The mortifying ordeal of being known | for Rosie

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil calls out of work for the following week, citing the flu.

He thinks about quitting, but that seems awfully rash. He thinks about a lot of things on the long walk back from Caleb's apartment to his and Rosie's. But the brutal agony of feeling broken and fundamentally second string is so familiar that he almost wears it like a coat. The worst part of it is that nobody knows. Nobody in the street understands what's just happened or thinks anything of it, and he goes about the walk in utter, unobtrusive silence.

His whole world has shifted, but it's just his world. Isn't that always how it is?

When he gets back to the apartment, Mercy Beau is almost instantly on him, trailing right behind his heels as he heads into the kitchen and looks for a bottle of scotch and the pack of cigarettes that he's carefully avoided touching since his and Caleb's little argument about it at Christmas. He puts one between his lips without lighting it as he pours himself a drink and then just stares at it.

In the end, he sinks down onto the kitchen floor.

Comments

[forthsofar]

Caleb texted her shortly after it happened, a message she'd responded to after a long silence with we will talk about this later, Caleb, leaving all his subsequent--and increasingly hysterical--replies essentially unacknowledged. In the last few minutes, she's considered everything from having him soundly killed to forgiving him utterly out of the strength of their friendship, but none of them seem like enough to heal the depths of Neil's sadness. Maybe there's nothing she can do on her own to fix it; maybe all she can do, really, is be there for him like always.

It isn't fair, how good she's gotten at that.

She hears the front door unlock and open, Beau jumping down from where he'd been curled up with her in her bed at the sound. At first, she stays in her room, giving Neil his space for a bit as he moves through the common spaces of their flat. As things go quiet, she steps out into the hallway and heads towards the living room. It's a surprise to find it empty, but the clink of glass against tile a moment later has her moving towards the kitchen.

She doesn't stand over him, doesn't try and say anything, just takes a seat on the floor across from him and waits.