I thought shaving and brushing my teeth felt good. Turns out it has nothing on a hot shower, especially after I’m already feeling good from having had a decent meal for once. By the time I turn off the water and start drying off with one of Adrian’s gigantic and super plush bath towels, I’m so relaxed I can barely stay on my feet. I just try not to think about tomorrow or any point in the future beyond going to sleep. After all, this is a temporary fix. Everything beyond tonight is a big void of I have no fucking idea.
Tonight, I’ll sleep. I’ll enjoy every single minute of sleep on a surface that’s not made out of wood or concrete. Whatever comes next, I’ll deal with it when it happens.
I dry off, brush my teeth again, and pull my jeans back on. At least they’re clean enough to sleep in.
When I return to the living room, Adrian is on his phone again, but he lowers it as soon as I come in the room. Probably just passing the time until he has his bathroom and bedroom back. Considering he was heading home from work when he found me, and that was a couple of hours ago, he must be wiped out.
He gestures at the couch. “I found a couple of pillows and a set of sheets and blanket. It probably won’t get too cold in here tonight, but if it does, there’s more in the linen closet, which is right outside the smaller bathroom.”
“This is perfect. Thank you.”
He smiles, and the fatigue is really showing now. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yeah. See you in the morning.”
He goes into the bedroom, turning off the hall light behind him, and the bedroom door quietly clicks shut. For the first time since he stopped beside me on the sidewalk, I’m alone.
It feels okay, though. As I arrange the blankets and pillows, and figure out a way to lie on the couch without wrenching my back or crunching my neck, I don’t feel particularly…lonely. Or at least, no more than I did in the weeks leading up to everything going to shit. Adrian is a complete stranger, and he’s in another room, but his presence is more than I’ve had in a lot longer than I care to think about right now. After this much soul-crushing solitude, I’ll take what I can get.
Adrian’s right about the couch. I’m six foot exactly, and even with my head on one armrest, my feet are on the other. There’s a hard spot in the middle that my hip can’t seem to avoid, and it’s narrow enough that I’m afraid I’ll tumble onto the floor if I try to roll over.
It’s also the most comfortable thing I’ve ever tried to sleep on.
And in no time flat, I’m out cold.
Adrian has some sheer blue curtains over his windows, and they mercifully filter out some of the brutal desert sunlight. As I sit up slowly, kneading a crick out of my neck, the room is still painfully bright, but it’s bearable.
I swing my legs off the couch and stretch. The house is silent except for the filter on the fish tank and the low hum of the refrigerator. Adrian’s bedroom door is still closed, so I’m guessing he’s still asleep.
As I rub a knot out of my back, I survey my surroundings for the first time. I was dead on my feet when we came in last night—this morning?—and don’t remember much besides that amazing shower. Now that I’m a bit more coherent, I look around.
Adrian’s living room is sparsely but tastefully decorated. Not quite minimalist, but no more than one person really needs. There’s a modest flat screen attached to the wood-paneled wall, surrounded by a handful of photos of people I assume are his family. The simple black coffee table has a small stack of magazines—some devoted to photography, others about geocaching, and some familiar news magazines—and a neat row of remote controls beside a stack of coasters.
On the end table by my pillow, there’s a framed photo from a wedding. I pick it up and bring it closer so I can see the faces. The men are all definitely related. I actually have to really look before I figure out that the best man is Adrian and the groom is—I assume—his brother.
I’m envious as I look at each smiling face in turn. No one seems to be pretending to be genuinely happy. Or pretending to like each other.
Sighing, I put the picture back on the table, then stand and work another crick out of my back. There’s definitely going to be a bruise on my hip where that hard thing in the couch had been digging in. Still—best sleep I’ve had in ages.
Slowly, reality dawns on me. It really was the best sleep I’ve had in ages. Like… years. Thinking back, I honestly can’t remember a night when I slept like that. No tossing and turning and stressing over work. No listening to the emptiness of my condo and realizing how painfully alone I was. No passing out when my liver had finally had enough or when even the hard concrete and cold desert night couldn’t keep me awake anymore.
How long have I been this fucked up?
I can’t put a number on it, so I settle on the closest answer: too long. I just hope to God there’s still a way to unfuck my life.
The kitchen door opens, startling me, and I turn as Adrian walks into the living room. Instead of black jeans and that tight shirt, he’s in a white tank top and red running shorts now. He takes out his earbuds and peels off the iPhone strapped to his sculpted upper arm.
“Hey.” He smiles. “How’d you sleep?”
“Better than I have in years.” He probably thinks I’m exaggerating. I don’t try to change his mind.
“I’m just going to grab a shower.” He toes off his running shoes and nudges them up against the wall into the neat row with his sneakers and a pair of black boots. “There’s coffee if you want some.”
Coffee. Oh God yes.
“Sure. Thanks.”
While he’s taking his shower, I go into the small kitchen. There are a couple of ceramic mugs hanging above the coffee maker, so I pluck one down and fill it. Normally I like some milk and sugar in my coffee, but I feel weird rifling through his fridge or cabinets, so I drink it black. Which is fine. It’s good coffee, so it’s not half bad even like this.
There’s a fish tank on the counter, which I vaguely remember from last night when he stopped to feed the inhabitants. Careful not to spill my coffee, I lean down to look inside. It’s one of those small tanks, kind of like a kid would use as a terrarium for a pet hamster or something. The bottom is an inch deep or so with fluorescent blue rocks, and a few plants stick up on either side of a garish purple castle. Behind another cluster of plants, a filter bubbles quietly.
I can’t see any fish at first, but then realize there’s one in the window of the castle. A moment later, another cuts a lazy path across the bottom of the tank. They’re bright blue, but I know nothing about fish so I wouldn’t know what to call them. If he had goldfish or Siamese fighting fish, maybe. Beyond that, my knowledge of fish starts and ends with what’s on a sushi menu.
The sound of bare feet on linoleum turns my head, and I very nearly fumble my coffee. Adrian’s hair is wet, smoothed out of his face, and he’s down to a pair of black shorts and nothing else.
Whoa.
He doesn’t quite have a six-pack, but he looks like he’s only a few intense workouts away from one. He’s slim and smooth all over, with a hint of dark hair on his chest and a more pronounced line extending downward from his navel. Just above his right hip is a dragon tattoo, its tail hidden by his low slung waistband.
I gulp and turn back to the fish before I start getting a hard-on. This guy picked me up off the street—no need to test his goodwill by openly perving on him.
“So, you like fish?” It’s a stupid question, but marginally better than anything else I might say if I spend another second looking at him.
“Eh, the place felt a little empty without any other living things in it, and I’m better at keeping fish alive than houseplants.” He pours himself a cup of coffee, oblivious to the drop of water sliding off his hair and onto his slender shoulder. “I’m not home enough for a dog, and I’m deathly allergic to cats, so…” He nods toward the fish, which causes a few more drops to sprinkle onto his back. “Fish.”
I laugh. “I never thought of fish as providing much company.”
Adrian shrugs and leans against the counter, cradling his coffee in both hands. “You live alone, you find all kinds of ways to fill in the silence.”
My humor fades. I shift my attention back to the fish.
“Oh.” Adrian clears his throat. “I’m sorry. That might’ve been…”
“It’s all right.” I take a sip of my cooling black coffee. “It isn’t like I’ve told you more than one or two things about me, so I can’t expect you to know where all the landmines are.”
He says nothing, and just drinks his coffee. His is black too. After a long moment of silence, he meets my gaze. “I won’t lie—I’m curious. About you. About how you ended up where you are. But you don’t have to tell me anything. If it’s none of my business, it’s none of my business.”
My first instinct is to take him up on that and never say another word about anything that happened before last night. At the same time, though, I want to. Not because I owe him an explanation—I owe him a hell of a lot more than that—but because I’m starting to think it’ll eat me alive if I’m the only one who knows.
I take a swallow of coffee and set the cup in front of the fish tank. “The short version is that I am a walking cliché. I came to Las Vegas to…” The words stick in my throat. I’d never said them out loud, and I can’t now, so I settle on, “Go out with a bang, I guess.”
His thin eyebrows lift. “You were going to kill yourself.”
My coffee threatens to come back up. I can’t say it, but he sure can. Staring at the pastel yellow and white linoleum at our feet, I go on. “In the last year and a half, I’ve basically lost everything. My job. My house. My boyfriend.”
I steal a glance at him, curious if he reacts to the mention of a boyfriend. If it even registers, I can’t see it.
I clear my throat. “There was… It’s a long story. A lot of bullshit. In a nutshell, my job was my life. Eighty hours a week for sixteen years. The only reason I even had a boyfriend was we met at a conference, and after three years, he got tired of being my mistress while I was married to my job. So he left. Then I had some health problems. Mostly from burnout. Needed some time off to recover, and the firm decided they could do without me.”
Adrian does respond to that, standing a little straighter and cocking his head. “That’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“Only if they tell you it’s why they’re firing you.”
He rolls his eyes. “Guess that happens in every field.”
“Oh yeah. Problem is, I’d advanced enough in my career to command a decent salary… for a job that kids coming out of college will gladly do for a fraction of the price.” I pause. “Not that I blame them. I mean, they’re coming out of school so far in debt they’ll probably pass it on to their grandkids. But it put me in this really shitty position where no one would hire me for what I was qualified to do because they didn’t want to pay me, but I was overqualified for everything else.”
Adrian whistles. “Jesus.”
“And when you live and breathe your job, and it’s suddenly gone…” I swallow, an all too familiar lump rising in my throat. “What’s left, you know?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“After the condo was foreclosed, I just…” I keep staring at the floor. “I lost it, I guess. I had a decent amount in savings, but couldn’t get a loan without a job. Couldn’t even rent an apartment. My career was over, my house and car were gone, the man I loved was gone… I had nothing.” I push out a ragged breath and look at Adrian. “I was so depressed, I finally just decided to take the money I had left, come to Vegas, blow every last penny, and then…” I shift uncomfortably. “Be done with it.”
I’m not sure what kind of reaction I expect. At this point, I’m mostly concerned about keeping my coffee down, but I’m also curious how he’ll respond to this. How stupid it must sound.
He watches me for a moment, then quietly asks, “What changed your mind?”
“About ending it?”
Adrian nods. There’s another teardrop of water sliding from his hair, this time along the curve of his throat and down toward his collarbone. I want to watch it, but I don’t want to stare.
I rest my hands on the edge of the counter. “It probably sounds insane.”
“You’re still alive, so it can’t be that insane.”
He has a point.
“Well.” I drum my fingers rapidly. “I was sitting there looking at the painkillers I planned to use, and just thought, that’s it? I’ve been working my ass off my whole life, and now I’m going to be some pathetic body that the hotel maid finds?” I shake my head and shudder at the memory. “And I realized… I mean, this is rock bottom. This is as low as it gets. I literally have nothing. But I don’t want to die like that. I don’t…” I hesitate, not sure how to word it. “I don’t want my life to mean nothing just because the company I worked for decided I do. And I figured, if I could just hold on and not go through with it, maybe I could find some way to get back on my feet. Or die trying.” I laugh, sounding both sad and bitter. “At least then I wouldn’t be giving up, you know?”
“Wow,” Adrian breathes. “That’s…a close fucking call.”
You don’t know the half of it.
I don’t say it, though. He doesn’t need to know just how far I’d pulled the trigger before coming to my senses. So I just mutter, “No kidding.”
“How long were you out there on the street? After you…changed your mind?”
I shrug. “A week or so. I kind of lost track of the days. And honestly? I’m not sure how much longer I would’ve lasted. So I’m, uh, really glad you found me when you did.”
“Yeah.” He holds my gaze. “Me too.”