window. It scares the shit out of me, but also makes me wonder if I didn’t have a nightmare at all and that’s what woke me up. I glance at the clock—it’s three a.m.—and grab my cell on the coffee table beside me, ready to dial 9-1-1. Am I’m overreacting? Leave it to me to call the cops when there’s a branch hitting the window or something benign like that.
Just as I have myself talked into that theory, the noise happens again—tink—but this time it’s several at once, almost as if . . . what the hell?
I get up from the couch, crouch down, and creep over to the window. I probably look ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than thinking there is someone throwing pebbles at my window in the early morning hours. As I pull back the curtains to look out, the noise hits again. I’m startled by it, and surprised when I look out to see Easton standing in my front yard.
I have the window open in a beat. “Easton. What are you—it’s three in the morning.”
His laugh floats up to where I am and as mad as I am at him, the sound of it so very welcome.
“Do you know how pathetic I am?” he asks, but finishes the question with more laughter as he stumbles and affirms my assumption that he’s more than a little drunk. “I can’t even be a decent Romeo. You’re on the first story and I can’t even throw rocks that high because I have to do it left-handed. As you can see, my left-handed aim is for shit.”
I’m on the second story, but I guess he had a good enough time with the guys tonight to forget how to count properly. I fight the smile tugging at the corner of my lips just like him being here tugs on the strings of my heart.
“Guess what?” he asks, lowering his voice to a whisper like he has a secret.
“What?”
“I’m drunk as fuck.” His chuckle echoes up to me. “But I needed to come here. To see you. Do you know you live a long-ass way from me? Too far. Way too far. That’s why you need to give up your lease because it’s way too far to walk when you’re drunk. And I’m drunk. Wait, where was I?” He scratches his head with his good arm and looks like a little kid who just woke up from a hard sleep—hair’s a mess, clothes are rumpled, and a sheepish grin is on his lips. “Oh. Yeah. Explaining. I needed to come here to apologize. Apologize? Is that the right word? Yes. I believe it is.”
I can’t help but laugh. He looks adorable, and I swear he’s actually smiling for the first time since he was injured in New York. “And so you decided to walk here. You could have called, you know?”
“Nope. Not good enough.” He shakes his head a little too hard and then basically giggles when the world around him spins from the alcohol. “I wanted to try and be like one of your romance books, so I decided to come and stare at you up on your balcony.”
“But I don’t have a balcony.” This is too much fun, he’s too much fun, to not give him a hard time.
“Where is your imagination? Pretend, will you?”
“Okay. What am I supposed to pretend other than I’m on a balcony right now?”
“That I look like Fabio.” He flips his pretend long hair with his hand.
“Eeeewwww.” I giggle.
“You’re ruining the scene I’m setting here,” he scolds.
“Yes. Sorry.” I try to keep a straight face, but it’s incredibly hard to do when he’s so endearing. “Continue. Please.”
“As I was saying, I thought I should come across town, and say, Scout, I was a dick. A big and fat and hairy one. Not a manscaped one. The kind that’s so gross you get pubes in your teeth and can’t get them out.”
Oh. My. God. I double over with laughter. Tears well in my eyes from laughing so hard and trying to take in what he just said. It’s a train wreck and hilarious and all I keep thinking is I hope my neighbors are not hearing any of this.
When I stop laughing and can keep a straight face, he’s standing there with his hands on his hips and his eyebrows raised silently asking if I’m done yet.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at you.” I snicker. “But how exactly do you know about a man’s pubes in your teeth?”
“Oh. God. No.” And then his eyes grow wide as he realized how what he said sounded like. “I was just talking. Not from knowledge. That’s just . . . I’m doing something here. I’m apologizing, right?”
He’s so damn adorable.
“There’s only one problem with your apology, Hot Shot.”
“What’s that?”
“Romeo and Juliet both kill themselves in the end.”
“Oh.” His face is a picture of shock, and regardless of how hard he tries to hold back his own laughter, the giggles hit him again. “I guess that shows you I can’t read for shit.”
“We’ll just say that details aren’t your strong suit.”
He shrugs. “Hey, Scout.” His voice is more serious now and pulls my attention.
“Hey, Easton.”
“I love you.”
And there he goes stealing my heart again.
“You’re forgiven.”
“Good,” he says animatedly as he part-jogs, part-stumbles up the stairs to my front door. “Because when this alcohol burns off, my arm’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker, and I’m gonna need your nursing skills.”
“Oh really?”
“Yep.” He looks back up to me. “Preferably the kind in a tight white uniform dress thingy with a zippered front and lots of cleavage. Oh, and garters. Garters turn me on.”
I leave the window as he rambles and rush downstairs. When I open the door, he’s staring at me—three sheets to the wind—but he’s still the best thing I’ve seen all day.