This Close to Okay(44)
Nico texted see you tmrw, mooi, and she considered responding with there is a man i do not know on my couch and you will meet him tmrw, but i don’t know what it means. i am relearning even my own heart, but simply sent him yes pls, mooi before putting her phone in the nightstand drawer.
She was supine under her cool sheet and weighted blanket, feeling guilty and awful and was she really doing this but. Put her hand between her legs because it was quieter than her vibrator buzz. Tallie let herself go and thought about the unlocked door separating her from Emmett out there on her couch. Thought about him finding her in that position, her hand beneath the blanket moving around like a busy mouse. She imagined his strong tiger body standing by the bed, watching her close her eyes and turn her head to bite the pillow. Imagined Joel, jealous, watching her. Nico, too. She thought about the sext Nico had sent her a month ago: i have a lesson this afternoon, but tonight…i want to make you come. He’d done exactly that, more than once. She thought about how good Nico made her feel and how good Emmett could make her feel if she’d ask him, if she’d let him.
Tallie was a tightly tied knot that needed to come undone. She imagined all he wasn’t telling her—his danger and darkness and secrets and the what-ifs—whipping like wind, snapping like thunder. An unstoppable storm. Her desire and his force and the mystery wrapping around it, revving up and swirling, knock-knock-knocking harderharderharder against her bedroom door until that gasping mouth of the world tugged loose and split wide open. Swallowed her up.
PART THREE
Saturday
EMMETT
Emmett was on the couch, curled like a comma, sleeping. He’d thought about Tallie behind her locked bedroom door as he drifted off, hoping she’d appear to him in a dreamy, sugar-spun haze where he was a different man with a different life. No before, no after. But instead, he dreamed the power went out again. He’d had his eyes on Christine and Brenna, their faces eclipsed, then illuminated by glows of sunlight and moonlight, swapped out for the lamp in Tallie’s living room. The dream clicked to an unending cone of darkness. Christine and Brenna were gone, wisped into black. Emmett screamed for them at first, then forgot their names. Couldn’t scream them anymore. He said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Chanted it, rocking himself in a cold, concrete corner. Alone. The only man in the world, left behind, pulling at his hair. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“I’m so—” He woke himself up saying it in the quiet of Tallie’s house. Frenetic flashes of black, white, and red with his eyes closed. Eyes open and crying, he saw Tallie standing over him with her hands held out, like she was preparing to catch him if he jumped into her arms. Once she saw he was awake, she turned on the lamp. She sat by his head and touched it, the tuft of hair at his temple. She put her hand on his, asked if he was okay.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“That’s what you kept saying over and over…‘I’m sorry’ pretty loud, not yelling…but it woke me up. Is this a recurring dream? Do you remember what was happening? Do you want a glass of water?” Tallie said.
Emmett looked at the clock: 4:13. The cats were now on the couch next to them, purring and rubbing their heads against Emmett, begging to be petted. He sat up, obliged. Tallie didn’t wait for his water answer. She went into the kitchen, got a glass for him. He took it, still trying to surface from the deep sleep he’d been swimming in.
“I’m sorry,” he said again after he’d drunk the water, set the glass on the table.
“You don’t have to apologize. I want to help you. Do you need anything?” She sat beside him, offered him her hand. Palm up, she set it on his thigh.
(Tallie looks concerned. She has her thumbs through the thumbholes of her long-sleeved shirt. Her big brown eyes are now behind a pair of lavender crystal cat’s-eye glasses.) “It was about my wife.”
“I’m so sorry, Emmett.”
He’d been relieved when he slept well the previous night. No nightmares, no screaming. His brain had been far too exhausted. He was embarrassed he’d had a nightmare in Tallie’s house, somehow cursing their cozy bubble and ruining the hygge she’d been talking about. He was sure nightmares weren’t allowed to be a part of hygge, but he couldn’t stop them. No matter what he did or where he went, his blood and bones remembered. All he could offer up was a pitiful I’m sorry, whether it was whispered or hollered or whether he was in his own bed or on Tallie’s couch. Suicide wasn’t hygge, either, and if Tallie weren’t there next to him, that was the only thing that would’ve been on his mind, no question.
But she was there. And she kept her hand on his thigh, and Emmett put his hand in hers.
(The room smells faintly like pumpkins and sugar. The couch is soft, so soft, almost painfully soft, like moss. Tallie’s hand is warm, and she is breathing slowly, deliberately. The trees tattoo the roof with rainwater.)
*
Emmett got up early, before Tallie. He went to the bathroom, changed into his jeans and flannel shirt, brushed his teeth as quietly as he could. He filled a bottle from Tallie’s cabinet with tap water and found his way out to her garage. He stood with his back to the wall, eyes closed, listening only to his breathing before lifting the ladder. Finding and flicking the switch to open the garage door.