What The Hell Am I Doing, Part II

3:21. None of this is mine. It never will be mine. I had been home—that’s where all of mine is. I remember that much. Sophia and David and Jack and Elena fought over who was closer to my apartment to take me home. I don’t remember who won. I know I got there. I got into the liquor cabinet. I sang to myself because I had no karaoke machine anymore. Although, I believe I tried to take it home from Jester’s Court. We left before they threw me out. They peeled my fingers from the monitor as I followed the bouncing ball by nodding my head and squatting along.

He must have called when I was at my most incoherent. He was probably worried about me. He used the key that he never gave back. He brought me here. He comforted me, I suppose. I don’t remember that part. I remember him rubbing my back as I hurled into his tiny garbage pail. I remember he kissed my forehead. Oh, Holy Lord, please tell me we didn’t kiss any part of each other after that. Funny how I always get religious in these situations.

The girls are going to kill me if I slept with him. Hell, they’re going to kill me for being here in the first place. It’s not my fault, though. He took me. Kidnapped me. Plus, I’m always helpless when it comes to him.

The clock says 3:30. Sixteen minutes and he’s still sleeping. I have to know the details. It can’t wait until morning. “Thomas?” I whisper into the back of his head. I smell my stale, cotton-mouth breath as it bounces off his scalp and cringe. That’s nasty. I roll myself to the night table, open the drawer, and find, as I suspected, the tin of mints he kept there for me. I pop one into my mouth and savor the mint as it takes hold.

Minty-refreshed, I try once more. “Thomas?” I say, still low enough to constitute a whisper, mighty close to being regular conversation volume. He snores in response. I poke him with my fingers and say in conversation tone, “Thomas.” He grunts. This isn’t working. I know what will work, though.

I fling my arm across the alarm clock. I hit the sleep button square and the Notorius BIG blares out of the radio. Thomas jumps to life. “What? Huh? Oh, honey, you hit the radio!” I had a habit of accidentally hitting the radio on the sleep button, which makes the radio play for about an hour once hit and lets you drift off to sleep without worrying about turning it off, when we had been going out. He never saw that I always did it on purpose to wake him up because I couldn’t sleep and was lonely. Now, it’s not merely that I can’t sleep. I need answers. And maybe, I’m still a little lonely.

He leans over me and yanks the plug out of the wall. We never could shut the radio after sleep was hit. We would wait out the hour talking, kissing. Thomas passes me my glasses and flicks on the lamp on his night stand.

“I’m wide awake now. You might as well be too.” He crosses his arms. He’s bulked up. More muscle than ever. His eyes gleam in the low light.

I sit up. I put on my glasses. They feel weird. I take them off. These are my old glasses. “Where did these come from?”

He nudges me to put them back on. He’s always liked me in my glasses even though I hate it. “They’re the spare pair you left here. You had your contacts in. I made you take them out before you started puking. Otherwise, your eyes would have been dry and they would have stuck and, you know the rest.” He bites his lower lip, satisfied.

He’s right. “So, Sir Thomas. Let me have it. What kind of fool am I?”

He leans back for a second. “Fool? You’re not a fool. Just upset. You had some stories in you.”

Oh, no. What did I say? “What kind of stories?”

He blinks away a yawn. “We woke up just in time. 3:30 is always time for Explaining the Funny Drunk Stories.”

I hit him in the shoulder. “Quit it. Just tell me.”

“Okay.” He scratches his chest. He’s doing that simply to call attention to his chest. I will not submit to his lead. He stops scratching. “True or false: you were dating a guy who had a wife.”

My hand goes over my eyes. “Unfortunately, true. I didn’t know it at the time.”

He pats me on the back. “Way to go, Marie. Nice choice in men.”

I snap, “I’ve never been good at choosing men.”

He inhales deeply. “Thanks.”

I tilt my head to one side. “Welcome.”

He cracks his neck. “True or false: you were dating a guy who turned out to be gay and works at a jazz club.”

I point at him. “False. That was a waiter we had there.”

He jumps on my answer. “Who’s we?”

I simply say, “Me and a date.”

He scratches his chin. “Which brings me to, True or false: you dated a student.”

Hand over eyes. “True.”

He sits up straight and gasps dramatically. “You of all people, Sweet Marie. Sweet, innocent, always walk the straight line Marie. Caught up in a love affair with a teenager.”

I remove my hand from over my eyes. “He treated me better than I’ve ever been treated.”

“Thanks, again.”

“You’re welcome, again.”

“True or false: you broke his heart.”

“True and false. He broke mine, too.”

Thomas shakes his head and makes a tsking sound. “You make them fall in love and then you push them out harder.”

I make the same tsking sound at Thomas. “Shut up. It’s all your fault, anyway.”

His eyes get wide. “My fault? How?”

I sit up tall, feeling the adrenaline kicking in. This is the moment I’ve wanted forever. “Because you fucked me up royally. That whole insanity in an instant crap that you pulled.” I make direct eye contact. “What the hell happened to you anyway?”

He shrugs. “Honestly, I have no idea. Part of it was fear that you were too good for me and to me and you would eventually get bored and leave me, so I wanted to do it first. Part of it was fear that it was all wrong and I wouldn’t know if it was going to be right until I tried other things.”

I slump a little. “Cop out.”

He stares straight ahead. “Whatever.”

“As long as we’re reminiscing,” I slink down on my side, and rest my head on my crooked arm, “what were you looking for in the bookstore that night? As I recall, you never bought anything.”

He scratches his chest. “You bought the complete works of Ginsberg.”

He obviously wants points for remembering. No dice this time. I say, “That’s not what I asked.”

He stops scratching. “Okay. Fine. I had gone in because I saw you. That was the first time in like my entire adult life that I had been in a bookstore. The last time as far as right now, too.”

“So you are illiterate.” I sit back up, satisfied that I’m finally catching on to the ruse.

He’s offended. “I’m not illiterate. I just don’t read for fun. I don’t like this game.”

“Fine. We’ll go back to your game. True or false: we had sex tonight.”

“Jesus!” He hits me with his pillow. “False, false, false! Although you were very enticing with your slurred words, stringy hair, and liquor breath, I held my libido at bay.”

I hide behind my hand. “I’m so embarrassed. It must have been really bad.”

He leans over and puts his lips to my neck. “Beyond really bad.”

I slink away. “What are you doing?”

He leans in further. “Kissing your neck.”

I scooch away some more. “Why?”

He gleams. “Because now you’re sober and minty.” He puckers up.

I sit up on my knees. “Um, hello? No.”

He jerks back. “Why not?”

I bounce on the bed, not being able to control my arm movements. “Because we’re not together and never will be. We’re not even friends anymore.”

He says, “You’ve had a hard night and I can make it better.” He leans in towards my neck.

This time, I hit him with the pillow. “Cut it out, perv.”

“So that’s it. Use me and give me nothing back.”

I hit him again with the pillow. “It’s not as if I asked for this.”

He grabs the pillow away from me. “No, but when I called you, you picked up. You never do that.”

I sit down on my butt, my feet towards his head. “Now there’s a sign that I don’t want to talk to you.”

He leans back. “You have a point there.”

Suddenly, I notice that my tinglies are nowhere to be found. Even in my post-drunken state, when my hormones are not yet at normal level, I feel nothing. He kissed my neck, that special spot that only boyfriends know about, and I felt nothing. Now, the real test. “So, you got a girlfriend?”

He crosses his arms. “I got two.”

I scan the room for photographs, thongs, any remnants of them. “Where are they tonight?”

“One is working. I ditched the other one when I got in touch with you.”

I still feel nothing. Except for maybe compassion. Some sort of urge to roll my eyes. Boredom perhaps. My tinglies are in hiding and my stomach is fine, even despite the liquor. I’m fine.

The clock says 4:25. I yawn. “I’m tired.”

He takes a deep breath. “If I take you home, you won’t ever be here again, will you?”

“Probably not.”

He shakes his head. He scratches the back of his head. “Then sleep here. I’ll take you home in the morning.” His eyes sink. “Please.”

“Okay.” I tuck myself beneath the sheets and spin away from him. I place the glasses on the nightstand.

“Hey, Marie. You really mean it when you say we’re not friends?” His voice is small and hopeful.

I smirk into my pillow. “Oh, Thomas. We seem to be the kind of friends that speak only when we bump into each other in alcohol induced situations.”

He moves around and adjusts himself in the bed. “I’ll take that much.” He lies back onto his pillow. Then he pops his head up and leans over me a last time. “Don’t ever call yourself a fool. It’s me who was and always will be.”

I start to conk out, a grin dancing on my lips. He finally admits to what I have known all along. I fade in and out of sleep, waiting for daybreak. Now I know what the hell I’m doing for the first time in a long time. It took not having anything of my own to figure it out.