We walked through the living room, up the stairs and the TV was on in the second bedroom. The minute I hit the landing and looked into the TV room, I came to an abrupt halt.
Eddie walked into the room and said, “What’s up, hombre?”
I could see through the open door that Lee’s huge-ass, flat screen TV was in the place where my old-ass, tired TV used to be. I could also see some frames stacked against each other on the floor and leaning against the wall.
I turned my head the other direction and saw two big suitcases on the floor in my bedroom, one of them open and it appeared to have exploded. Men’s clothes, or more to the point, Lee’s clothes, were all over the floor.
I looked into the bathroom and there was an open dop kit on the counter of the bathroom vanity.
Lee had moved in.
I wandered into the TV room. My desk no longer had all my cute stationery, fun girlie boxes, knick knacks and brightly colored journals, that I collected but never wrote in, carefully lined up on the attached shelves with my laptop closed. Everything was shoved around, there was a huge flat screen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse and a bunch of other crap littering the surface and floor and all sorts of cords everywhere.
There was also an enormous safe next to the TV stand.
Lee was flat on his back on my big, red, poofy, deep-seated, comfortable couch. All my fancy toss pillows, which were normally arranged artfully, were shoved up behind his head and shoulders, he had a beer dangling from his fingers and a baseball game on.
He and Eddie were chatting but when I came in Lee looked at me.
“Hey,” he said.
I didn’t answer. It was a physical impossibility.
I wandered out of the room and into my bedroom.
I was vaguely aware of Eddie leaving and was staring at the exploded clothes when Lee walked into the room.
“Cherry’s gonna be all right,” Lee told me.
I didn’t answer. Not that I wasn’t glad as any good human would be that Cherry was going to live to see another day where she could make other mortals feel inferior, just that I was freaking out.
I walked forward and opened my closet doors. I put both my hands at the very end of the hangers on one side and with all my might, I shoved them to the other side. It was a superhuman effort. Hangers clacked together and all my clothes scrunched up and I managed to free about a foot and a half of space. I stepped back and looked at Lee’s exploded clothes on the floor.
It was then I began hyperventilating.
Lee’s arms came around me from behind and he rested his chin on my shoulder.
“Breathe deep,” he advised.
I did as I was told. In. Out. In. Out.
“Feel better now?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.
He walked over to my CD player and sorted through some CDs. Then I heard Stereophonics “Dakota”. It was a really good song. I was beginning to feel better.
I looked at Lee and took a deep breath.
“Give me a minute, I can do this.”
He left me to it.
Half an hour later, I was losing it. I had freed another foot in the closet and there was a small pile of stuff that I should have thrown out years ago laying in the landing.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
“It’s not gonna be enough!” I shouted hysterically.