Neighborly(47)

I’m fumbling, flailing, and emitting strangled cries. I’m harpooned here in the dark, suffocating. I’ve been swallowed. I’m in the belly of a whale, like that book I should have read in high school.

I scream. I don’t know if anyone can hear me, but I have to try. I want to live. Sadie. I have to get back to her. I need to live, for her.

I hear heavy footsteps, someone running. To save me or to hurt me? I don’t know. I should have stayed quiet. Maybe they didn’t even know I was here, whoever they are, wherever here is.

Then I’m free. My bindings are lifted, and the room is flooded with light. It’s my bathroom, with the gray-blue tiles, like I’m being tossed on stormy seas. I’m breathing heavily, and I realize that I’d been under a blanket made by my mother-in-law, the kind of loose knit pattern that seems like a net. I’d never actually been trapped, but sometimes the illusion is enough. It’s like how people can drown in water a foot deep.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Doug says accusingly. He’s breathing heavily, too, though I don’t know why. It’s a tiny house. Maybe we really do need to start riding our bikes. We’re in terrible shape.

Well, I am, currently. My head is pounding; my stomach is roiling. I have to close my eyes against the fluorescent light.

“Sorry,” I tell Doug. “First time drinking in a year. Regrets.”

“Yeah.” His tone is bitter. “I bet.”

I try to remember what I could have done to make him mad. Even at the height of my partying days, I never felt like this. This sick, with a cratered memory. I remember the spreadsheet, though; there’s no way I could forget that.

“You were throwing up a lot,” Doug says, disapproving.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have drunk that much.”

“Andie had to knock on the door and wake me up at one a.m. She needed me to come out and carry you out of her car, caveman-style. You were completely out. Like, unconscious but mumbling.”

My chest tightens. “What was I mumbling?”

“I couldn’t make it out. Neither could Andie. She said that it had taken four of the women to get you into her car.”

I throw the blanket back over my head. “I am so mortified.”

“Andie tried to make excuses for you. She said those drinks were hard-core. She only had one herself.”

So Andie had stayed sober. Great. She’d remember everything.

Doug squats down beside me. “Andie really likes you. She said she knows you’re going to be great friends.” His tone is scathing, like there are air quotes around “great friends.” I’m keeping the blanket over my head. I don’t want to see him right now. Don’t want to see his disgust.

“Did you guys talk long?” I ask him.

“She came in for a drink.”

They used to call those late-night drinks “nightcaps.” It seems a little weird that Andie was having a nightcap with Doug while I was somewhere passed out. But Andie’s not someone I need to worry about. She opted out; I definitely remember that.

He says defensively, “I needed to stay up for a while to make sure you were OK. I couldn’t let you choke on your own vomit, could I? She offered to keep me company.”

“I should have had one drink at most. I probably shouldn’t have even had that.” My breasts are heavy and leaking, or have already leaked. The front of my shirt is damp. I never did the pump and dump. I need to do it now.

I throw off the blanket and stagger to my feet. I’m not drunk, not in my brain, but in my body.

I’m still in last night’s clothes, so my phone is in the front pocket of my jeans. I hear an incoming text and I see that it’s one of many from Andie, including one that reads, I’ve never seen anyone that drunk!

As if my face could grow any hotter.

Thanks for getting me home last night, I text back. I’m so sorry about that. Did I do or say anything I’ll want to forget?

No. You were a blast. Don’t worry at all. What are friends for? Then quick on the heels of that one, she writes, The whole point of girls’ night is to let your hair down. You partied like a rock star!!!

No, the whole point of girls’ night is to get fresh meat for the spreadsheet.

Well, I won’t be a regular, not once I tell them I’m opting out, but I’ll still have Andie.

I hate not knowing exactly what happened last night. It’s part of why I stopped drinking entirely for a period in my twenties. I don’t want to have to ask other people what I did. I haven’t had this experience since I started seeing Dr. Morrison. Back then, I was trying to forget. Now, my life is entirely different. I have so much that I want to remember. Like Sadie.

I feel like crying, I miss her so badly. I’m such a mess. We didn’t move here so she could have a wretch of a mother. Quite the opposite. “Is Sadie sleeping?”

“Yes. But don’t worry about her. I fed her in the night. I was Father of the Year.” There’s no humor in the reference this time.

“Thank you. I never worry when she’s with you.”

He ignores my comment. “Do you need anything?” He’s in the bedroom doorway, watching me, waiting to be dismissed. “Tea or toast?”

It’s like he can’t not ask me; it would go against his ethos. But he obviously doesn’t want me to say yes. His anger is palpable, and I don’t really get it. He’s the one who insisted I go out last night. So I overdid it. I don’t know my limits anymore. So he had to do a night feeding. It doesn’t seem like a reason to seethe.