This Close to Okay(16)

(A plate of bacon, eggs, and toast. On the middle of the table—butter and local organic blackberry jam, almond butter. A carafe of water, two glasses, and a bottle of ibuprofen.)

“Red wine gives everyone a headache,” she said, touching the plastic top of the medicine. She motioned for him to have a seat. “Do you like breakfast?”

“Only a psychopath wouldn’t like breakfast,” he said. He took two ibuprofen. Last night he’d wondered if dinner would be his last meal, and now? He was ravenous for breakfast.

Emmett and Tallie ate and discussed the rain, the weekend forecast. She asked him again how he was feeling.

“Better…I feel better,” he said.

“Glad to hear it.”

He remembered the phony email to Joel and felt like garbage for it, wondering if he could make it all go away. His feelings shuffled like a deck of cards—diamonds of embarrassment, overreacting clubs, stubbornness in spades, the ace of guilt. And his heart, their hearts, still beating. Somehow. But hope. Hope was the real joker. Had he confused exhaustion for hopelessness? Maybe they felt exactly the same in the cold rain, darkness creeping.

“Just wondering…do you ever talk to Joel anymore?” he asked after a moment, attempting to make the question as casual as possible—a continuation of their conversation from the night before. If she talked to Joel via some other form of communication, she’d figure out what he’d done real easy.

“Oh…no. I actually blocked his number in my phone out of pettiness. Maybe the occasional message online, but not really. Last time he wrote me, I didn’t feel the need to respond. Nothing more to say,” she said. “On a nicer note, did you sleep well?”

The sweetness in her voice inspired a violent tenderness inside him.

“I did. Did you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, you did beat me at arm wrestling…so maybe tonight I should be behind the locked door,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. Her face went plain.

“Not that I’m trying to stay here tonight. I was kidding. I’ll be on my way soon, no worries,” he said, not fully able to decode how he wanted her to respond. Ask him to stay? Ask him to go? Leave it up to him? He ate, drank his coffee.

“No, that’s not what I meant. You’re more than welcome to stay. I’m worried about you. Maybe you need a couple days to feel back to your old self?”

Emmett swallowed and took his time. “I don’t ever want to feel back to my old self.”

“Of course not. Right,” she said, nodding. “Well, okay…so my brother, Lionel, has this huge Halloween party every year. It’s on Saturday. Tomorrow,” she said, as if he were an alien and didn’t know how the days of the week worked. “It’s a lot of fun, tons of people in wild costumes…” She stopped talking and put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, before sitting back in her chair and beginning again. “A proposal: How about you stay here at least until then and go to the party with me? That would be fun and something to do. It’s always good to have something to do…to look forward to. It keeps our brains happy.”

They smiled across the table at each other like old friends.

“What’d you dress up as last year?” he asked.

“Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, and my best friend, Aisha, was Dorothy, too,” she said. “My brother always goes way overboard since it’s his favorite holiday. Last year he was Houdini and rented a water tank. And! He has this friend who grows his beard out specifically to dress up like Gandalf every year, then he shaves it the day after. He even comes with his own little hobbits. The whole thing is beyond.”

“Okay, wow. Big leagues. So what’s your costume?”

“Absolutely no clue. I usually know, like, months in advance, but this year I’m so slow…with work and…everything else on my mind, I haven’t figured it out yet. And time’s a-tickin’. But it’ll all work out, because now you and I can look for costumes together.”

“I’ll do it,” he said. What did it feel like to have a happy brain? He couldn’t fully remember, although there was a flick of it somewhere inside him. But it was too small, too far away.

“Good. That’s what we’ll do today.”

*



(An outlet mall costume shop, but this one isn’t as sad as it could be. The costume shop is sandwiched between a shoe store and a candy store. There is a sporting goods store across from it, a kitchenware store next to that. It is a wet morning, and the world seems to have not woken up yet. The college kid working the register has his feet up on the counter. He is wearing glasses, reading a Superman comic book.)

They wandered up and down the aisles, Tallie stopping every now and then to inspect costumes a little more closely.

“See anything that looks good?” Tallie asked him from the end of a row of gorilla costumes.

“Not really,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Last time you dressed up for Halloween…what were you?”

“Few years back, I was Beetlejuice.”

“I love Beetlejuice. That’s so good. Okay, what about Star Wars? All boys love Star Wars. You love Star Wars, right?”

“I do,” Emmett said.

“We’re just riffling through the leftovers at this point. I waited too late,” Tallie said, walking away from him and down the other aisle. He could see the top of her head bobbing. And when she got next to him, she popped up over a rack of spooky signs. “There’s nothing good over here. Okay…I know, I know…but what if we do a couples costume? Not a couples- couples costume, but you know what I mean…related costumes for two people going to a Halloween party together. Is that weird? Would you maybe do that?” she asked.