Bang, bang, bang…
I wake to the sight of rolling credits.
Bang, bang, bang…
The door.
I cocoon myself in my stripy duvet and stumble downstairs. I feel fuzzy, scatty, a sandwich short of a picnic. Halfway down, I duck to try and make out who’s at the door. For a millisecond I’m convinced it’s Finn, come to see if I’m all right. He has the same dark hair, the same fair, smooth skin and dark eyes, but Isaac’s rougher around the edges. It’s got to be Isaac. I mean, Finn’s no Ken doll, he has style. He has a metrosexual emo chic thing going on, but it’s a controlled, deliberate roughening of his edges, whereas Isaac just doesn’t care if he looks good or not.
I open the door to the face of someone trying to do a hard sum: perplexed, awkward, in pain. There’s no way he likes me.
I cough an opener. “Hi.” Not my best line…
Isaac surveys me like he’s looking at a building for the last time before pulling the demolition lever.
“I, er, came to check on you. Finn said you were sick.” He doesn’t look me in the eye. I twist the corner of the duvet in my fingers.
“Couldn’t sleep last night. Coming down with something. Best keep your distance.”
“Bet you’ll be feeling better by tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, watching his dark hair flap in the wind, exposing a few little furrows on his forehead. He’s always in his head, thinking, analyzing, calculating…
“Just… Saturday night” – Isaac descends into mumble – “going pretty hard and…”
Dramatic pause. I’m freaked at the length of the silence.
“Anybody home?” I say.
Nothing.
I sigh. “I feel like a giant slice of death, if I’m honest.”
“Look, um…” He shuffles his feet, then looks right at me – in a scary making-me-wish-I-wasn’t-home-alone kind of way – and starts projectile word-vomiting. He just wants to get it over with and go home. “Carla, I came because, well, Finn couldn’t. He asked me to. He’s gone with Slink to some way-out board shop for bearings. It was a favour for him. I’ll let him know you’re OK. You can go back to sleeping or whatever.”
“OK, well, yeah, I’m alive. Report back to Finn. Thanks for stopping by,” I say, and wait for a nod or a “Later” or a wave goodbye, but…
I scan his face for life-signs. Nada. Zero. Flatline. Blank. He’s forgotten how to end conversations. I’m too tired to cope with the complex workings of the male brain, and I need to be lying down, or with my head in the toilet right now, so I break the deadlock with “See ya” and shut the door.
I slump into a pile of duvet on the hall floor, listening for the thud of his footsteps to fade away before returning to the man I actually do understand and can guarantee will always supply the happy ending, my romcom husband, Gabriel Grayson.
What was that about?