Our house is quiet but I know now not to take that for granted. I climb the stairs two at a time and stop at Amy’s closed door. The sound of Fleetwood Mac comes softly behind it. The hallway smells faintly of pot. Technically Mom’s no-marijuana rule blew out the window when she started using medical cannabis for pain therapy, so I let it slide, despite the fact that smoking in the house will undoubtedly affect the resale value that she’s suddenly so interested in.
I take a deep breath. I’m mending fences, not burning bridges right now.
“Amy?” I knock and after a moment her footsteps shuffle on the other side of the door. She opens the door and flings herself back on her bed, picking up a well-loved copy of The Bell Jar.
“In a Plath mood, huh?”
She hums a response. Yes.
“I know you’re still mad at me, Amy. And...shit. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I never should have yelled at you like that.”
She hums again. Um, yeah.
But she still doesn’t turn around.
I step farther into the room. “I wanted to show you how sorry I was but I guess you don’t want this?”
She turns her head, just slightly. I present her with a brown box wrapped with pink ribbon. She narrows her eyes. Sitting on her bed, I open it and pull two candles and a lighter from my pocket. I stick a candle in both of the cupcakes in the box and light them. “Which do you want? Cappuccino or vanilla bean?”
“Cappuccino, idiot.”
She snatches the cupcake from my hand.
“Happy birthday, Amy,” I say. “Sorry I missed our party. Thanks for all the work you did to plan it.”
She smiles. “Happy birthday, Wes.” We blow out our candles and dig in, sitting in companionable twin silence for a while.
“How was your day?” I ask after my last bite.
Amy takes her time considering the question. “Pretty good. I drank expired milk but I didn’t get sick.”
I nod. “Gross.”
“What about your day?”
Despite having to spend my evening with Mark, and Richard telling me the team had to win lest he lose something as trivial as a parking space, I got to play ball today. Corrine seemed off earlier to the point that I worried she’d gotten cold feet. But Emily said it was just a migraine. I want to do something to make her feel better.
“You know what?” I lean back on my hands and smile at the window. “It was better than I thought it was going to be.”
“So what are you up to tonight?” She collects cupcake crumbs from her bedspread.
I look out her window at the overcast sky.
“Can I use the car?” Raindrops start to spatter the glass. “Corrine had a migraine and I wanted to get her a couple things to help.”
The bed shifts as Amy scoots to sit beside me. “Yeah.” After a pause she says, “Are you her boyfriend now or something?”
“No,” I say quickly. I shrug as I search for the words. “I just...” I want to make her feel good. I want to make her like me. I want to make her happy.
“I want her to feel better.”
Music that sounds like it belongs on a 1970s sitcom plays overhead. The grocery store lights make all the products seem too bright and the shoppers washed of all color. I browse the aisles grabbing the things I Googled: cola for the caffeine, peppermint oil from the pharmacy, and a gel eye mask.
I send her a text as I get in the car, letting her know I’m on my way over.
Her only response is: the door is unlocked.
She didn’t use punctuation. Things must be bad.
“Corrine?” I call as I let myself into the apartment. Everything is quiet and dark. I move down the hall to her bedroom, where dim light glows from under the door of her en suite bathroom.
“Corrine?” I knock softly on the door.
“Come in.”
The bathroom is lit only by a few pillar candles throughout the room. Corrine sits reclined in the soaker tub, her hair down, her eyes closed. I place the bag on the counter and lower myself next to the tub. Her skin is almost as white as the porcelain. Her eyes puffy and red, old eye makeup dried in streaks on her cheeks.
The plastic bag full of headache supplies seems pointless when it clicks that those tracks on her cheeks are from tears. All of it is useless in the face of the pain she must be in. I rub her temple and she leans into it. I cup some water in my hand; it’s freezing.
“Corrine,” I whisper, running my hand over the top of her head. “Are you cold?”
This is a stupid question. Her skin is covered in goose bumps.
“Do that again,” she says.
“Are you...cold?”
I’m not sure if it’s possible but Corrine’s eyes roll beneath her eyelids. She reaches out, her eyes still closed, searching blindly until her fingers wrap around my wrist and lift my hand to her head again. “That.”
I run my palm over her head and she presses into my hand, almost purring. So I do it over and over. I run my fingers through her hair and my thumb across her temple. I turn on the hot water and pour water over her hair, pick up her bottle of coconut shampoo and squirt some into my hand, massaging her scalp. She dips her head under the water when I’m done to rinse her hair. “Where do you keep your makeup stuff?” I whisper as she wipes water from her eyes.
Her eyes flutter open. “My what?”
“You know, the stuff you use to take your makeup off.”
“Oh.” Water falls in a staccato patter as she lifts her arm from the tub, points past me. “Bottom drawer on the left.”
Rinsing and drying my hands, I pull the drawer open, find what I need, and return to my spot by the tub. “Close your eyes.”
She leans her head back against the tub. I pour some of her fancy makeup remover onto a cotton ball.
I don’t know if I’m doing this right. Every dab feels like it won’t be soft enough, but slowly the smudges disappear.
I run the tap to wet the washcloth with warm water once again, wipe her face one last time. When I look up from rinsing my hands in the water, she’s watching me.
Her wet eyelashes stick together in little bundles, her face is clean, her cheeks are pink. She lifts her hand, cupping her wet palm to my cheek. Water falls from the tap in a slow drip, like it’s counting time that’s slower in this quiet room.
She doesn’t smile but somehow I know from how she touches me that she’s happy. “I’m feeling better now,” she says.
“Really?” I ask. “Because of me, right?” I smirk as she rolls her eyes. She can’t resist an opportunity to set me on my heels.
She shakes her head. “No. My last dose of Rizatriptan finally kicked in.”
She laughs when I splash her.