Page 16 of The Intimacy of Finding You

Tobi still hadn’t told me what’d happened when he was on the phone with his mom this morning. All I could do was helplessly be in his presence, just there for when he was ready.

It was time for bed, and he still wasn’t ready. I respected that, giving him the space he obviously needed, but we had work tomorrow. He needed to sleep.

Checking the time on my phone, I sighed and turned the flashlight on so I could find him in the dark. I could still see the flashes of light from the TV as I walked down the hallway, getting closer to the living room.

I walked to the side of the couch, leaning down. “Hey, it’s time for bed, baby.” I placed a hand on his shoulder with the intent of rubbing it in a soothing gesture, but it had the exact opposite effect.

Tobi jumped, scrambling away from me so fast I’d barely had time to process it. His chest was heaving, and his eyes were wide, the light reflecting off them in an array of colors I’d never seen in them before. Red and white. Red and white. Red and white. Just like an ambulance, barreling down the roads in the dead of night, racing to arrive at a scene of catastrophe.

He hadn’t flinched away from me like that in years.

I’d touched him unprompted a hundred times over without so much as a flutter of his eyelashes. But at that moment, he looked terrified.

What the fuck could be torturing my Tobi?

chapter nine

Present Day

He looked so…peaceful. His eyes were closed, and his lips were pressed together, but they were relaxed. They weren’t pursed or turning into a frown. His mouth was just closed. Despite the monitors beeping around him and the oxygen cannulas in his nose, Tobi looked like he was just taking a nap. A very much needed nap. A nap he’d been waiting to take for ten years.

The nurse said he was finally out of the danger zone and that his vitals were slowly climbing. They’d called me because of how desperate it was looking for a while there. His stomach had to be pumped, his blood pressure was dangerously low, and his body temperature was the same, not only because of the alcohol poisoning but because he’d passed out in the snow.

It took over an hour for someone to finally call an ambulance for him. He’d been lying face-down in the snow, covered in his own vomit that’d come up while he was unconscious, and he had a vodka bottle right beside him.

The idea fucking sickened me. If only I’d been there to help him sooner.

How long had Tobi been drinking like that? How many times had he passed out from too much, right on the verge of the same fate? I had so many questions I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers to.

I bit into the skin on my thumb, tearing a piece of the nail and skin away. My other thumb was already bleeding, torn open from the inside out, pouring my worry out in droves. Self-cannibalization, as Jack so kindly labeled it.

Was he in pain? He looked so peaceful that I couldn’t imagine he was, but I still wondered. Could the organs still feel pain when we weren’t awake? If they could, I wished I could soothe his.

The door slowly creaked open as Jack entered the room with one of his arms full of two Styrofoam containers and small matching cups. “I hope you like turkey sandwiches and apple juice.” He whispered.

“You don’t need to whisper, Jack.” I held my hand out to grab mine from him. “If he was going to wake up just from us talking, I would’ve been screaming this whole time.”

“You’re a bit dramatic, don’t you think? I was just trying to be respectful.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, man.”

The turkey sandwich looked sad. Which, I guess, made sense, seeing as it came from a hospital cafeteria. I ate it anyway, refusing to leave Tobi’s side for anything until they kicked me out—even if it meant eating the sorry excuse for bread and meat.

Jack took a seat in the chair next to me, picking up a slice of bread and spreading mayo across it. “Did the doctor say anything about when to expect him to wake up?”

“Anytime in the next twenty-four hours or so. As long as his vitals keep rising, they expect to hold him for observation for a few days and then release him.”

“I don’t like the idea of him going back to the streets after this.”

I popped the plastic tab on the apple juice without ever looking away from Tobi’s sleeping form. “I don’t plan to let him. I’m going to ask him to come stay with me.”

Jack let my words sit in the air for a moment before letting out a long exhale. “Do you think he’ll agree?”

“I’ll argue as much and as long as I have to. He’s coming home with me, right where he belongs.”

He didn’t have anything else to add to that. Jack had left the bar to Mav and Melissa so he could stay with me. I was really fucking lucky to have a friend like him.

Just as I was about to stuff the final bit of my turkey sandwich into my mouth, I noticed movement in front of me. It was Tobi. His eyes were fluttering, and his hands curled into fists, gripping the bedspread surrounding him.