Niq - New Adult

Chapter 14

A soft tap at the door.  “Miss Niq?  I have some lentil and pumpkin soup here.”

“I don’t want it.”  I sit in the swinging egg chair, my legs tucked up under me, staying as still as possible.  The less I move, the less I feel.

Schteve comes in anyway.  “Chef Mykael says he’s got some real turkey breasts.  You can have them roasted with cranberry or fried in butter with sage, if you like.”

I answer neutrally.  “No meat.”

“Miss Niq, please.”  Schteve approaches my chair.  “It’s been four days.  You’ve hardly eaten anything.  Please, let me help you.”

“No.”

“I don’t want to have to get Sheb back here again.”  The note of stern warning in Schteve’s voice is something new.  He has a point though.  Two nights ago, Sheb stormed in and force-fed me rice, water and vitamins.  It’s not an experience I care to repeat.

Scowling like a snotty toddler, I snatch the bowl from him.  Instead of using a spoon, sipping from the side as I’ve been trained by etiquette experts to do since I could grip a utensil, I slurp straight from the bowl.  I down half the contents and thrust it back.  “There.”

“Thank you,” says Schteve, calmly, as if I’ve just complimented his hair.  He tried to hand me an envelope.  “There’s todays.”

“Put it with the others.”  I turn my head so I don’t have to see the block script which is Onrhi’s writing.

“Today’s gift is a cactus.”  Schteve waves the spiky plant in front of me.  It looks like a diseased thumb sticking out of a luridly decorated pot.  “The note says, ‘Did you know cacti are actually very sexy?  They have areolas.  That’s where the flowers grow from.  This little one is a Pygmaeocereus – she has scented night flowers.  Put her beside your bed and think of me tonight.  I love you, answer my calls, Onrhi.’” 

I don’t bother telling Schteve to shut up anymore.  This is Onrhi’s fourth gift, and Schteve won’t let me ignore them.  The little basket full of hand-collected seashells keeps reappearing in the bathroom, even after I dumped it in the bin twice, and there is a framed photo of Onrhi’s imaginary polar bear hanging on my wardrobe wall, high enough that I can’t reach to pull it down.

He admires the little plant and says, “I’m going to put this on your night stand.”

“And I’m going to sleep out here tonight…” I mutter as he pads away.  He’ll be back: bearing dinner and reading me updates from my compad, which I’ve been refusing to open.  It sounds like Siimon is doing me proud, getting tagged in all kinds of promiscuous pics and vids daily.  I think Schteve has been posting them under my name.  I don’t really care enough to find out for sure.

Sighing, I push my foot off the floor and rock my chair vigorously.  Is it too much to ask to have a few days to just be alone, to grieve?  Apparently it is, but I can’t even begin to think about functioning.  I don’t have the ability for forward thinking right now, but my capacity is limited to simply existing until something other than Schteve’s bitching or Sheb’s brute force requires me to leave my suite.

I fall asleep, and the memory of Onrhi’s face swims up to torture me sweetly.

Another two days passes.  This time, it’s Vix who storms in and rips the curtains open.  “What the flurg, skank?  I’ve been messaging you for days, then Sheb tells me you’re in some sort of self-induced pity party because lover-boy didn’t immediately fall down and kiss the hem of your robe!”