And Then We Fall

by Bryce Taylor

I overlook that her house is as empty as a tomb, desolate of even the warming possibility of ghosts. It is as if when she moved in here only the large pieces of furniture turned up and everything else went into a black hole.

  To top it off, Leigh wasn't kidding at all when she said she barely used one of the bedrooms. Two weeks slide by and I have only seen her in passing, a few mumbled words, her eyes avoiding mine.

  I can't help but feel that she regrets having me here and I wish I wasn't either. I'd like to avoid being home too but I can't, the last power bill turned up for the flat and it took all of my limited funds to pay it.

  So, I stay at home and watch television on a giant screen from a giant couch in an empty room and feel the emptiness bleed into me.

  Chapter 13

  On pay day I go to the pub by myself after work. A nice young guy with floppy hair who reminds of Diarmuid, except with an awful twangy Australian accent, buys me drink after drink and lets me talk and talk and talk until my lips start to feel numb and my speech is slurred.

  There is a small part of me that logically knows that I am too drunk, far, far too drunk. That logic doesn't extend to me not drinking each and every drink that he puts in front of me.

  It isn't until I try to stand up and go to the bathroom that I don't ever remember being this drunk, my limbs are insensible to my wishes, I'm miserably nauseous and I'm blackened with sadness. I'm misery through and through.

  I get tangled up in my legs and fall over, landing awkwardly on my wrist. It hurts and I sit on the stairs not knowing what to do, just that I wish Diarmuid and Katie were still here, that I wasn't both alone and lonely.

  The barman who I know by sight, is offering me a hand and helping me up, the nice boy gone and I only vaguely wonder where. He takes me to the bar and sits me on a stool at the quiet end, asking me who can come and get me and I'm telling him that I want Leigh, I want Leigh, childishly, repeating it over and again. I don't really know anyone else anymore and the realisation makes me want to cry.

  I don't stop to think that she is in surgery, I just sit there, my head on my arms crossed on the bar and listen to him leave a voicemail to Leigh from my phone.

  He tells me that if she isn't here in an hour at closing he will take me home. He urges me to drink the water he puts in front of me. I stare at the wood of the bar from close up, at each mark and splinter and knot hole and feel the floor tilt this way and that, despite all attempts to stabilise myself.

  Leigh arrives some unknown time later, in her scrubs, just a jumper over the top, looking worried.

  She takes my face in her hands and professionally checks my eyes.

  "You're not a doctor," I slur at her stupidly, "you're a surgeon."

  She smiles indulgently.

  "I'm enough of a doctor to see you are pissed, Aednet," she says sternly but she doesn't look annoyed though, she looks worried.

  Leigh nods at the barman, mutters a thanks at him, ducks down next to me to wrap my arm around her shoulders and somehow, we are walking out the door even though my legs still aren't working.

  I don't recall the drive home, just that one moment she is bundling me in the car and doing up my seat belt for me, then there are a series of stomach churning turns and stops and then she is hauling me out again.

  We make it in through the front door and then I can feel that I am about to lose the entire contents of my stomach. I look mutely at Leigh, my brow furrowed miserably as I feel the burning fireball enveloping my chest. She gets me into the bathroom, but I don't make it as far as the sink, on my knees, a fury of alcohol, bile and the sandwich I ate a few hours ago launching across the floor, down my clothes, hot and sticky in my hands.

  Leigh turns me away, magics up a bucket in front of me, holds back my hair, patting my back soothingly. I'm trying to push her away but I don't want to get vomit on her.

  "Don't worry," she says, "don't worry, I'm here."

  Then I'm crying. Weeping really, helplessly miserable and humiliated, still coughing up the last dregs of my stomach.

  Leigh sits me on the toilet when I'm done, when there is less than nothing in my stomach and crouches down in front of me, smiling reassuringly up at me.

  "Don't worry, kiddo," she says, "I've seen a lot worse than this."

  So, have I. It doesn't mean I want her to see me like this though.

  "Let's get you cleaned up," she says.

  She wipes down my face and hands with a warm flannel, strips off my shirt and pants in a business-like way, puts a fluffy-white bathrobe around me and helps me upstairs to the main bathroom. She coaxes me to drink a glass of water and brush my teeth. I try to hold the toothbrush in my right hand forgetting that I have hurt my wrist and stare at it in confusion.

  Leigh's focus turns heavily to my wrist and she takes it gently in her cool hands, carefully turning it this way and that.

  "Why didn't you say you had hurt your wrist?" she asks, worried, sitting me back down on the toilet seat again, assessing the damage.

  I can't explain myself so I just stare at the floor, hoping that she will continue cradling my hand as if it is precious to her.

  She frowns up at me, gently probing the bones in my wrist and hand.

  "I think you've sprained it," she says eventually, inconclusively, reminding me that she really is not a doctor and unless my hand is broken she is almost no use at all. "I'm going to get a bandage."

  "I want to have a shower first," I tell her weakly.

  She narrows her eyes and after a moment nods.

  I realise that she has no intention of leaving the bathroom.

  That she can't leave the bathroom because I am going to need her help taking my underwear off.

  Not that she is looking at me like that, I have for the moment turned from a friend into a patient and if sometimes I feel as if she might be attracted to me, now is definitely not one of those times.

  I am soon in a warm shower, the door open, Leigh watching me carefully, monitoring my status, my ability to remain upright.

  The hot water momentarily makes me feel much better and then slowly starts to make me feel worse, the steam suffocating me. I turn off the taps and lean my head against the warm tiles, exhausted. Leigh steps in the shower and bundles me up in an enormous towel, patting me down, rubbing me dry, my head resting on her shoulder.

  "Come on, kiddo," she says, guiding me out of the bathroom, up the stairs and into my room. Pulling my t-shirt on over my head and my sleeping shorts on.

  Sitting me on the end of the bed, using the towel to gently dry my hair, smiling at me sadly, her brow furrowed when my face appears from under the towel.

  She wraps my wrist with a bandage, her face twisted with a troubled look and when she is done she lets out a long breath and stares at my knuckles that are grazed slightly from the fall. Then she kisses them softly, the slightest brush of her lips.

  "There," she says sounding pleased, "all better."

  She glances up and sees the look on my face, my hand tingling from her kiss and she looks horrified that she has crossed a line she obviously had no intention of going near.

  She drops my hand and is on the other side of my room before I can blink.

  "I'm sorry," I tell her, tears starting to fall again, sorry that I have driven her away, that I have made her uncomfortable with my love for her.

  Leigh takes one look at my face and crosses back to me, kneeling in front of me, long fingers tucking my hair behind my ears.

  "Oh, sweetheart," she says consolingly, "you really miss your friends, don't you?"

  There is a flood of tears now, rivers, flowing unimpeded down my face. Partly that I'm tired of being alone and partly that Leigh looks so sad and worried for me but mostly that she called me sweetheart. I crawl onto the bed, trying to curl up in a miserable ball, to escape the nausea and the sadness and Leigh's looks.

  I feel the bed moving, Leigh getting on, sitting next to me, the warmth of her body against mine. Waiting until the storm passes, her legs stretc
hed out on the bed. Till I uncurl myself and turn back to her, look up at her and ask her with my eyes for more, for more comfort than this.

  She thinks it over for a second, momentarily conflicted and then slides down the bed, holds open her arms, folds me into them, so gently as if I am fragile, treasured. My hands are holding weakly onto her jumper, it smells of sunshine and washing detergent and I am suddenly very aware that her scrubs are made of the thinnest cotton and that my bare legs are entwined with hers.

  Leigh's head is laid on mine and I feel sad, sad all the way through to my marrow, I feel safe too, that everything will somehow turn out ok. It's now that I connect Leigh wearing her scrubs, with the time of night it is and that even though she isn't fidgeting she must be needing to get back to work. That someone is probably dying as I'm lying here, waiting for her to save them.

  I open my mouth to tell her to go, that I'll be fine and instead my fingers tighten convulsively in her jumper.

  "Please don't go," I whisper hoarsely.

  Just the thought of being alone in here, in this empty immense house is too much. I have never ever allowed myself the luxury of being weak like this, of begging someone to give me something that is going to cost them.

  I wait for Leigh to tell me that she has to go. That she doesn't want to but she must. Because she has no reason to stay and every reason to go.

  She doesn't.

  She holds me a little tighter, kisses my damp hair and nods, a tiny nod, a promise.

  I instantly fall asleep.

  The kind of dreamless, empty sleep, a light switch turned off, not even a moment to enjoy Leigh's strong arms wrapped around me. The briefest instant before I wake sometime in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark, both of us still atop the covers. I shift around trying to get comfortable, murmur, "I'm cold," sleepily.

  Leigh wakes or is already awake, I don't know, but she gets up and carefully pulls the covers out from under my body, draws them up over me. I sense that she is going to leave and I take hold of her hand, clasp it weakly.

  "Don't go," I ask her again. "Please don't go."

  I can't see her in the dark but I can sense her indecision.

  "Please," I ask her, swallowing around the lump in my throat.

  "You don't make this easy," she mutters quietly, giving in. I feel her crawling into bed beside me and she is letting me snuggle up to her. I fit into her perfectly, my face burrowed into her neck, my hand holding onto her shoulder, my leg sliding between hers.

  Blessedly I can't sleep at all now and I lay there listening to her heartbeat, trying to imagine what she is thinking if she is awake or dreaming if she is asleep. I can pretend that she is mine and that the warmth of her body is my permanent reality.

  I shift to get comfortable, acting more asleep than I am, pressing my leg more firmly between hers, my hand to her chest, the edge of soft flesh tantalising. Leigh shifts back a little, trying to create more space between us and I'm smiling, because I know that she is doing that because she is enjoying this more than she should.

  That I am too.

  She smells so good of vanilla and sunshine and for the first time since I got to this country, of home.

  I slowly drift into a warm cocoon of sleep, safely taken away from the waking world before awaking to the shock of a cold bed, to the sense of sadness and defeat. To an all too real hangover, my head broken into two disconnected pieces, a painful ravine between them, my eyes itchy and my kidneys aching as if they have been trampled by tiny feet.

  I am about to turn and crawl back under the covers until I smell the savoury scents of cooking. The thought that Leigh is still here, she hasn't left for work instantly brightening me up. I stagger down the stairs and find her in the kitchen, a room I hadn't even been aware that she had ever been in, let alone used and she is cooking. My mind is shocked more about this than it is prepared for in the midst of my less than adequate consciousness.

  "Hey, Aednat," she says smiling at me and even though I wish she was still calling me sweetheart I smile back at her.

  Leigh can actually cook and I watch her roasting mushrooms and tomatoes, frying potatoes and bacon. Her hands that can so cleverly tear apart and mend human bodies, creating a breakfast from odds and ends, bits and pieces.

  She finished frying the eggs and the whole meal comes together on warmed plates and she is eating with me, cutting her food into tiny portions, eating in some very specific order only known to her, eggs then potatoes then toast then mushrooms then tomato.

  Even though I know that Leigh is only here because she is worried about me I'm happy to take that. I watch her small habits and pretend that this our thing, a routine that we have that keeps us together.

  I realise that she should be chastising me for my drinking, that I am off the rails and that as my friend she should be telling me I have a problem. But Leigh isn't that kind of person, she hasn't ever once told me in word or look that the smallest thing I am doing is inappropriate. That she doesn't judge me means more to me than she will ever know. That it gives me the confidence to be stronger than I was before.

  We watch movies on the couch and Leigh fetches me tea and water and painkillers. She lets me snuggle into her side under the pretence that it is actually cold which it isn't despite it being almost winter.

  The knowledge that I am in love with her has never hurt so much, the insidious pain of her love for me without being in love with me is almost too much to bear. That I am addicted to her presence, to the feeling that she cares for me.

  I get her to re-bandage my wrist twice even though it doesn't need it, even though I could do it far better myself one-handed.

  At the end of one movie, Leigh looks around the room and says musingly, "it's really empty in here, huh?"

  That is quite the understatement. Leigh looks at my face and laughs out loud.

  "I've never really thought about furnishings," she says wryly, a flash of regret or embarrassment passing across her face, I can't tell.

  "We could go shopping," I tell her tentatively.

  She immediately brightens.

  "I'm not sure you are up for it?" she says dubiously but still looking keen, that now that a problem has been identified she would like it to be fixed.

  I'm not at all up to it and hadn't actually meant going shopping today but I certainly could find the willpower to make it happen if it means this house being a little less foreboding.

  She thinks about this for a moment before coming to a decision.

  "I don't think we have to leave the house," she says looking pleased with herself.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  She picks up her phone and makes a few calls and before I know it a procession of people turn up at the house with catalogues and fabric swatches, with sketches and computer simulations.

  With sales pitches and soft words.

  Leigh sits at the other end of the couch with her arms crossed, her mind changed about the whole thing, wishing that she hadn't had this idea, that strangers weren't in her house. That she doesn't like anything they are offering or their compliments.

  Her obvious intention is that she is going to let me deal with them.

  I'm not impressed by any of them either, until an older woman turns up, with no brochures, just a box of photos of a warehouse full of mid-century Danish and industrial furniture and modern art pieces. Leigh sees the look on my face and leans forward, interested for the first time.

  The seller and I walk around the house, pointing at empty walls and rooms and holding photos up, measuring and considering colours and style. Leigh is nodding and smiling, agreeing to our every recommendation. There are lamps and art works and sideboards and vases and rugs.

  We decide that some of Leigh's existing furniture needs to go too.

  The sums of money that are adding up are silly but they lose their meaning completely when a print I think would be just perfect in the dining room has a price tag in the tens of thousands.

  I should feel bothered b
y spending all of her money but Leigh looks so happy by the end, a whole new makeover for her house. I smile back at her and she hugs me gently before she really does have to leave for work.

  Chapter 14

  Leigh makes the effort to come home more, bringing food and conversation, almost every day for breakfast and as often as she can for dinner.

  We swim together at the beach in the mornings and then eat muesli on the deck by her pool and she listens while I talk and talk. She gets a coffee machine, even though she doesn't drink it, and I learn to make a reasonably decent cup. I discover that she enjoys drinking smoothies as long as they are full of vegetables, all cucumber and spinach and ginger. How she can drink such horrible concoctions is beyond me, that her only dislike of them is the sound of the blender. It isn't much effort for me to have one ready for her when she walks in the door in the morning.