[lj idol] week thirteen | "until you're free from here..."
[holy fucking shit, it's cold up here...]
*
Mitch swings opens the hall closet and shuffles through the myriad contents for the sports bag he's sure is shoved somewhere in its depths. The light globe above his head fizzled to a whimper weeks ago and he's never quite managed to remember it needs changing when he's been in a position to actually do something about it. Consequently, the contents of the closet are cloaked in a musty darkness that conjures images of kid’s books and Halloween movies. His fingers brush across taped-together boxes and discarded pieces of clothing, the handle of his well-worn baseball bat and a plastic bag that could contain long lost treasures of national significance but probably doesn't.
He relents, sinks to his knees and begins to drag things out onto the faded carpet, one after the other with barely a glance, until the bag he's searching for is pulled against his knees. He pushes up to standing, loops his fingers through the strap and drags the bag behind him as he makes his way into his bedroom, leaving the contents of the closet spewed, obstacle-like, from its yawning doors.
The remnants of last summer's weekend getaway to San Francisco still sit, abandoned, in the base of the bag. Discarded receipts for t-shirts and sushi and a boarding pass that has faded to even beyond illegible. He leaves the scraps where they are and haphazardly shoves jeans and hoodies and an assortment of winter jackets in on top of them.
He's heard it can be cold where he's headed, this time of year.
The heater in Sawyer's car vibrates when switched to high. She cranks the radio to combat the electronic hum and bounces blood red nails on the steering wheel in time to a tune that is familiar enough to provide all the distraction she needs. Her stomach grumbles along with the thudding base, testament to the seven minute lunch break she'd managed to sneak just before three pm. Six hundred millilitres of coca cola and a granola bar not quite cutting it in her bid to make it to the end of the day.
The car’s wipers are oddly silent. Not required for the first time in what feels like years as an incongruently clear night sky reveals a haloed moon and a smattering of stars that she'd started to think had been sucked into some kind of oblivion, never to be seen again. The further into the suburbs she gets, the more they reveal themselves to her, and it's not until she's rounding the gentle curve into her own street that she remembers to offer up a wish.
Better late than never after all.
The garage creaks to a shuddering close behind her, locking into place with a reassuring jolt as she fumbles for her handbag, its contents sprawled across the backseat amid case notes and legal pads and discarded pens.
Lip-gloss and gum and hair brush and lint. The meagre detritus of her life these days.
The screen of her cell phone bursts to life, bathing the interior of the car in an eerie, electronic glow. Sawyer reaches for it with her left hand but only manages to push it further out of reach, sending it and a folder of paperwork over the edge and onto the floor.
“Shit.”
She turns back in her seat as the ringing cuts to silent. Voicemail doing its unenviable reception job as her forehead slumps to rest against the steering wheel. The final nail in this balsa wood coffin of a day from hell.
Actual hell.
She makes her way inside with a sigh, toes off her shoes and slings the contents of her backseat onto the kitchen table. Only manages to lose three sheets of paper and one lip-gloss over the edge and onto the linoleum floor.
The interior is in darkness. Mitch should be home but clearly isn't.
This turn of events stopped surprising her months ago.
Sawyer aims her keys at the dish meant to house them, misses and can't quite bring herself to care as she pulls her hair from its sensible up-do and shakes her curls out and around her shoulders. The scent of this morning’s shampoo is almost sickening as murmuring voices from deeper in the house send a lightning bolt of ice-cold terror through her veins. Deep and foreign, she holds her breath in an attempt to make out the words. Drags a blunted bread knife from the dish drainer in a pathetic attempt to arm herself and sidles her way further into the house.
There is flickering. And the voices are getting louder. And it's not until she's three steps inside the living room that her heart slows enough for her to digest the details.
The television is on; a subtitled movie that she doesn't recognise plays out across the forty two inch flat screen that had been their present to one another last Christmas. She flicks the light switch with her left hand, illuminates the room in a yellow glow that instantly reveals the chaos she'd so far managed to miss.
The toaster is in the middle of the living room floor, its cord curled into a trail of bread crumbs that appear to have escaped as the catcher was jarred open. The couch cushions are also askew, pieces of a taken apart camera of some kind strewn across the coffee table.
“What the fuck?”
The words echo back at her, intended for no one as there is no one to hear them.
“Mitch?”
Another pointless verbalisation. Benny hasn't made an appearance. If Benny isn't home, Mitch isn't home.
“Mitch? Are you home?”
She tries again nonetheless.
The on-screen characters provide all the response she's likely to get as she turns and makes her way through the house room by room until every light is on and every door is open. It's when she traverses the hallway for the third time that she manages to connect the obstacle course she'd been navigating with the chaos she's since found in various other rooms.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit...” And usually she's not one for talking to herself but this? Tonight? After the day she's had? Her care factor for the crazy she's currently channelling could not be any lower.
The roads are oddly empty once Mitch reaches the interstate. Slips in behind a dual cab with Canadian plates and figures if he follows along he won't have to decide on an actual destination until he reaches the border.
He's lived in Seattle his whole life and it only hit him a little after five this afternoon that he's never been further north than about two miles out of Bellingham and why not choose now to rectify that?
He steals a glance at Benny, spread out as he is across the backseat in his customary pose of bored canine indifference.
There's a cracked can of something guaranteeing to unleash the beast in the drink holder in the centre console of his truck. Sweet and sugary and full to bursting with chemicals that he tries not to think too hard about as he swallows with a grimace.
“Road trip, Benjamin! Your favourite...”
He's being facetious. Benny would love nothing more than to be sound asleep on the couch at home right now. He stopped letting Benny vote on their extra-curricular activities years ago.
Mitch rifles through the glove compartment for the once-used passport he vaguely remembers pushing in there several hours ago. Back when the doubts weren't hovering over his shoulder and his voicemail hadn't been quite as filled as he guesses it probably now is.
“Where you off to, buddy?”
The customs officer is no buddy of his but he figures now is probably not the time to point this out. He steals a glance at the digital, neon green numbers on his dash and stifles a yawn.
“Got a few days off, sir. Figured now's as good a time as any to finally learn to snowboard...” He manages what he hopes is the right amount of eager excitement and casual indifference. Clamps down on the urge to spill his life story to the guy in a series of run on sentences and confused metaphors.
“Whistler?”
“Nah, I'm thinking somewhere smaller. Got any recommendations? A girl I knew in college went to Sun Peaks once, she said it was awesome but she came home with a fractured collar bone so I'm not sure how much weight to give her opinion. I was actually thinking maybe Silverstar. Or Big White? 'It's the snow' after all...”
He trails off as the customs officer sinks his brow into a deepening frown, forces a slow breath that he vows to hold until he's waved across the border.
Sawyer only just manages to refrain from hurling her cell phone through the still flickering television screen. Mitch's voicemail has gone from lightly encouraging her to leave a message after the tone, to bluntly informing her that its capacity has been reached.
He's disappeared before but he's never trashed the house prior to his departure and his meds are still tucked, untouched, in the bathroom cabinet and she's almost sure she’s three seconds away from joining him on a one way trip off the deep end.
She sinks down against the bedroom wall, keeps on sliding 'til her backside hits her heels and her chin comes to a solid rest against her nylon covered knees. She's hardly reached seated when the phone she still has clutched to creaking in her fist burst to life with a tinny rendition of Sex On Fire.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
She's answers it blindly, heart beating somewhere high and hard in the back of her aching throat.
“Mitch...” A sigh of relief, more than his name, that is erased almost before it's completely verbalised.
“Sawyer? It's Heath. I just got your message...”
Damnit.
“What the hell is going on?”
She only just resists the urge to laugh. A bitter echo that bounces around inside her skull nonetheless. She sighs, obviously takes too long to answer as Heath's frantic monologue fills the spaces inside her chest. An endless string of questions that she knows she'll never have all the answer to, no matter how hard or high she searches.
“Sawyer, what the hell? Are you there? What's going on? Where's Mitch...”
She cuts him off at some point. Isn't entirely convinced that he notices initially as their voices fight each other to be heard. She wins in the end.
She usually does.
“I don't know where he is, Heath. If I knew I probably wouldn't have called asking if you knew...” She doesn't even bother to hide the sarcasm that drips from her lips and pools to puddles at her toes.
She's always had a love-hate relationship with Heath, one that she knows full well is reciprocated on every intricate level. She's well aware of the sacrifices he's made for Mitch over the years but she's also intimately familiar with his head-in-the-sand approach to his little brother's diagnosis.
She's pretty sure he tolerates her only because she's taken over the reins he was slowly but surely losing his grip on. The more she got involved with Mitch, the less Heath had to deal with him himself. It's a cynical opinion but she's been shown little evidence to the contrary over the years.
“All I know is... the house has been trashed, his truck is gone, Benny is gone, and his voice mail keeps telling me to fuck off and leave him alone...” She deflates on the last few words, repeats them with a sob that gets stuck half way to out.
Leave him alone...
Heath pulls the phone away from his ear as Sawyer's words sink in, settle on his shoulders with a familiar weight he'd only just managed to dissolve.
Fuck.
A pounding takes up residence between his eyes as his fingers drum a beat against the coffee table his elbows are resting on. A colouring book lays discarded in his peripheral vision. Crayons litter the carpet at his feet as squeals float down the stairs on a wave of bubble bath and steam. Sawyer is still speaking. Her murmured words at his fingertips just loud enough to reach his awareness, and he returns the phone to its original position and makes a concerted effort to listen.
Figures it's the least he can do in the grand scheme of things.
“Have you called the police?” The words fall from his lips before he can comprehend what they might mean.
“No... but, crap, Heath, I've dialled the number so many times and each time I convince myself that I'm over-reacting and I hang up before I finish.”
“Do you think you're over-reacting?” He hopes to God she's over-reacting.
“Yes, no... maybe. No, I don't think so. I don't know. And that's the whole freaking point. I don't know anymore.” There's an edge of hysteria in her voice that grates against his knuckles, he's heard it before. Has only just managed to rid himself of the memory, of the knowledge that it was once necessary.
“Maybe we should just wait until tomorrow, see if he calls in the meantime. I mean, the police will tell us we have to wait anyway. Do you know if...” He trails off because saying the words makes them tangible and he's never been good with tangible when it comes to Mitch.
“Do I know if what?” Her questions reeks of confusion and a desperate colouring of hope. Like maybe what he’d been planning to ask would give her all the answers she would need in order to make the right decision.
He knows for a fact it was never going to achieve that end.
“Do you know if... did he-- I mean, have you checked if he took--”
She cuts off his ridiculous stammer with a barked laugh.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” And the curse burns at the back of his throat. So much harsher for the delivery and the fact that it's Sawyer who has verbalised it. Good girl Sawyer. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Again.
“Sawyer.”
“No. Just no, okay? You do not get to ask me that question.”
He deserves everything he gets from her, and infinitely more, on this particular topic.
“I'm sorry--”
“No, you're not. And don't patronise me, don't patronise him, by pretending that you are.”
“Sawyer--”
“And stop saying my fucking name. Stop saying it like that. Like I'm some naïve little girl who's freaking out because her boyfriend didn't call her back. This is so beyond that and if you're intent on maintaining a facade that everything is fine with him, then fucking go ahead, but don't expect me to indulge your pathetic denial.”
He smiles. It's bitter and tastes more than a lot like failure. Even at her most pissed off she's still an articulate little bitch. Her parents must be so proud. A Harvard education put to good use.
He hangs up on her because there is nothing left to say.
So, it turns out Canada is all kinds of epic.
Mitch snags a brochure from a gas station and takes a moment to revel in grand ideas involving moose and powder soft snow and law enforcement officers wearing the most hilarious red pants he thinks he's ever seen. Consumes a breakfast of doughnuts and burnt coffee from a chain store restaurant and can't remember a time when he'd felt happier.
The drive-through operator offers him a free doughnut for Benny. He jokes with her for a moment, content and in no real hurry.
“He'd love one, but he's gluten intolerant,” he says sadly, as though devastated by Benny’s misfortune.
“For real? Well, I've never heard of a gluten intolerant dog before!”
Her incredulousness makes him grin widely and she laughs back as the penny drops and she throws the proffered cake at him with mock fury.
“Get out of here, you're holding up the line!”
“Ha! Don't even try and pretend I'm not your most favourite customer.”
“I've never seen you before,” she laughs back, arms flung wide, “How can you be my favourite customer when this is your first visit?”
“What can I say? I'm just that good...” He lets the reply fade as he revs the engine of his truck suggestively and ignores the horn blast from the impatient driver behind him.
“Catch you later, sweetheart, it's been real!”
Sawyer thinks she might have, by some miracle, fallen asleep around the same time the sun was making a futile attempt at rising. She blames Mitch and her worry for him because it's easier than admitting that the three lines of coke she did off the kitchen counter might have been a contributing factor.
She has vague memories of a fight with Heath that ended with the dial tone reverberating loudly in her ear. She has clear memories of using the f-word. Numerous times. Figures she probably owes him an apology or seven but reconciles it with the knowledge that he owes her at least that many in return.
Knows neither of them will ever relent and offer them.
She pads her way across the hall and into the bathroom. The tile under her feet is bone chilling cold but she's numb from her scalp down so it's not the shock it would otherwise be. She reaches into the shower bay and gives the hot tap a violent twist, turns back to the sink and deliberately avoids the reflection waiting there to meet her.
Lest she finally have to acknowledge the pathetic state she's slowly, quickly, painfully descending into.
Heading to the office seems like an abstract concept that she's not familiar with. Toast clogs in the back of her throat, threatens to send her reeling to her knees as she struggles to draw air in and around it. There's no milk for coffee and so she drinks it black. Hates every single sip with lip twisting distain and only just refrains from hurling the mug through the kitchen window with a blood curdling scream.
It's only the neighbours that would undoubtedly come a-running that stop her.
Her car starts on the first twist of the key. She's surprised and can't quite put her finger on why. It always starts on the first twist, after all.
She blames her altered state on sleep deprivation and terror. Contemplates calling Heath again, settles on one last-ditch attempt at contacting Mitch, and almost drives her ecologically friendly vehicle into a skip bin when it connects through.
“Hey, Lawyer Sawyer! Morning babe! Holy fucking shit, it's cold up here...”
And she'd cry if she still remembered how.
*
previously on...
introduction | jayus | the missing stair | in another castle | nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent | build a better mouse-trap | step on a crack, break your mother's back | yes, and... | the recency effect | barrel of monkeys
*
Mitch swings opens the hall closet and shuffles through the myriad contents for the sports bag he's sure is shoved somewhere in its depths. The light globe above his head fizzled to a whimper weeks ago and he's never quite managed to remember it needs changing when he's been in a position to actually do something about it. Consequently, the contents of the closet are cloaked in a musty darkness that conjures images of kid’s books and Halloween movies. His fingers brush across taped-together boxes and discarded pieces of clothing, the handle of his well-worn baseball bat and a plastic bag that could contain long lost treasures of national significance but probably doesn't.
He relents, sinks to his knees and begins to drag things out onto the faded carpet, one after the other with barely a glance, until the bag he's searching for is pulled against his knees. He pushes up to standing, loops his fingers through the strap and drags the bag behind him as he makes his way into his bedroom, leaving the contents of the closet spewed, obstacle-like, from its yawning doors.
The remnants of last summer's weekend getaway to San Francisco still sit, abandoned, in the base of the bag. Discarded receipts for t-shirts and sushi and a boarding pass that has faded to even beyond illegible. He leaves the scraps where they are and haphazardly shoves jeans and hoodies and an assortment of winter jackets in on top of them.
He's heard it can be cold where he's headed, this time of year.
The heater in Sawyer's car vibrates when switched to high. She cranks the radio to combat the electronic hum and bounces blood red nails on the steering wheel in time to a tune that is familiar enough to provide all the distraction she needs. Her stomach grumbles along with the thudding base, testament to the seven minute lunch break she'd managed to sneak just before three pm. Six hundred millilitres of coca cola and a granola bar not quite cutting it in her bid to make it to the end of the day.
The car’s wipers are oddly silent. Not required for the first time in what feels like years as an incongruently clear night sky reveals a haloed moon and a smattering of stars that she'd started to think had been sucked into some kind of oblivion, never to be seen again. The further into the suburbs she gets, the more they reveal themselves to her, and it's not until she's rounding the gentle curve into her own street that she remembers to offer up a wish.
Better late than never after all.
The garage creaks to a shuddering close behind her, locking into place with a reassuring jolt as she fumbles for her handbag, its contents sprawled across the backseat amid case notes and legal pads and discarded pens.
Lip-gloss and gum and hair brush and lint. The meagre detritus of her life these days.
The screen of her cell phone bursts to life, bathing the interior of the car in an eerie, electronic glow. Sawyer reaches for it with her left hand but only manages to push it further out of reach, sending it and a folder of paperwork over the edge and onto the floor.
“Shit.”
She turns back in her seat as the ringing cuts to silent. Voicemail doing its unenviable reception job as her forehead slumps to rest against the steering wheel. The final nail in this balsa wood coffin of a day from hell.
Actual hell.
She makes her way inside with a sigh, toes off her shoes and slings the contents of her backseat onto the kitchen table. Only manages to lose three sheets of paper and one lip-gloss over the edge and onto the linoleum floor.
The interior is in darkness. Mitch should be home but clearly isn't.
This turn of events stopped surprising her months ago.
Sawyer aims her keys at the dish meant to house them, misses and can't quite bring herself to care as she pulls her hair from its sensible up-do and shakes her curls out and around her shoulders. The scent of this morning’s shampoo is almost sickening as murmuring voices from deeper in the house send a lightning bolt of ice-cold terror through her veins. Deep and foreign, she holds her breath in an attempt to make out the words. Drags a blunted bread knife from the dish drainer in a pathetic attempt to arm herself and sidles her way further into the house.
There is flickering. And the voices are getting louder. And it's not until she's three steps inside the living room that her heart slows enough for her to digest the details.
The television is on; a subtitled movie that she doesn't recognise plays out across the forty two inch flat screen that had been their present to one another last Christmas. She flicks the light switch with her left hand, illuminates the room in a yellow glow that instantly reveals the chaos she'd so far managed to miss.
The toaster is in the middle of the living room floor, its cord curled into a trail of bread crumbs that appear to have escaped as the catcher was jarred open. The couch cushions are also askew, pieces of a taken apart camera of some kind strewn across the coffee table.
“What the fuck?”
The words echo back at her, intended for no one as there is no one to hear them.
“Mitch?”
Another pointless verbalisation. Benny hasn't made an appearance. If Benny isn't home, Mitch isn't home.
“Mitch? Are you home?”
She tries again nonetheless.
The on-screen characters provide all the response she's likely to get as she turns and makes her way through the house room by room until every light is on and every door is open. It's when she traverses the hallway for the third time that she manages to connect the obstacle course she'd been navigating with the chaos she's since found in various other rooms.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit...” And usually she's not one for talking to herself but this? Tonight? After the day she's had? Her care factor for the crazy she's currently channelling could not be any lower.
The roads are oddly empty once Mitch reaches the interstate. Slips in behind a dual cab with Canadian plates and figures if he follows along he won't have to decide on an actual destination until he reaches the border.
He's lived in Seattle his whole life and it only hit him a little after five this afternoon that he's never been further north than about two miles out of Bellingham and why not choose now to rectify that?
He steals a glance at Benny, spread out as he is across the backseat in his customary pose of bored canine indifference.
There's a cracked can of something guaranteeing to unleash the beast in the drink holder in the centre console of his truck. Sweet and sugary and full to bursting with chemicals that he tries not to think too hard about as he swallows with a grimace.
“Road trip, Benjamin! Your favourite...”
He's being facetious. Benny would love nothing more than to be sound asleep on the couch at home right now. He stopped letting Benny vote on their extra-curricular activities years ago.
Mitch rifles through the glove compartment for the once-used passport he vaguely remembers pushing in there several hours ago. Back when the doubts weren't hovering over his shoulder and his voicemail hadn't been quite as filled as he guesses it probably now is.
“Where you off to, buddy?”
The customs officer is no buddy of his but he figures now is probably not the time to point this out. He steals a glance at the digital, neon green numbers on his dash and stifles a yawn.
“Got a few days off, sir. Figured now's as good a time as any to finally learn to snowboard...” He manages what he hopes is the right amount of eager excitement and casual indifference. Clamps down on the urge to spill his life story to the guy in a series of run on sentences and confused metaphors.
“Whistler?”
“Nah, I'm thinking somewhere smaller. Got any recommendations? A girl I knew in college went to Sun Peaks once, she said it was awesome but she came home with a fractured collar bone so I'm not sure how much weight to give her opinion. I was actually thinking maybe Silverstar. Or Big White? 'It's the snow' after all...”
He trails off as the customs officer sinks his brow into a deepening frown, forces a slow breath that he vows to hold until he's waved across the border.
Sawyer only just manages to refrain from hurling her cell phone through the still flickering television screen. Mitch's voicemail has gone from lightly encouraging her to leave a message after the tone, to bluntly informing her that its capacity has been reached.
He's disappeared before but he's never trashed the house prior to his departure and his meds are still tucked, untouched, in the bathroom cabinet and she's almost sure she’s three seconds away from joining him on a one way trip off the deep end.
She sinks down against the bedroom wall, keeps on sliding 'til her backside hits her heels and her chin comes to a solid rest against her nylon covered knees. She's hardly reached seated when the phone she still has clutched to creaking in her fist burst to life with a tinny rendition of Sex On Fire.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
She's answers it blindly, heart beating somewhere high and hard in the back of her aching throat.
“Mitch...” A sigh of relief, more than his name, that is erased almost before it's completely verbalised.
“Sawyer? It's Heath. I just got your message...”
Damnit.
“What the hell is going on?”
She only just resists the urge to laugh. A bitter echo that bounces around inside her skull nonetheless. She sighs, obviously takes too long to answer as Heath's frantic monologue fills the spaces inside her chest. An endless string of questions that she knows she'll never have all the answer to, no matter how hard or high she searches.
“Sawyer, what the hell? Are you there? What's going on? Where's Mitch...”
She cuts him off at some point. Isn't entirely convinced that he notices initially as their voices fight each other to be heard. She wins in the end.
She usually does.
“I don't know where he is, Heath. If I knew I probably wouldn't have called asking if you knew...” She doesn't even bother to hide the sarcasm that drips from her lips and pools to puddles at her toes.
She's always had a love-hate relationship with Heath, one that she knows full well is reciprocated on every intricate level. She's well aware of the sacrifices he's made for Mitch over the years but she's also intimately familiar with his head-in-the-sand approach to his little brother's diagnosis.
She's pretty sure he tolerates her only because she's taken over the reins he was slowly but surely losing his grip on. The more she got involved with Mitch, the less Heath had to deal with him himself. It's a cynical opinion but she's been shown little evidence to the contrary over the years.
“All I know is... the house has been trashed, his truck is gone, Benny is gone, and his voice mail keeps telling me to fuck off and leave him alone...” She deflates on the last few words, repeats them with a sob that gets stuck half way to out.
Leave him alone...
Heath pulls the phone away from his ear as Sawyer's words sink in, settle on his shoulders with a familiar weight he'd only just managed to dissolve.
Fuck.
A pounding takes up residence between his eyes as his fingers drum a beat against the coffee table his elbows are resting on. A colouring book lays discarded in his peripheral vision. Crayons litter the carpet at his feet as squeals float down the stairs on a wave of bubble bath and steam. Sawyer is still speaking. Her murmured words at his fingertips just loud enough to reach his awareness, and he returns the phone to its original position and makes a concerted effort to listen.
Figures it's the least he can do in the grand scheme of things.
“Have you called the police?” The words fall from his lips before he can comprehend what they might mean.
“No... but, crap, Heath, I've dialled the number so many times and each time I convince myself that I'm over-reacting and I hang up before I finish.”
“Do you think you're over-reacting?” He hopes to God she's over-reacting.
“Yes, no... maybe. No, I don't think so. I don't know. And that's the whole freaking point. I don't know anymore.” There's an edge of hysteria in her voice that grates against his knuckles, he's heard it before. Has only just managed to rid himself of the memory, of the knowledge that it was once necessary.
“Maybe we should just wait until tomorrow, see if he calls in the meantime. I mean, the police will tell us we have to wait anyway. Do you know if...” He trails off because saying the words makes them tangible and he's never been good with tangible when it comes to Mitch.
“Do I know if what?” Her questions reeks of confusion and a desperate colouring of hope. Like maybe what he’d been planning to ask would give her all the answers she would need in order to make the right decision.
He knows for a fact it was never going to achieve that end.
“Do you know if... did he-- I mean, have you checked if he took--”
She cuts off his ridiculous stammer with a barked laugh.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” And the curse burns at the back of his throat. So much harsher for the delivery and the fact that it's Sawyer who has verbalised it. Good girl Sawyer. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Again.
“Sawyer.”
“No. Just no, okay? You do not get to ask me that question.”
He deserves everything he gets from her, and infinitely more, on this particular topic.
“I'm sorry--”
“No, you're not. And don't patronise me, don't patronise him, by pretending that you are.”
“Sawyer--”
“And stop saying my fucking name. Stop saying it like that. Like I'm some naïve little girl who's freaking out because her boyfriend didn't call her back. This is so beyond that and if you're intent on maintaining a facade that everything is fine with him, then fucking go ahead, but don't expect me to indulge your pathetic denial.”
He smiles. It's bitter and tastes more than a lot like failure. Even at her most pissed off she's still an articulate little bitch. Her parents must be so proud. A Harvard education put to good use.
He hangs up on her because there is nothing left to say.
So, it turns out Canada is all kinds of epic.
Mitch snags a brochure from a gas station and takes a moment to revel in grand ideas involving moose and powder soft snow and law enforcement officers wearing the most hilarious red pants he thinks he's ever seen. Consumes a breakfast of doughnuts and burnt coffee from a chain store restaurant and can't remember a time when he'd felt happier.
The drive-through operator offers him a free doughnut for Benny. He jokes with her for a moment, content and in no real hurry.
“He'd love one, but he's gluten intolerant,” he says sadly, as though devastated by Benny’s misfortune.
“For real? Well, I've never heard of a gluten intolerant dog before!”
Her incredulousness makes him grin widely and she laughs back as the penny drops and she throws the proffered cake at him with mock fury.
“Get out of here, you're holding up the line!”
“Ha! Don't even try and pretend I'm not your most favourite customer.”
“I've never seen you before,” she laughs back, arms flung wide, “How can you be my favourite customer when this is your first visit?”
“What can I say? I'm just that good...” He lets the reply fade as he revs the engine of his truck suggestively and ignores the horn blast from the impatient driver behind him.
“Catch you later, sweetheart, it's been real!”
Sawyer thinks she might have, by some miracle, fallen asleep around the same time the sun was making a futile attempt at rising. She blames Mitch and her worry for him because it's easier than admitting that the three lines of coke she did off the kitchen counter might have been a contributing factor.
She has vague memories of a fight with Heath that ended with the dial tone reverberating loudly in her ear. She has clear memories of using the f-word. Numerous times. Figures she probably owes him an apology or seven but reconciles it with the knowledge that he owes her at least that many in return.
Knows neither of them will ever relent and offer them.
She pads her way across the hall and into the bathroom. The tile under her feet is bone chilling cold but she's numb from her scalp down so it's not the shock it would otherwise be. She reaches into the shower bay and gives the hot tap a violent twist, turns back to the sink and deliberately avoids the reflection waiting there to meet her.
Lest she finally have to acknowledge the pathetic state she's slowly, quickly, painfully descending into.
Heading to the office seems like an abstract concept that she's not familiar with. Toast clogs in the back of her throat, threatens to send her reeling to her knees as she struggles to draw air in and around it. There's no milk for coffee and so she drinks it black. Hates every single sip with lip twisting distain and only just refrains from hurling the mug through the kitchen window with a blood curdling scream.
It's only the neighbours that would undoubtedly come a-running that stop her.
Her car starts on the first twist of the key. She's surprised and can't quite put her finger on why. It always starts on the first twist, after all.
She blames her altered state on sleep deprivation and terror. Contemplates calling Heath again, settles on one last-ditch attempt at contacting Mitch, and almost drives her ecologically friendly vehicle into a skip bin when it connects through.
“Hey, Lawyer Sawyer! Morning babe! Holy fucking shit, it's cold up here...”
And she'd cry if she still remembered how.
*
previously on...
introduction | jayus | the missing stair | in another castle | nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent | build a better mouse-trap | step on a crack, break your mother's back | yes, and... | the recency effect | barrel of monkeys