Changed
Existence
The next day, I slept in and felt consummately
miserable. My mind troubled over if Richie would remember the previous night
and hold it against me, or if anyone would inquire as to why I wouldn’t do what
he had asked since it was so commonly done those days. My parents, thank
heavens, had gone to Aspen for a two-week retreat—mostly my mother's idea—giving me some time to
regain my composure.
Turns out, I shouldn’t have worried
myself. I awoke Monday morning with a headache the size of China and a cold suitable for a giant. The school excused me, trusting I wouldn’t lie and
expecting to find any acting skills lacking. I think they were used to
having students call themselves out sick and such on the occasion. Our parents
weren’t the average sort who went on vacation with us, after all.
At first I attempted reading, only to
find I couldn’t focus if I was blowing my nose every five seconds. TV proved
difficult to watch for the same reason. I finally settled for three
boxes of tissue, a microfleece blanket, and the cushy chaise lounge on our
glass encased porch. There I fell asleep for a few minutes at a time before
being jarred awake by killer sneezing fits; while these fits may not have
actually killed anyone, they felt like they had the potential to do so. Many
times the fits were so forceful I feared they would send me flying backwards. If my eyes weren’t too blurry afterwards, I could see the fog left on
the glass from them. An amazing feat considering I was at least ten feet from
any of the glass walls. At some point, I had been facing the tissue box and
sent it flying across the room, smacking into the wall looking out over the
garden.
Though I had never before experienced
a cold firsthand—don't confuse this with my never having been ill, because I've
had the flu, chicken pox, and strep throat—I knew this was not the norm. Not even aspirin and cold medicine could quell the fits.
A maid found me half asleep, wheezing
with my stuffed sinuses and twisted in the blanket. She informed me—after
another round of sneezes woke me—Richie had stopped by earlier. When
she told him I was asleep, recovering from a bad bug, he left my purse in her
care and said he would call later. I hoped he had forgotten what had happened
after all.
I felt slightly better—since my
headache was receding—when Richie called. We spoke briefly of the events he
remembered; I wasn’t keen on filling in what he had forgotten. Luckily, he
believed he had been smashed and ran headlong into the wall, ending up there
for the night. Presumably, I did stay the night and left early, forgetting my
purse, but arranging for a friend to give me a ride home. He apologized for the
ass he assumed he had been, and I told him I forgave him. I added we should probably take a break until he could
control his alcohol consumption; that I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t
know when to stop—which was probably the only whole truth I gave him. Granted
he was gravely disappointed, he did accept this explanation and swore to be
better so we could have another go.
My entire being agreed that would
never happen.
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