neglected building, and every day I weathered a fierce storm that dripped through my roof, flooded my floors, and broke my windows, and the disrepair just made me weaker and closer to collapse.
The water turned on in the bathroom and I looked around the apartment, my compulsion raging back with a fury now that he was gone.
At least I could do this for him. I could take care of his space, give it order. Wash his clothes and his blankets. Make things smell clean, turn his home into someplace he wanted to be. Do this thing that he obviously couldn’t do for himself at the moment.
I blitzed the place. I stripped the bed, threw open the windows. I was washing dishes when the dizziness started.
Why are my lips tingling?
I pressed a shaking finger to my mouth.
And then my vision began to blur…
THIRTY-SEVEN
Josh
I dragged a razor down my cheek for the first time in days and studied my face in the bathroom mirror. I looked the way I felt.
Lost.
It was good to see her. She filled me up. Even when she was giving me shit and bossing me around, it was like taking a deep breath just being near her. She charged my batteries, dragged me back to myself.
She looked beautiful—but she didn’t look good. Pale. Thin. She’d lost weight—a lot of it. She wasn’t taking care of herself.
I couldn’t do shit for myself at the moment, but I could do anything for her. I would take care of her if she let me. But this was the first time she’d even spoken to me in weeks.
I hadn’t given up. I could never give up on her. But I’d gotten tired. She was so stubborn, so implacable, and my heart was worn. Without Kristen and Brandon, I couldn’t move anymore. I wanted to talk to him about her and talk to her about him. And both of them were gone.
The enormity of it was too big to wrap my brain around.
I was never going to see him again. Never sit with him in a duck blind and bullshit. Never talk to him again about Kristen, or Sloan, or anything.
I wasn’t going to be his best man. He’d never be mine. Our kids wouldn’t play together.
Eleven years. We’d been friends for eleven years. And he was just gone. His life was over. He’d gotten all he was going to get. And I didn’t know how to move on from that.
So I didn’t move at all.
I half expected her to be gone by the time I came out of the shower. She ran. That’s what she did with me. The half of me that expected her to still be here would have put money on her cleaning the place. But when I came out, she was on the couch. I knew immediately something was wrong.
I flew to her side. “Kristen, what is it?”
She panted. “I can’t see. My…my eyes are blurry.”
She was covered in sweat. Shaking, breathing hard. I pulled back her eyelid and she swatted at me.
Combative.
Hypoglycemic.
I ran to the kitchen, praying that she hadn’t tossed all the trash. I spotted an old In-N-Out cup with Coke in it from yesterday and grabbed it, running back to the couch.
“Kristen, I need you to drink this. You’re not going to like it, but I need you to do it.”
It was flat, old, and room temp, but it was all I had in the apartment. I put the straw to her lips.
She shook her head violently and clenched her teeth. “No.”
“Listen, your glucose levels are low. You need sugar. Drink this. You’ll feel better. Come on.”
She tried to knock the cup from my hands, and I protected it like it was the cure for cancer.
If she didn’t get her blood sugar up, she could have a seizure next. Slip into unconsciousness. And her symptoms were already advanced.
Panic overcame me. My heart pounded in my ears. What’s wrong with her?
“A few swallows, please,” I begged.
She took the straw in her lips and drank, and my relief was palpable.
It took a few minutes and a few more sips, but she stopped shaking. I got a wet washcloth and wiped her face as she came back around. I peeled her sweatshirt off her—my sweatshirt.
“When’s the last time you ate?” I asked.
She was still a little disoriented. When she looked at me, her eyes didn’t really focus. “I don’t know. I didn’t.”
I checked my watch. Jesus, it was almost 2:00 p.m.