We sit, collapsing between moments.
My head drops, my neck too weak to support it. I lean on my side, curled up like a baby.
"Why the flowers?" I ask, that scent flowing over me. I think I'm getting used to it now. It's nowhere near as sickly as before.
Silence. He turns away, extends himself and lays down next to me.
"My mum. They were hers."
I blink a few times, syncing every blink with my breath. If he's going to open up to me, I need to do the thing he did. I need to be here.
This man, this person who knocked on my door barely three hours ago. Why does he feel so easy?
I roll to my left, the bed rattling as we exchange stares with one another.
Shit. This is much more awkward than I thought it would be. Two guys in their thirties snuggled in a twin-sized bed. Pretty sure I've watched this porno before.
Is silence right? Should I ask about his mum? Fuck. What are you supposed to do in these situations? Would it be selfish to ask? To feed this want to know?
He looks up, glancing at the pink scrunchie, barely hanging onto my head.
"That was hers." He points with his forehead.
"This?" I say, feeling the scrunchie between my fingertips, my heart palpitating.
"I'm sorry," I say.
"I didn't realise… here, take it back. I've treated it and you so dreadfully."
I grunt, pulling my dead-weight arm from under my hip, working my way up my body to remove the ponytail.
He grasps my hand. His touch feels warmer than last time. Tingly almost.
"No, you keep it, please. Besides… it suits you." He smiles, momentarily, before a wave of something hits him.
I see it. That look in his eyes, that shimmer. It isn't mythical.
It's tears. This whole time. Has he been holding something back?
"Tell me about her," I speak, squeezing his shoulders. Holding him tighter. I can't help it.
I need to squeeze everything he's hiding, every word, every part of him I haven't seen yet; every single thing,
out.
"The flowers," he starts. His body falling limp in my grasp.
"Every year on her birthday, I'd buy her a flower."
I direct my eyes to a flower, a lily. Then to another, and another. Not one flower the same as the next.
"She must be easy to buy for," I grin.
"I sense she has a wide variety in taste."
He brushes a piece of cotton from my face, a stray thread from the pillow we were on.
"She was. Not at first though. Her favourite flowers were always lilies. Each year I'd buy her one and she'd be overjoyed. Every year until I turned fourteen, that was my go-to."
"Then one year, I brought her a lily, just like I always did, and she stopped and looked at me with this expression I didn't recognise.
'My favourite flower? No,' she said. 'My favourite flowers are roses.' It felt so… so wrong."
"A month later she was diagnosed with dementia. Early onset. She was only forty-five. I tried to make it work. Buying her different flowers each birthday. Her favourite flowers were never lilies again. And I was never her baby again."
"It was hard. Working a job no one should have to work, just for some cheap cash. Just to live."
His eyes cloud over with this pain. It looks so familiar, so much like—
"Sex work. I had to do it. There were no other options for me. Not any I could take at fourteen."
My chin edges downwards, peering at him through the top of my eyelids, trying to absorb what he's telling me while listening at the same time.
"You want to know the funny thing?"
He laughs, almost hysterically.
What is this? This composed beacon of privilege, the man with a teacup fetish, the man who knew exactly how to calm me. Is he really still a kid too?
He swallows, breaking his cackle in two.
"She thought I was a lawyer. She'd praise me every day. Express her pride, her love. I never corrected her and, even if I did, she wouldn't remember. She only remembered what she wanted me to be when I was young, not what I was. Not what I did…
Honestly, the only time she'd ever show me affection was when I came home after having sex with old men for a ten-pound note."
Leaning to his side he holds his chest, wiping a tear from his eye in hysterics.
"Isn't that just… the funniest thing?" He asks.
It's so obvious now. All of this.
I couldn't see him and he couldn't see me. The same people.
Staring at a double-sided mirror.
There's no point trying to stop this on my own. I'm just his neighbour. How can I even begin to relate to him? I haven't earned the right.
I clutch my palms, my nails denting my skin.
"Fuck," I say, clawing at my hands, picking at my cuticles. I'm not scared by this. I've been where he is. I know what this is and I know how it ends.
But what does someone do seeing it, hearing it?
That's what's scaring me. I'm scared I can't save him.
I exhale.
"Give me your arm," I say, pulling the scrunchie from my hair and sliding it down his wrist.
He doesn't say a word. His tears ceasing just long enough for me to see his eyes. Clearly now. Without a trace of deceit, without a fabricated self protecting him from what he can't forget.
I thought I was the liar. The one who needed a hand to hold. But who's to say who was holding who?
I know, without a doubt, he is human.
I shake him, clinging to him with my wounds.
"She's right here. She's right here," I repeat, short-circuiting, over and over like a shitty radio song, until he hears it.
The last remaining pools drip from his eyes, tracing down his cheekbones.
I feel so hot, my eyes are sore and the back of my throat feels like tire tracks from a truck have been burnt into it.
Yet somehow, even after all this… I don't want to run out the door anymore.
I don't want to be anywhere else.
His jaw unclenches as his chest begins to rise and fall with the pace of mine.
I contort myself to lay on my back, lifting my leg up, stroking the unshaven hairs.
Forget my insanity hangover. This is a whole other level. What did he do with me?
Tea, he offered tea.
I pout my lips, eyeing up the kettle as if to prepare it for my arrival.
"Tea?" I say in a hushed manner.
He's still twirling the scrunchie around his wrist. I rustle through my mind for anything. Good ways to help people when they are upset, good distractions.
I poke his leg with my toe.
"Beer?"
No response.
His chest. The motions. He's no longer matching my breaths. They're slower now. Simpler.
"He's out?" I say, taming my volume.
I carry my lower body with my arms until I'm sitting, propped up like a mannequin.
"I'm gonna head out now." I whisper, assuming it'll go unheard either way. This is my easy exit, I would've been thrilled a few hours ago. Why do I feel so caught.
I stumble to my feet, locking my gaze once more with the book. This time I won't let my mind slip. I whisk it up, lodging it between my neck and jaw, using my hands to instruct my leg.
I steal one more glance at him when I notice his eyes fluttering.
This weirdo twitches in his sleep too? He'll behead someone with those lashes if he keeps that up,
I squish my arse past the bed, making sure to avoid his head for… obvious reasons.
"Stay."
His voice so subtle it was hard to hear at first.
"Don't leave." He mumbles, eyes shut.
I twist my head to look at him as I see a hand reaching outwards.
"Nope this is not how that's going."
I say, redirecting his aim from my ass cheek to my hip.
"I'll stay okay? Just stop wafting yourself around willy nilly."
I drop my shoulders. I think I'm just relieved that a decision has been decided for me.
Because if I had the right to choose, I would've stayed with this manic little shit every time.