“I promise if he pulls through this, I’ll never fight again. I will never hurt anyone ever again. You go tell him for me. Tell him that I’m sorry. Please…” He grabs my hand and squeezes tight. “Grams, don’t make me go there. I can’t do it.”
Eyes dark and glossy, his entire body is trembling with fear. This has to be some kind of memory, and I’m not sure what happened. I don’t know if Grams made Slate go and apologize to Joey himself. I don’t even know if Joey made it. But tonight, tonight I’m going to make it all better. Tonight, he doesn’t have to go see Joey. Tonight, Joey is going to be okay. “I’ll go, Slate. I’ll tell Joey that you’re sorry.”
“You will?”
“Yes, I will.” I smile at him, watching the stress gradually dissipate from his face. “Now, it’s late. Lie down and try to get some sleep.”
“Okay,” he says, settling back into the bed with his back to me. “Grams?” He pulls the sheet over himself. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
I curl up against his back, wrap my arm around his shaking body, and whisper, “Yes. I’m not going anywhere. I will stay with you for as long as you need me.”
I wake alone in the bed with the sun making an appearance through the small glass-block basement window. I sit up and rub my eyes. Shit! Slate! I jump out of the bed, praying he’s okay and hasn’t passed out somewhere. Or he’s not high out of his mind, crawling the walls and imagining shit. I sigh when I find him standing in front of the apartment-size stove in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He looks over his shoulder. His alert eyes take in every inch of my body then he turns back around. I smell bacon. He’s making breakfast. I’m not sure what’s going on here. Last night he was freaking out, seeing shit, and now, he’s acting as though nothing happened. He seems fine. I guess that it’s all part of being an addict. You learn to adapt. One second, you’re flying high, and the next, you’re back down on the ground.
“Over easy, right,” he says with his back to me.
“You remember.” I pull out a stool at the high nook that separates the kitchen area from the living area and sit down, carefully examining him.
“How could I forget? Every Saturday morning you’d drag my ass out of bed so that we could make it to Granny’s Kitchen for the breakfast special.” He sets some toast on the counter in front of me.
“Hey, there’s nothing like Granny’s homemade hash.” I smile, glad that he’s not still in the land of Oz where I’m not real and he’s hurting boys named Joey. “Remember that time we got there late and you talked her into giving me some anyway.”
“Yeah, her dish washer didn’t show up that morning. I don’t know what I was thinking, offering to do the dishes so that you could get your damn homemade hash. You try washing off dried-up egg yolk from a plate with a hangover. I puked like three times.”
I laugh. “It was sweet.”
He looks up at me from long dark lashes with a grin. “I was a sap.”
“Yeah, but you were a sweet sap,” I say, picking up a piece of toast and taking a bite. He turns back to the stove to flip the eggs. “So…” I swallow the dry toast. “You feel better?”
He doesn’t say anything, but nods his head.
“Do you have any more drugs on you?”
“No,” he says, placing his hands on the counter; his shoulders lift and his head lowers.
“And are there any hidden down here?”
His head lifts, and with his back to me, he shakes his head. “No.”
“Okay, I’m going to trust you,” I say, committing again to my decision to help him. “I’m not leaving, Slate. We have two more days, so get it together.”
He turns around and places a plate of perfect eggs with a side of bacon in front of me. “Eat,” he says, brushing his hands together. He looks up from the plate and stares at me for a quiet moment. “Want some orange juice? I think there’s some in the fridge, or there’s coffee.”
“Coffee, please.” I smile, glad he’s ready and willing to give this another shot.
“Oh-ho, look at you, all grown up,” he teases. “You like coffee, now?”
“Yes, I do.” I tilt my head, grinning. “In fact, I do all kinds of grown-up stuff now.”
“Huh, I’d like to see some of those grown-up things.”
“Yeah, I bet you would.” My cheeks flush with heat. “But it was Emmie who got me hooked on coffee when she moved in with me in Manhattan. And now, I can’t live without it.”