“You need money?”
My heart warmed as I looked at my friend. He was genuine; he’d give me everything he had if it meant my wellbeing. He could afford it too; being in a thruple was like being a fucking millionaire these days — three incomes, three sets of hands to carry the weight. The dream, man. I shared a dingy apartment with a roommate, and we scraped by each month.
But I shook my head. “I can pay for it.” I paused and looked at him, a man so deep in love with two other women he hadn’t once checked out my body through the see-through robe, and smiled. “Thank you, Noah.”
“Any time, Zora.”
Sleep came easy that night, but waking up did not. Waking up came with the fucking flu. With a fever making me loopy, a throbbing headache and an elephant on my chest preventing any deep breaths.
For a full ten days I laid up in bed, melting from high body heat, hacking up what felt like more than the two lungs I had in my chest, and generally suffering. Delirium, only lightened when my roommate slipped in, a face mask on, to give me sips of soup and force me to swallow pain relief and cool water.
“Shh,” Bellamy said when I tried to get up, to claw my way out of bed. “Just rest babe, I’ll watch out for you.” They paused stroking my hair, and scooped up my phone from the table. “I’ll let work know it’ll be a few more days.”
It was on the tenth day that I unstuck myself from my disgusting bedsheets and stumbled into the living room of our small apartment. Disheveled and stinky, but in desperate need of a drink. A tiny bit revived.
“She has arisen!” Bellamy yelled, jumping up from their seat and coming to the small kitchenette we had. The place was compact, just enough space for the two of us and a handful of furniture. We’d met when I moved in, Bellamy’s old roommate dipping out all of a sudden and leaving them desperate. As luck would have it, I was desperate too, running from my family, who disagreed with every choice I ever made.
“Shh,” I grumbled. “Too much noise, not good.”
“Alright, cave dweller,” Bellamy laughed, wandering over and pulling me into a hug. “Nice to see the grumpiness in full swing. Means you’re almost you again.”
“Thank you,” I muttered into their chest, enjoying the warmth. “You’re the best.”
“Only the best for my special girl.” Bellamy kissed the top of my head and turned away, returning with a bottle of water from the fridge. “Drink up. We need to get you back to normal.”
Groaning, I plodded over to the sofa and sank down onto it. The cushions sagged, but it was still warm from Bellamy’s body, comforting. They were watching a documentary about what looked like the sea, dolphins and shit, and my brain switched off for a cozy moment, hooked on the motion of the water, the sway of the animals as they swam and dove.
“Normal seems so far away,” I said, blinking back the hypnosis these shows always brought.
Bellamy laughed, scooping up my legs and settling where I’d been stretched out on the sofa, before resting my feet on their lap. “Tell me about it.”
We sank into a brief, comfortable silence, both lost in our heads.
“The club phoned a bunch,” Bellamy said, breaking the quiet. “I told Noah you were done for, but you’d let them know when you could come back to work.”
“Ugh, I need at least another day or so before I go fucking about with randoms…” The thought made me nauseous.
Plus, the last time had been so amazing it haunted my dreams in the best way possible. Visions of Harry plagued my mind through the flu haze. When I fell in and out of consciousness, it was his face, his touch that carried me over.
It was ridiculous. He was a client. A man who paid me for the experience and got every bit of his money’s worth. No doubt he’d jumped off that bed, said his goodbyes and wandered off to continue his life, satisfied and not giving me a second thought.
It was only me who was haunted by him.
“Noah also wanted to check that you’d got that… thing,” Bellamy continued. “He only said thing, though, even when I pressed.”
“What fucking thing?” I grumbled, scrunching up my face. “What the hell is he talking about, strange man…”
For a minute, the dolphins on screen had my heart, my attention. I swigged from the bottle of water, trying not to let it dribble down my chin in my reclined position, andI watched those squeaky fuckers dive through the water without a care on the planet beyond the next seal they could fuck up.
What was Noah on about? He knew I was sick, that I was in no way, shape or form able to run errands for him. Fuck, I was ten days post-shower. A few spongings here and there from Bellamy, but…
Oh.
Fuck.
No.
The thing.
