Chapter Text
It’s been 24 days. You know this because you’ve been counting the sunsets and sunrises through the gap in the blinds on your bedroom window. Not because you’ve had things to do to fill your days, like a person who is not utterly and completely broken. You remember the very short time when you were, maybe, almost that person. But mostly there was just a longer time after that when you tried so, so hard to pretend that you were, tried for them.
And look where it got you.
That feels like a different lifetime now, but it’s only been 24 days.
You hear the faint sound of your front door opening. It’s Dave. He’s been coming every day to clean up after you, and honestly, probably to make sure you’re not dead. For the first week he tried to do more than that, but you made it pretty clear that you were not going to engage, so he let it go.
You hear the now routine sounds from downstairs, the fridge door opening, the cabinets, the kitchen faucet, and then footsteps up the stairs, the creak of the loose floorboard in the hall, and finally, the soft courtesy knock on your already ajar bedroom door, before he pokes his head in without prompting. This is routine for him now, too.
“June?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here…”
“OK. Do you need anything?”
“No thanks.”
“OK, text me if you do. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah…”
You hear the creak of the floor board signaling that he’s turning to go, but then it creaks again as he stops and turns back.
“Uh, June? You should probably check the mail today...if you’re up to it. I left it on the counter for you. OK, later.”
Then once again comes the floorboard, the stairs, the closing and locking of the front door.
You don’t know when you fell asleep, but when you wake up it’s still mostly light out. You only know it’s the same day because you’ve never slept through a Dave visit, and he’s never missed one. You decide that since Dave has already come and gone, it’s safe to make your daily sojourn to the bathroom and kitchen to complete your obligatory life-sustaining activities for the day. You decide it’s been a little too long since your last shower, so you summon up all of your energy and force yourself to take one. The bathrobe hanging on the back of the door is not exactly clean, but it’s cleaner than what you were wearing, and it’s here, so you put that on, abandoning the dirty pajamas where they lay, and head downstairs.
You have plenty of bowls and spoons in the cabinet, but you grab the ones from the drying rack, the same ones you used yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, and yet are always clean and there waiting for you in the drying rack when you need them. You open the cabinet and stare blankly at the two boxes inside- coco and fruity- for several minutes, before grabbing the fruity for no particular reason at all. You fill your bowl with cereal, leaving the box open on the counter, and then milk, which you only put back in the fridge because, well, that can’t wait for Dave to do it.
You start to head out to the couch where you take all of your “meals” these days, when the pile of mail on the counter catches your eye. You remember what Dave said, and though your complete lack of motivation almost outweighs your curiosity, you decide to set the bowl down and start shuffling through the stack.
Ad, coupons, ad, ad, bill, sweepstakes...what’s this?
You uncover enough to see the corner of a large manila envelope sticking out from the bottom of the pile. You grab it and brush the rest of the junk aside.
There’s no address or postage, just a message on the front delicately hand-written in pink marker-
June,
Whenever you’re ready.
-R
A single sharp, frightening laugh escapes you first, soon followed by a white hot rage that bubbles outward from your gut as you trace the flowery pink letters again and again with your eyes.
Whenever you’re ready.
Whenever you’re ready.
Whenever you’re ready.
“Oh, OK, Roxy, OK, whenever I’m ready, now it’s whenever I’m ready, now you care about what I want, what I can do and when I can fucking do it! Now you fucking care about that!” You find yourself shouting at no one at all.
“Well how about this, Roxy, how about if I’m never fucking ready, huh? How about that? Then what? Will you still care forever? Will you still wait?”
Your throat is already raw, having atrophied over the course of the month. The angry tears start flowing out quickly and steadily, blinding you literally and figuratively, but the fire inside is still growing stronger and hotter and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
“Well get used to fucking waiting, Roxy, because I’ve got absolutely nothing but time! And I am Not. Fucking. Ready!”
You are screaming now as you take the envelope in both hands and tear it to shreds. The pieces get smaller and smaller and smaller but you keep tearing and you keep screaming.
“I’m not fucking ready! I’m not fucking ready! I’m not fucking ready! I’m not…”
When the last confetti-sized scrap falls to the floor, you follow it down. Your screams become sobs as you lay there in your pile, on the cold hard kitchen floor, alone.