The Love of My Afterlife(11)
That was all way back before I’d frequently bump into him in the building lobby, waving off yet another beautiful woman he’d clearly just entertained for one night only. Back before he told me to fuck off the morning I politely asked him to turn down the music he was blasting at 6:00 a.m. After that interaction his eyes looked significantly less glittery to me. I’d studiously ignore him if I passed him in the hallway. He stopped wearing a pencil behind his ear and would snipe at me every time one of my parcels got accidentally delivered to his place on the ground floor. People say I’m prickly, but I am rainbow-stuffed sunshine compared to this guy.
“Right.” He rolls his eyes. “All very normal. And you’re sure I don’t need to telephone for help?”
“Telephone? Alright, Downton Abbey. No. You don’t need to telephone anyone. You don’t need to be here at all, in fact.”
“Good.” His eyes travel down to my nightie and then back up to meet mine. “I’ll let you get back to sparkling and shining, shall I?”
“I’ll let you get back to Rydell High. The other T-Birds are wondering where their shittest member is.”
“I sincerely hope you find that missing beefburger.”
“I sincerely hope you don’t get a heat rash from wearing leather on the hottest day of the year.”
I smile but it’s not real.
He glares and it’s very real.
He turns on the heel of his dumb boot and strides out of my flat, not shutting the door behind him, which I know he did on purpose. Grumbling, I go and close it, locking all three locks and double-checking them.
“And stay out!” I call after him, although my door is already closed, and Cooper is probably back in his own flat now. God. Irritation might be my default setting most of the time, but my goodness does that idiot know how to conjure it.
As soon as he’s gone, I scan my flat once more for evidence of the burger, or the plant I knocked over on my frantic run to the kitchen chair to Heimlich myself. I find nothing.
I pick up my phone. No notifications, no calls, which isn’t a rare occurrence. No notifications and no calls is exactly how I like it.
Hearing the sound of Mrs. Ernestine from downstairs giving grief to someone on the street, and the hum of my fridge, and smelling the scent of the roast chicken in the air coming through my windows—the things I encounter every day—it occurs to me that what just happened was almost certainly the world’s most disturbing dream.
There’s an unexpected roll of disappointment in my gut. I mean, of course I’m delighted I’m not dead. Obviously. But if none of that was real, then that means Jonah T. wasn’t real either. Just a figment of my clearly outrageous imagination. Huh.
Lying on the floor in the setting sun has made my skin gross and sticky, so I strip off my nightie and dive under a tepid shower. I soap my body and stare blankly at the pale pink wall tiles. How did I end up passed out on the floor? Am I unwell? Am I dehydrated? Jan at work told me I needed to drink more water to account for the buckets we’re all sweating in this heat wave.
I think of Jonah T. as I wash my hair with my favourite sweet apple shampoo. About how my body had felt in that dream. How just for a moment I was excited about the possibility of…I don’t know what. Something better. I think about his eyes and his hair and the way his hand felt in mine. My chest aches with longing.
“Get a grip, Delphie,” I say out loud. “It was just a weird dream.”
After climbing out of the shower, I pad about from room to room feeling desperately uneasy. My flat feels too hot and too small. The sun is still too bright for 8:00 p.m. I stare at the spot on my new striped rug where I collapsed. Where I’m certain the air left my lungs. God, it felt so real.
Inspecting the fridge, I spot the offending burger. It’s unopened. I quickly grab it and dump it straight into the trash.
Then, at a loss for what else to do and with absolutely no-one to talk to about this strange occurrence, I switch the TV back onto Netflix and turn on The Tinder Swindler, picking right up where I left off.
6
After slipping into the flat of a sleeping Mr. Yoon to make sure his cigarettes are stubbed out and his oven is turned off, I climb into bed. It takes me ages to get to sleep on account of my brand-new fear of having horrifyingly vivid dreams featuring pushy dungareed women. But eventually I drift off.
When my alarm blares in the morning, the whole thing is still right at the front of my thoughts. I kick off my summer quilt, and Jonah’s face flashes brightly into my mind. I recall the exact shade of his irises: cobalt blue, speckled with shiny touches of hazelnut brown. But more than that, the absolute warmth of them. The kindness. How calm I felt when they were on me.
I sit up, sigh, and briefly wonder if I have a brain tumour. In Grey’s Anatomy Izzie started a full sexual affair with a hallucination. Is that what’s happening to me? Or have I seen some hot guy in a movie at some point, and his face has somehow imprinted into my subconscious?
“My god,” I mutter as I remember that whole video Merritt played. Those memories were crystalline clear: The Sweethearts’ mocking laughs. Me sitting alone on my sofa watching TV on an endless loop. Mum, before Gerard and the artist’s commune.
My heart lurches and I pull out my phone.
Hey Mum! How’s it going? Do you have time for a call later today or tomorrow? Would be nice to catch up.