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“Yes, actually. After the night I laid into him for not calling me, he’s called twice and seemed normal as ever. I even thought about asking him about that one night.”
“Why don’t you? You keep bringing that up…just get it off your chest.”
“I don’t know Holly. There’s something internal that prevents me from going there. There’s something uncomfortable about it.”
“I think you’re blowing it all out of proportion and all of it would go away if you’d just bring it up to him. There’s gotta be a stupidly simple explanation.”
“I’m sure you’re right, and I probably will at some point.” I turn back to the last bites of my food, hoping she’ll be satisfied with my response.
After Holly gives up on prying any juicy info out of me, she submits to chit chatting about her latest architectural assignment…which I personally find fascinating. But she always interprets it as a failure when she can’t engage me deeply in gossip about my life. I keep trying to tell her that hers is more interesting, but she never buys it.
Needing to put in some Saturday work, Holly apologizes and takes off quickly after lunch. So I decide to take a stroll in the warm, sunny afternoon air, stopping by Thymely Solutions for some gourmet chocolate. I’ll need this in the bathtub later.
***
I arrive home tired and head upstairs for a rare nap, only to be awakened after twenty minutes by a call from Quade. “Hey Cookie, what are you doing with your Saturday afternoon?” He sounds chipper.
“I was sleeping, actually. A bowl of fried rice knocked me out I guess,” I reply in a dramatically groggy voice.
Quade chuckles into the line. “Well Cookie, it’s Saturday. You’re entitled to spend it however you like.”
“Oh, thank you Quade,” I respond with barely suppressed sarcasm.
“Did I tell you I’ll be in town this evening?” he asks out of nowhere.
“No,” I reply, jerking myself upright and feeling suddenly alert.
“Yeah…I have a dinner meeting but I’ll be free after. How about I come around eight and we’ll pop some corn and watch a flick.”
I answer politely against the better judgment of my arm hairs, which are standing on end. “Sure, that sounds like a good idea.” I cannot explain why I’m having these palpable responses to Quade that I’ve never had before.
“Great. I’ve gotta run now but I’ll see you around eight then.”
“Okay good…see you then.” After hanging up, an electric silence buzzes through my bedroom like a restless spirit.
Nearly thirty minutes later, I glance at the bedside clock and realize how long it’s been since I moved a muscle. I feel paralyzed by lack of impetus, a phenomenon that never occurs in my life. Maybe the hot bath will help. As I slide my legs over and push off the edge of the bed, I notice I’m faint and breathing audibly. Collapsing back down, I can hear my breath escalating in speed and volume…yet I’m helpless to stop it. It dawns on me I’m having a panic attack, my first one in years, and then the thought disintegrates into a wash of blurry, dizzy hyperventilation. I writhe limply on the bed, clawing at nothing with distorted arms and useless hands, as my body curls in on itself and gives up. The roaring of the jet engine inside my head comes to a sputtering halt, and then there is only gray, blindness, and a high pitched whine in my ears. Speckled fragments of colorless fuzz reintegrate and slowly form the room around me.
I wake up at five, in a state of disbelief that I’ve allowed my entire afternoon to slip away. Feeling hit by a truck, I stagger up and brew some tea to keep me from sleeping through my meditation. At six thirty I’m ready to pour a bath and get psyched for Quade’s visit. Shuffling a few movies around in my head, I add coconut bubble oil to the water and consciously relax my face. I should be happy, looking forward to tonight, but nothing can get my attention off of what happened earlier without any cause or explanation.
After lighting a couple beeswax candles and killing the overhead lights, I finally slip down into the soft, delicious smelling water. Within seconds I feel so much better. I reach out to my tableside tablet and put on an All Things Considered episode about baby talk, then lean back against the tub pillow and close my eyes to listen. Inane discussion about things that don’t pertain to me or my life. Perfect.
Shit! A tidal wave of bubbles splashes out onto the red and white mini-tiles, as I singularly yank myself upright and slam my fists into the water. I left my fucking chocolate in the bedroom! What next? Somebody kill me now.
As I hastily attempt to snatch my towel, the crooked rack loses its last bolt and both crash to the floor in a heap. Not giving a flying flip, I storm past them and into my room…where I grab the chocolate cherries out of my purse and throw it back onto the bed, contents spilling everywhere. Stalking across the wet carpet, I begin tugging at the impossible-to-open bag of cherries. What in the hell was the manufacturer’s point in creating an impossible-to-open bag? Did twenty people sit at a thirty-foot table on the seventeenth floor of a forty-eight story high rise to put their heads together and come up with this as a reasonable means of containing eight ounces of chocolate covered cherries?! God help us all.
I whiz around the corner of the bathroom in time for the plastic bag to pop open, depositing chocolates throughout, just as I lose my footing and stumble toward the tub…which now looks like the candy-bobbing bucket at a seriously trashy Halloween party. Seeing that there are still a few ounces left in the bag, I splash into the tub and begin unceremoniously choking them down as I feel something strange happening. Two little tears are welling up in my eyes and threatening to slide down my cheeks. I hold my mascara-coated lids open wide to avoid a smudgy disaster, but then resort to laughing so hard the same result is inevitable. Now hysterically laugh-crying while choking on a cherry, I’m convinced I’ve lost my mind. I haven’t shed a tear in at least five years, and I can’t determine whether this sudden flood is a good or bad thing.
Right after I reach over to turn off the utterly pointless podcast I’ve been tuning out, I hear something that alarms me out of my emotional mess. There are footsteps thudding up my stairs.
“Quade! Quade is that you?!” I yell at the top of my lungs.
“Yeah, it’s me Cookie. Sorry…I tried knocking but you didn’t answer,” he lies as his voice gets closer and closer.
“Quade! Ever heard of calling, or sending me a damn text? I’m in the tub!”
A moment later his face is peering around the thick, dark mahogany molding of my bathroom doorway. I stare at him stupidly, rendered speechless by feelings of helplessness, when it occurs to me that my exposed C’s are still perky in their childless middle age…and are floating on top of the bathwater.
“It’s okay Cookie…I’ve seen you naked a time or two,” he states calmly, in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that he’s ogling me. And then the inevitable question comes. “Cookie, what in the world happened in this place?” he asks with a stricken expression. “What is going on…are you okay?”
