Glance one more time at my roommate’s door.
Grab the goddamn bottle of champagne and fucking brownies and stuff both in my duffel bag. Crumple the note, toss it in the garbage.
The walk to Kennedy’s house isn’t far, but I take it slow. After last night at Kellermann’s, I’d planned on having a week before seeing her again. A week of sun and sand and girls that don’t cause me to stay up all night thinking about what a fucking idiot I am. Letting my anger and suspicions get the best of me. Going too far and saying the wrong shit.
The worst part of having a temper isn’t the initial punch. No, that feels good. Manifesting all that rage with a single strike. Releasing it in the most primal way your body knows how.
The worst part? It’s the aftermath. That after the fog of fury has blown away, you’re left with blood and aching hands and shame and guilt and the knowledge that there’s something seriously fucking wrong with you that you have to react in such a violent way.
When I see her house, her car still in the driveway, I start snapping the band around my wrist. Fucking kick myself I didn’t write a goddamn note of my own. One that just says I’m sorry. Because now I have to do it in person. Can’t just leave her birthday presents on the doorstep and pretend like I was never there at all. That’s what a fucking coward would do. I’m not a fucking coward.
When I reach the front door, I raise my fist—
It swings open before I can knock.
Kennedy blinks at me. She’s bundled in her coat, scarf wrapped around her neck, hair spread about her shoulders under her hat. For a moment, I’m stunned. By nerves and a dumb blankness in my head and the mere sight of her.
For once, she doesn’t look picture perfect.
She’s… the exact opposite. She’s got on ratty sweatpants, and her hair’s a knotted mess, and her cheeks are flushed, her nose noticeably a bright red dot, metal band around her teeth, and she looks—
“What do you want?” she asks. Only it sounds more like, “Waa do boo wanb?”
“You’re sick,” I state the obvious.
Because she looks sick. Sick and miserable and kind of pitiful.
“No bit,” she says, and then pulls a tissue out of her jacket pocket and blows her nose. And I realize she’d just tried to cuss at me, though her nasally voice ruins the effect.
As she moves back inside, slowly, to throw the tissue away, I step through the door for a peek. The TV’s on, a mountain of blankets and pillows on the couch. A pile of discarded tissues on the coffee table. I follow her to the kitchen, where she steps on the lever to open the garbage can. She has to try three times, since the slippers on her feet are too bulky to hit it on the first time. They’re fuzzy and blue and not the sort of thing Kennedy typically wears out of the house.
I unload the champagne and brownies from my bag onto the counter, trying to be subtle, but Kennedy catches me. She raises a brow, and I tell her they’re from Natalie. She nods, like that makes sense.
My chore done, I stuff my hands in my jacket pockets. Kennedy eyes me, not speaking, whether because she’s feeling under the weather or because she’s still mad from the night before, I don’t know. She mirrors my stance, sticking her hands in her coat, a muffled jingling of keys from her pocket.
“Your flight leaving soon?” I finally break our silence.
“Nob going.” She stresses each syllable to accommodate for her blocked nose. I don’t miss the sad glance she sends a suitcase by the door, one I imagine is tidily organized and adhering to every airport regulation.
I nod to the living room. “Kind of overdressed for binging TV.”
“I’m going to da door.”
The store. In fuzzy blue slippers and old pajamas and hair unbrushed. Driving her car. When she sways on her own two feet, until she has to reach out and hold herself against the counter.
Like fucking hell.
I drop my duffel on the floor. Hold out my hand. “List.”
When she looks confused, I say, “You have a list? Give it to me. Keys, too.”
And like I thought, she pulls out the folded piece of paper from her pocket, along with her keys, and places both hesitantly in my waiting palm. I read over it, in her neat curly handwriting, checking its contents are suitable for someone who looks like they’re about to simultaneously hurl and pass out.
I don’t know if I make a face or give a reaction to the last item on the list, but Kennedy gingerly curls a hand over her abdomen. I nod, not commenting, since her face burns red. Not from her cold. I grab Kennedy by the shoulders and walk her in the direction of the stairs. And that’s how I know it must be bad, since she listens to me when I tell her, “Go to bed.”
* * *
I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing.
I glare at the wall of boxes, like they’re to blame for the current situation. They are. They so fucking are. Shelf upon shelf of bright pinks and blues and bold marketing copy fucking screaming words like absorbency and flow and ounces and easy insertion.
I pick up a box. Compare it to the one next to it. Scented. Or unscented. These things are fucking scented? I shove the first box back on the shelf and glare at Kennedy’s list. I should have fucking asked for a brand. Why the fuck had I saved her
