Missing You Again

Swatch This

My morning glow of righteous satisfaction was somewhat dimmed by my night of disturbed sleep. My self-congratulations over the way Zacky and I had managed to keep our hands to ourselves felt a little less like outstanding will power and more like an inevitable consequence of the way I'd spent half the night with my head over the toilet. My stomach ulcer was getting out of hand. 'Maybe it's cancer, maybe you have a tumour' the pessimist inside me whispered to which the realist replied in a voice which sounded remarkably like Arnold Schwarzenegger 'it's not a tumour'.

Tumour or not I felt like a sack of dehydrated shit so the chances of me becoming overcome by lust and jumping Zacky's bones were slim. For his part I'd never seen Zacky less likely to try and cop a feel, and I include the times when he was married in that estimation.

"Are you okay?" Zacky looked down at me with concerned eyes as he stroked away the strands of hair that clung to my sweating forehead. I was a limp bag of bones tucked against his side as we lay in a tangle of sheets on my bed.

"Ungh," I grunted. It may not have been sexy but it was lovely to be nestled in beside Zacky soaking in his sympathy. "It's one of the perils of being a businesswoman that Romy and Michelle didn't brag about. I have a stomach ulcer and it's giving me shit."

Zacky gave a long low whistle. "Wow, that's fucked. Can they do anything for it?"

"Well careful perusal of the multitude of drug company adverts you guys have on the television here tells me that yes, there is something that will help." Beads of sweat were breaking out across my forehead in anticipation of another episode of me hurling up my guts. The problem was there was nothing left in my guts for me to hurl.

"You want me to grab anything for you? Call your office for you to let them know you're not coming in?" If I'd not been feeling so miserable I'd have wanted to roll around in his concern like a dog rolling in a particularly pungent scent.

"No, it's okay. I have to go into the office. Stomach ulcers pretty much come with the territory. After all, that's why they pay me the big bucks." I sucked in a deep breath and the wave of nausea passed.

Zacky snorted, "Nice try but I'm pretty sure that they pay me the big bucks as well and my job's never made me sick."

Even through my misery I couldn't hold back a laugh, "That's your story is it? You're going to stick with that?"

Zacky looked as outraged as a Real Housewife being questioned on exactly how much plastic surgery she'd had. "It hasn't," he replied in the tones of someone who'd been grievously offended.

I cleared my throat and noted with satisfaction that it hadn't sent me lunging for the bucket beside the bed. "How many times have you messaged me to tell me that you clowns partied so hard you thought you were going to die?"

"Jesus Kelly, that's not even close to being the same thing! I did that to myself. Your job is making you sick! Does Sean know about this shit? 'Cause I'll fuckin' call him!" Zacky was literally spitting with outrage.

"No!" I yelped, "Don't call him!"

The look on Zacky's face broke my heart. I'd never seen anyone look so disappointed in me. Not even my parents when faced with some of the worst antics of my teenaged years, although I'd managed to keep all of the really bad stuff from them.

"This is fucked. You're even keeping secrets about your health now?" He sat up and rubbed one hand across the back of his neck as his eyebrows pulled together in a frown. With the way his eyebrows naturally winged upward it gave him a satyr like look that was far from unattractive. If only I'd been in a position to appreciate it. Instead I was at the pointy end of his disapproval.