Man Flu

by Ryan, Shari J.

  Logan opens the door and turns back around to help me up and inside the house. “Where is your shower?” he asks.

  “No, no, you can’t see me naked, Logan. That’s against company policy,” I say. My words sort of sound like I’ve had about five cocktails, and my stomach feels about the same.

  “I won’t look,” he says. “You need to get cleaned up though.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Then, I have to get back to the office before anyone notices I’m gone.”

  “There’s no way,” he argues. “You’re seriously sick. You need to take it easy.”

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “You have to.”

  “You’re not my boss. I’m yours,” I argue.

  He gives up the battle and helps me up the stairs, where I point off to the right toward my bedroom. Normally, I would have spit-shined my house if I knew a man was coming over, never mind lightly straightening up the place. It looks like a tornado whipped through here at some point in the last week.

  I always laugh when I watch the TV shows where a woman unexpectedly finds herself in a sexy predicament and spontaneously brings some hot guy home to her super clean, spotless house, as if she always lives that way. There needs to be some real reality TV shows, like this is what a house of a single, working mom looks like. Yes, it needs to be cleaned. Yes, the dishes are still in the sink from two days ago. No, the laundry has not been done in a week and a half, and no, my sheets have not been changed in at least five weeks. I’m gross, but surviving and keeping a child alive, so I’m thinking that’s all that matters.

  Just as I remember leaving it, my sheets are hanging off the bed, my comforter is crumbled in a ball on the floor, I have two bras hanging from the top of my hamper, oh, and a pair of panties just sitting there in the middle of the floor for no reason. My room might actually smell, but maybe that’s just me.

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  “Eh, we all have our days,” he says.

  I have mine every day. I like to be clean and organized, but I suck at it. I even Pinterest that shit just so I can be inspired to clean and organize, but still, no luck.

  He sits me down on the edge of my bed, and another wave of thuds rolls through my head like thunder. Holy crap. What the hell is this?

  Over the pounding of my head, I hear water squeal through the pipes before splashing onto the tiled floor of my shower.

  “Okay, the water temperature is good, and you’re all set. Are you going to be okay in there?” Logan asks. I lift my head, looking up at him and the concerned gaze in his caring eyes. The sunlight pouring into the room reflects off his face, making the blue in his eyes almost transparent. There isn’t a flaw on his face, not even a chicken pox scar. How is that possible if he’s older than I am? Shouldn’t he have more than just two little crow’s feet on either side of his eyes? And those only end up making him look sexier. God knows I have enough lines and age spots for the both of us, but still.

  “I think so,” I tell him. I push myself up and sluggishly drag my feet into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

  “I’ll wait here for you,” he says.

  I should probably tell him to go back to the office or something, but I do want to get back to work, assuming this shower is like the magic healing solution I hope it is.

  The hot water does seem to settle my stomach a bit, so I soap up and move through my routine quickly.

  Crap.

  There’s a man waiting in my bedroom, and I have no clean clothes in here. Could this day get any worse? Why, yes, yes it can.

  I step out onto my plush bath mat and reach for the linen closet to grab a towel—a towel that isn’t where it should be. Shit!

  I know I had at least one clean towel left. I don’t even have a hand towel to dab myself up with, or clothes.

  My hamper—I don’t care if it’s dirty. I need a towel.

  I open the door a crack, peeking into my bedroom for Logan, but I don’t see him.

  “Logan?” I call out. After a second without hearing a response, I open the door a little wider. “Logan, are you still there?” If he’s anywhere in the house, he would have heard that shout. Maybe he left. The house is so quiet, I’d be hard-pressed to think he’s still here. For all I can imagine, Rick came in to find him.

  I open the door and tiptoe out and over to where my hamper should be, but either I’m losing my mind, or there’s a laundry fairy, which I’m certain there isn’t. I circle around my room, looking for where the hell my laundry could be. You must be kidding me. I’m freezing, soaking wet, and there is no towel in this room.

  I scurry over to my bed, ready to grab the comforter for warmth, but because this is the worst day of all worst days in the history of worst days, Logan has appeared at my doorway in what looks to be a state of shock—he’s staring at my dripping, wet body with his mouth ajar.

  Chapter Eight

  Wednesday just keeps f***ing humping me like a horny dog

  HE’S AS CAUGHT OFF guard as I am. Both of us gasp and turn around, but me turning around means I’m just showing off my backside. At least he’s not looking—I don’t think.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “Looking for a towel. What are you doing?” I return the question.

  “I threw your laundry in the washing machine. I was—” My room is clean. My panties are no longer on the ground. My bras are not on top of the hamper because the hamper is gone. My sheets and comforter are in place nicely, but I grab the heather gray feathery clump and wrap it around myself.

  “I am mortified,” I tell him, facing his back.

  “I was trying to help,” he says.

  “This is not what it looks like,” I tell him. I’m not sure why I said it, but it seems like the only thing to say in explanation of this sight.

  “What?” he questions.

  “Me, my body, my bedroom, and my cleanliness.” It’s right at this exact moment that I realize I’ve let myself go. I have stopped caring about myself. I look down, assessing how bad the view was, something I desperately try to avoid.

  My stomach is flat thanks to the stages of grief from being cheated on, but I’m whiter than the ceiling, and then there’s the whole jungle issue going on that I haven’t tended to in quite a while. It’s like a scene from the Kama Sutra book, circa nineteen-seventy-something. It’s not pretty, nor is the dark hair lining my legs. What the hell have I done to myself?

  “I don’t think I can ever let you look at me again,” I add in.

  “Are you decent yet?” he asks.

  “I’ve made a comforter burrito around myself, if that’s what you’re asking?”

  Logan slowly turns around, peeking out of one eye first, as if he’s scared to see what he just saw again. We’ve crossed so many lines in the last hour, I don’t even know where the original line was.

  He places his hands out before him as if I were a scared dog. “It’s okay, just relax.”

  “Don’t tell me to relax! I know what you just saw!”

  “It all happened so fast, I didn’t see much, if that helps,” he says. He’s lying. He’s lying. He got a good look at everything.

  “It doesn’t help that you touched my panties.”

  “So what? I’ve touched jock straps that don’t belong to me. It’s just clothing.”

  “First, why would you be touching someone else’s jock strap? Second, it’s not just clothing.”

  “Look, I wanted to help you out. Clearly, you’re having a rough time, and I didn’t think I would be making things worse.”

  My head pounds a little harder, reminding me of its ever-so-apparent presence. “I’m sorry, I’m overreacting,” I tell him. Am I, though? I don’t know him all that well, and I’m his boss. I suppose anyone trying to suck up to their boss would do what he did today, maybe, but then again, probably not.

  “How can I make this better?” he asks.

  As if there’s a way to erase the last couple of hours, my thoughts are ins
tantly swayed into a different direction. I’m going to vomit again. With a tight hold on my blanket burrito, I jump from the bed, making it halfway across my room before I trip, landing so hard on my boobs that the pain itself purges the vomit from my stomach. I look like an avocado that’s been stepped on. All I see is my vomit decorating my white comforter beneath me.

  “My heart is literally breaking right now, Hannah,” Logan says as he jogs into my bathroom, quickly returning with a wad of toilet paper. He gently cleans my face up. “What am I going to do with you?” He laughs quietly, not at me, but with me, if I had the energy to laugh.

  I don’t have the energy to even speak, so I just watch. How is it fair that I spent so much time with a man who couldn’t care less about me and then meet someone who is willing to clean up my vomit within a couple of days of knowing me? I didn’t think there was this type of kindness in the world. It doesn’t matter, though. I was destined for dicks like Rick. Yeah, I know; calling him Dick got old a long time ago.

  Logan cleans up as much as he can, covering up what’s remaining with the extra blanket. His hand drapes over my forehead, and the scent of soap soothes me. “You’re really pale. We might need to get you to a doctor.”

  “No,” I croak out. “I’ll be fine. I just have to get up and start moving around—get my mind off vomiting.”

  “You’re burning up, though.”

  “I’m just embarrassed,” I tell him, honestly. “I don’t feel like I have a fever. I don’t remember the last time I even had a fever.”

  “Do you just want to lie here for a bit, maybe?” he asks.

  I know I said I want to get up and start moving, but his idea sounds better. “I think so. “He lowers himself down, bringing his knees to his chest. That doesn’t look comfortable. He’s in dress slacks and a fitted shirt. “You don’t have to stay here,” I tell him.

  “I know,” he says.

  “You don’t have to feel bad for me, either.”

  “I know that, too.”

  He stands back up and looks around the room before heading to my nightstand and grabbing the remote to my TV. Unsure of what he’s doing, he powers it on, so I slowly twist my head to the other side, watching as he flicks through the channels until he finds a soap opera. “Yes, or no?” he asks.

  “No,” I tell him, trying not to laugh. “Not my thing.”

  He passes by a few more channels and finds HGTV. “This?”

  “Yeah, I like that.”

  * * *

  Three hours of HGTV and no more vomit. It’s a win. Logan is still next to me, sitting quietly, watching the shows as intently as I have been. The silence and calm cause a storm of thunder in my chest when the doorbell rings. I look at the clock on my nightstand, finding the time to be past five. “It’s probably Rick with Cora.”

  “Let me take care of it,” he says.

  “I want her to come home,” I tell him. “I haven’t seen her all day.”

  “Of course. I’ll stick around and help with her. It’s no problem.”

  I try to push myself up a little, realizing I’m still naked underneath the wrapped-up blanket. “You really don’t have to do that, Logan. You’ve already done more than you should have today.”

  “Maybe, but I’m going for sainthood, so let me have this.” He smirks as he pushes himself up to his feet. “I’ll grab your clothes from the dryer while I’m down there.” He had switched my laundry a couple of hours ago during a commercial break, and in my lethargic state I didn’t argue, but I don’t remember the last time someone has done my laundry.

  “If Rick gives you any trouble, let me know,” I tell him.

  “I’ve got it taken care of,” he says with a reassurance I can’t understand. Rick is a dick. I don’t know how many times I can recite this silently to myself, but he doesn’t just give in.

  I swear I hear laughing downstairs, but it must be my imagination. There couldn’t possibly be anything the two of them have in common unless a devil and angel are somehow related, but surely that’s not the case.

  I hear little feet clomping up the stairs. She’s moving around, so hopefully she feels better. My bedroom door flies open, and I’m still flat on the ground in a burrito. “Mommy?” Cora asks, obviously confused to see me lying in the middle of the ground.

  “Hey sweetie,” I say, reaching my arm out to her.

  “Why are you on the ground in a blanket?” she asks.

  I shove my hand under my face to look up at her. “I believe I caught whatever you have. How are you feeling now?”

  She sits down in front of me, and her nose scrunches. “What is that smell? It smells like poop or throw up, maybe both.”

  I’m sure it’s smelled like that in this room for the last three hours, and I’ve just gotten used to it. I can’t imagine that Logan got used to it, yet he stayed. “Let’s try not to worry about the smell. How are you feeling? That’s what’s important.”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “A little better. I’m kind of dizzy still, and my head hurts, but I want to go back to school tomorrow. Dad said I could if I don’t have a fever in the morning.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you’re doing better.” And I’m so selfish for thinking that because she’s better, I have a slight chance of being better tomorrow too. Maybe it’s just a twenty-four-hour thing.

  “Mom?”

  “Cora …”

  “Why is Batman Beefcake here?”

  I feel like whining and crying a little. Cora doesn’t understand what it means to kick someone when they’re down, nor would she think that’s what she’s doing right this second, but I’d rather not think of any form of Beefcake. “It’s a long story,” I tell her. It’s the truth, but to be honest, I don’t believe I really have a good explanation for why he brought me home at lunch and never left. It may be hard for her to understand.

  “Good luck with that,” I hear loudly from downstairs. It was Rick’s voice. Good luck with what?

  “Did Daddy take good care of you today?” I ask Cora.

  She leans back onto her elbows and crosses her legs. She’s such a mini-me. “Eh,” she sighs. “He was on the phone all day, but Tiana braided my hair five times. It kind of hurt, but it’s the only time she stops talking so I let her do it.”

  “Why isn’t your hair in a braid now?” That woman drives me bonkers. I don’t care if someone is good at doing hair, or calls herself a beautician, along with a fitness enthusiast, she should keep her hands off my child. Plus, I think one member of my family is enough for her to steal.

  “I took it out. That’s why she did it five times.”

  “I know, you don’t like tight braids.”

  “I told her that, but she didn’t listen.” I roll my eyes, noting the extra pain it causes in my head. “Why are you naked?”

  “It’s part of the long story,” I tell her. If she were older, my long story would be going in a bad direction right now.

  “Daddy and Tiana were naked today too. Maybe it’s naked day?”

  “Um, what?” I’m hoping I just heard her wrong, so I’m going to let her say it one more time before I hunt my laundry down and head on over to castrate Rick’s dick.

  “Well,” Cora says, letting her head fall to the side. “I was taking a nap, and when I woke up, I forgot where I was, so I got scared and ran to Daddy’s room. I opened the door without knocking. It was an accident—” Crap, I don’t want to hear any more. “But he was naked and so was Tiana. I think they were fighting or something because he was shaking her around against the wall, and she was yelling his name really loud. I told him to stop hurting her, and when he saw me, he dropped her.”

  “What?” I ask with exasperation.

  “Yeah, she fell to the ground and screamed, then crawled into her closet. It was weird. Dad said he’d be with me in a minute and that I needed to go back to my room—did you know Daddy doesn’t have a vagina like we do?” Dear God, I’m already sick to my stomach. Why must you do this to me today?

>   “Cora—” I can’t do this.

  “It’s okay. Daddy told me that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina. It’s not confusing. It makes sense now.” I’m going to vomit again. Not because of this damn flu I have, but because I want to hurt that man. She’s five. Five!

  “Cora, sweetie, that’s a lot of information for one day.”

  “You know what’s weird, though?” she continues.

  Tiana has one too? Oh, wouldn’t that just answer all my questions!

  “Laundry!” Logan says as he reenters the room with my laundry basket. “Nice and warm, right out of the dryer.”

  “Did you fold my clothes?” I ask him. I don’t need to ask because they’re neatly stacked in layers of organized clothing.

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when they come out of the dryer? They’ll wrinkle if you don’t.” He laughs at me since I’m the crazy one. He’s folding his boss’s laundry, and I’m crazy. I am crazy. I’ve lost my goddamn mind.

  “Mommy, I was talking to you!” Cora snaps.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt, Miss Cora,” Logan says as he places the basket down on my bed.

  “It’s okay,” she says with a smile, a smile just for Logan, not me. “So, Mommy, what was weird was that Tiana’s boobies stand straight up on their own without one of those strappy bowls you wear. She doesn’t need one of those, I guess.”

  I hear the wind fly out of Logan’s lungs. “Cora,” he says, “I think we should go downstairs and see what we can find in the kitchen to make for dinner while your mom gets cleaned up. What do you think?”

  “I’m kind of tired,” Cora says. “And my head hurts.”

  “I bet I know a way to make it feel better,” Logan suggests. Maybe I should be concerned about him taking care of my five-year-old since I don’t know him very well, and he doesn’t know her well either, but for some reason, I have more faith in his childcare skills than Rick’s at the current moment.

  “Really?” she asks with hope.

  “Yup, I’m an expert at making headaches going away.”

  “A lot of flying balls to the head?” I belt out. I couldn’t help it. The joke just rolled off my tongue without a second thought.