This Close to Okay(12)

“For you, too,” she said.

“I guess so.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“I guess so,” he said again. He poured the last of the This is my blood wine into his glass and looked at it in there for how long?

“Emmett, are you comfortable staying here tonight?” Tallie’s voice said, fracturing the deep ecclesiastical spell he’d gone into.

“Only…if you’re absolutely sure it’s okay. I do like it here.”

“Would you like to sleep on the couch or in the guest bedroom? Forgive me for not giving you a proper tour.” She stood and pointed, ticking off the rooms for him. “Laundry room, my bedroom, guest bedroom, office. And the hallway bathroom is yours. I have my own in my bedroom.”

“I’ll take the couch. I appreciate it,” he said.

Tallie disappeared down the hallway. Emmett heard a door click open, the slip of fabric across wood. She reappeared with three thick-knitted blankets: purple, brown, and gray. She put them on the couch and went into the closet again, returned carrying a pillow.

“I knit these,” she said, touching the blankets. “Knitting calms me down. I always have a project.” She reached into a basket by the couch, held up a thick ball of yarn attached to rows of neat knitting hanging from a circular needle. “I’ve started giving most of the blankets away to the homeless shelter. For Christmas and Valentine’s Day, I knit tiny red hats for the hospital nursery.”

“Oh, wow, so you’re actually, like, a good person,” he said. “You aren’t worried I’ll, at the very least, rob you blind while you’re sleeping?”

“Not really. I’m kind of a hippie about that stuff. It’s not like I have a trove of jewels here. The most precious things to me are myself and these two, and we’ll be locked behind the door,” she said, nodding toward the cats.

(A truck shifts and grumbles down the street. The ocean-deep bass of a slow-moving vehicle rattles through the rain, thumping Tallie’s windows.)

“I…um…I wrote my parents a suicide letter and mailed it to them. They’ll get it tomorrow. Saturday at the latest,” he confessed once it was quiet again.

“Oh, no.”

“So yeah…that’s awkward.”

“How did it make you feel, writing the letter?” she asked. Her presence—a cool, minty balm working its way onto his skin, through his muscles.

“I hated it, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice. If I didn’t write it, that wouldn’t be fair. If I did…if I had to write it, period, that would be awful, too. So I chose the least awful choice.”

“How do you feel about it now? They’ll get it and you’re still here. I’m so glad you’re still here,” she said, tilting her head to the side.

“Shitty, I guess,” he said.

“Well, don’t you want to call them and explain? Try to intercept it somehow? We could do something,” she said.

“I don’t know yet.” So much darkness, Tallie couldn’t possibly understand, even if he laid it out for her. And he didn’t. Wouldn’t. “But yeah, I’ll sleep on the couch. I appreciate this. I would never…look, I promise not to uh…kill myself in your living room,” he said, noticing her pale pink toenails—Brenna’s favorite color. His eyes burned and welled; he put his head in his hands. He couldn’t believe the thing that broke him open, what finally made him cry, was the color of Tallie’s toenails. That whisper of pink, those screaming memories. Emmett was embarrassed he’d told her too much by crying in front of her. The Giants scored, taking the lead in the bottom of the eighth.

“Listen to me. I hope you’ve heard it plenty of times before, but it’s okay to not be okay. And it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, you crying. So I don’t want you to worry. I’m totally fine with emotionalism,” Tallie said, her voice soft and sweet as that pink polish.

“Do you have to work tomorrow? I’m assuming you have a job,” Emmett said. Sniffed.

“I do have a job. I have the day off tomorrow, though.”

“What do you do?”

“What do you do?” she asked.

Emmett sniffed again. His throat was thick and wobbly. Hot. He wiped his nose.

“I’ve worked a lot of places,” he said.

“But not anymore?”

“Not anymore.”

“I teach high school. English. I scheduled tomorrow off so I could have a break from teenagers,” she said. She drank some wine, put the glass down. Picked it up again and finished it, wiping her bottom lip with her thumb.

“Easy, tiger,” he said.

“Ha! Why do men think women can’t hold their alcohol? It’s like you guys depend on us being weak and vulnerable even when we’re not. You’re drinking tonight, but I can’t?”

“I’m sorry. I was only kidding. Really. I didn’t mean it like that. You don’t seem vulnerable. Maybe you should behave more like it, but you don’t,” he said.

“Wait…I should?”

“Hell, yeah. You invite a stranger…a man to your house? A suicidal stranger. I know you can’t stop thinking about that part. Look at me. I’m not all there up here, apparently,” he said, pointing to his head. “I could be anyone.”