Ember Kate

Chapter:: Seventeen

When I roll out of a deep sleep and somewhere that I can idly be aware of what’s going on around me, I see and hear confusing things. I guess we stayed out late or something, because I keep tossing and turning and waking up. At one point I find his spot empty and cold, so I roll around and open my eyes half way to search the room. I see him in the middle of my floor and a rubber band tied around his bicep.

“Tommy . . . what are you doing?” I ask him sluggishly. My eyes close, and I feel a pounding in my head. The part of the evening I forgot was the hardcore drinking we did. After we dived off Bend, going higher and higher each time, we never quite reached the part where I was going to end it all.

I fall asleep again, rolling over and snuggling into the cold spot to try and make it warm for Tommy when he comes back. Comes back from what? I couldn’t remember as I fell back into a black dreamless slumber.

When I wake up again I hear Tommy yelling into a phone. He is angry as he paces back and forth in my small bedroom. He keeps sighing repeatedly, and he switches between outright yelling and more of a loud whisper. “I don’t have it!” he whispers harshly into the phone. His pupils are wide and he looks like he’s trembling. I can see his chest move up and down, and it looks like it’s taking a little more effort to breathe. “I just need to figure out another payment plan, just give me three days.” Tommy didn’t wait for a reply before hanging up and tossing his phone across the room.

“Tommy? What’s wrong?” I throw the blanket off and try to sit up but find it doesn’t work. My head gets light and I’m seeing stars until I crash back onto my pillow. For a brief second I wonder what kind of alcohol I was drinking, and was it really this strong?

I finally manage to sit up after struggling, but I have to keep my eyes closed or the room moves. Tommy sits on my floor finally and puts his head in his heads. “It’s nothing, I’ll deal with it.”

“Are you sure?” the question flies out of my mouth with a yawn attached to it. I don’t bother covering my mouth as I get up and stretch.

I walk over and stand by him, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. The room sways slightly and I look down at Tommy. “Yes,” he mutters while he runs his hands over his face. When he rests his arms on his legs, I see an angry red spot at the bend in his arm.

“What’d you do to your arm?” I kneel down and get next to him, about to put my hand on his arm. He lifts his hand up and pushes me back so that I get knocked back on my butt. “What the hell, Tommy? I was just trying to help.” I explain, getting irritated at the fact of him being so rude.

“Well I don’t need your help,” Tommy looks at me and I see a battle in his eyes as he gets up from his position on the floor. “I’m going outside to smoke,” he tells me as he leaves my room and doesn’t look back at me.

I try not to be offended as I pick myself up off the ground and make my way to the bathroom to shower. Maybe he’s just stressed about being in a new part of town. But what could he be freaking out over already? Surely he hasn’t made any friends yet that would be giving him trouble? I decide not to worry about it as I turn the water off and wrap myself with a towel, Tommy was a big boy and had survived his life thus far without me worrying about him.

~

“Should I be worried about you?” I shout over to Tommy as he speeds in the rented Jeep down the empty desert road. He asked me if I was in for an adventure, and of course I was. We drove to a rental shop and he got a jeep, and now we were going ninety while making tight turns. Tommy’s face looked like a kid who was at Disneyland. All grin, and I’m sure it reached his eyes; it was hard to tell through his Ray Bans though.

He looks over at me and starts laughing. My eyes can’t stop tracing over his features, trying to figure out what had changed about his demeanor. “Of course not,” he snorts out while he starts to light a cigarette after making a hard left. It seemed as if the chemical in my brain that produced fear was absent, because I didn’t even have butterflies in my stomach about the thought that he could be drunk or that the car could flip over at any moment.

I couldn’t shake the pressing feeling of something being different about him. Trying to remember what I saw when I was half asleep, I knew that would tell me what was wrong with him. Except the more I tried to think about it, the worse my growing headache became. I would find out what was wrong with him, even if I didn’t really want to know.