“Bring me cake.”
Karen slips out of the room. I manage to sit up while she’s gone. She comes back with two overly generous slices of cake and two tall glasses of milk on a tray. She climbs up on the bed next to me and for a while the only sound is the clinking of forks on plates, and slurping.
“Stop slurping.”
Karen narrows her eyes at me and takes a long slurping drink of milk to wash down the last of her cake. It was store bought but it was good anyway. It feels heavy in my stomach, along with all that pasta. I could sleep for a million years.
Karen takes the dishes with her when she leaves, giving me a longing look until I nod that I’m okay and switch off the light. I don’t feel like reading or watching television tonight. When she closes the door the room goes pitch black and I sink down into the bed, tugging the quilts and comforters up to my neck.
Goddamn you for buying a king-sized bed, Russel. It feels so empty. Lying on one side, I stretch my arms and legs across and they’re not even close to the far edge. I’m so goddamn lonely, it hurts.
What happened? I can tell Kelly it’s not our fault all I want, but it’s my fault, I just know it. I did something, I said something, I ruined it. He’s such a kind man. He did so much for us in only a few days.
The wheels start spinning in my head. There’s something really wrong here. I was getting at it before when I tore into him on the porch.
Oh, and why do I feel bad about that? Prick deserves it. Yet here I am tearing up and biting my lip thinking, Rose, you bitch.
I was always like that, even before Russel. I just let anybody walk all over me. High school boyfriends did the same thing: give Rose the old pump and dump.
I can’t shake the feeling that this is different, though, that there’s something more in play here. Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that somebody wants me.
I thought he did. He wanted me to beg him, didn’t he? I don’t understand why he made me feel like the center of the universe a few hours ago and then completely changed his mind.
Did something happen?
What, while he was…what? What was he doing? He went somewhere, I saw his car. It’s hard to miss. Why does he claim he doesn’t have a cell phone if he does some kind of remote work? What does he do, exactly? Even if people are cagey about the details of their job, they’re usually at least willing to mention the industry that they work in. Quentin gave me nothing, just evaded me and changed the subject.
You’re obsessing, Rose. Go to sleep.
Damn it, I can’t. Why did he show up all of a sudden? Why would he leave days later, supposedly never to return? Did he own that house this whole time? Why is he so cryptic? What was he going to tell me before he stopped? What’s he worried about me finding out?
He was upset when Karen was sneaking around his house, too. Anyone would be, though, right? I snort. Rose, you’re deluding yourself. Trying to look for an excuse, a reason why he didn’t just want to get his rocks off and give you a pity fuck.
It wasn’t like that. It was more. I felt it. He was with me in a way that nobody else ever really has been. I know what it’s like to get fucked by somebody who just wants to blow their load, roll over, and go to sleep. Quentin paid more attention to my pleasure than every other man I’ve ever slept with, combined.
“I though he liked me,” I whimper out loud.
Sleep, sleep damn it. It’s your day off.
When sleep comes it sneaks up on me, stealing over me like an invisible blanket. When my eyes flutter open again, I have to blink away purple splotches from the bright sun slicing through the blinds. I roll over, moaning.
It’s ten thirty in the morning. There’s a text on my phone, from Karen. They got on the bus.
I let out a sigh of relief and rise from the bed.
From there I sit on the steps for a while, rubbing my arms. I’m so cold today. The thermometer hanging on the back porch says eighty-six. I turn the thermostat up a little and look for something to eat.
I haven’t had a day off in so long I can’t remember what to do when I don’t have something to do. I’m hungry. There’s a whole big bowl of leftovers from last night’s spaghetti feast. As angry as I am with its maker, I can’t hate the spaghetti.
I pour the bowl into a saucepan and heat it up, and pull a beer out of the bottom of the fridge. Quentin must have moved them all to the bottom shelf. I wonder why he did that?
The sauce starts to bubble, and I pour the hot spaghetti and meatballs right back into the bowl, grab a fork, and plant my ass on the couch. There’s nothing on but news channels, which I don’t need right now, and cartoons.
Cartoons it is. Cartoons, leftover spaghetti, and beer for breakfast.
This is the high life.