Page 68 of Running Feral

It’s like there’s a wellspring of old hurt inside me that has a thin piece of plyboard slapped over it. Most of the time it’s fine, but when she touches it from just the right angle, even with the lightest brush of her fingers, it cracks, and old, bubbling venom pours out to fill my veins as if it never left.

With a deep, shuddering breath, I square my shoulders and finish making my way up to the apartment. The least I can do is not take out this attitude on Tobias. Hopefully, he at least got some rest today while I was working. Maybe he’s feeling better and I can convince him to come sleep in the bed tonight.

The apartment is quiet when I knock and then let myself in, but that’s what I expected. It’s dark, apart from the flicker of the TV. On the screen is a movie I now recognize; Tobias has watched it enough times since he’s stayed with me, and I turn away before I’m forced to watch a particularly gruesome murder sequence for the fourth or fifth time in my life.

He’s on the couch, like I expected. I move closer to see if he’s sleeping, but as soon as I do, the smell hits me.

Alcohol. A wall of fucking alcohol. Stronger than I probably smell of it, and I’ve been serving it all night.

On the ground next to the couch is a mostly empty bottle of vodka that was mostly full when I left for work before, and Tobias is turning to look at me with bleary eyes.

Even in the low light, I can see that his cheeks are burning red, which always happens when he drinks and would give him away even if the rest of it didn’t. But he’s got the whole drunk package going for him: his movements are slow and sloppy when he turns to look at me, his eyes are slightly unfocused, his hair is a mess, as if he’s been pulling at it, and he has to blink owlishly at me several times before he seems to process if he’s going to speak or not.

“Hey,” is all he says in the end.

I can’t contain my urge to sigh. “Hey.”

“How was work?” he asks, with an unmistakable slur to his words.

“It was fine. How are you?”

The fact that he’s pretending everything is normal and we’re having this banal conversation is cranking up my anger even more, for some reason. This is why I didn’t want to leave him alone. This is just one more way that he’s in danger, and if I can’t watch him, how can I keep him safe?

“Drunk,” he says, letting his body collapse back onto the arm of the couch after leaning forward to greet me. “But I’m much more relaxed, so I guess it did the trick.”

He holds his hands up as he says it, moving them through the air in a nonsensical pattern which I guess is meant to reflect how relaxed he feels. He studies his own hands as they move, all his gestures syrup-slow, then eventually turns his gaze back to me.

“You look angry.”

It’s a statement, not a question. And while he doesn’t quite shrink in on himself as he says it, there’s a hint of uncertainty in his posture.

I try to dispel my anger. My irrational, lingering anger that has been mounting day by day, hour by hour since the moment he was taken.

Hurling it at him would be not only useless, but just about the cruelest thing I could do. He’s been the brunt of enough anger for one lifetime. But no matter how much I try to breathe through it and suppress the feelings, they stay right at the surface, roiling and chaotic, begging to be let out.

I’m standing there taking one deep breath after another, my legs spread wide, and my fists clenched. I can only imagine what I look like. All the images of Tobias and Eamon and my fucking dead father are rolling into one and plastering themselves on the inside of my eyeballs until I feel like my brain is about to melt out of my face like hot lava.

“I’m going to take a shower.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say that gets me a little distance until I can pull my head out of my ass.

Tobias sits up again, though, looking alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just… I need to shower. I’ll be back. Don’t fucking drink anymore.”

I turn toward the bathroom, but a noise behind me draws my attention back to him. Tobias is up and off the couch, scrambling to get to me on clumsy feet.

“Nonono,” he says all in one breath. “Don’t be mad. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I didn’t mean to. I just couldn’t breathe. It was so fucking exhausting, and I wanted everything to be quiet. I’ll stop, I promise. Please don’t be mad.”

The words are an assault on my senses, rapid-fire attempts to placate me like my unspoken anger has tripped some kind of warning system in his brain that’s pushing him to appease me at any costs. Guilt churns inside me, and I can’t even look at him when he grabs for my shirt to pull me to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, desperate, before pulling me harder.

I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to exist in the toxic dynamic that we’ve somehow managed to create in the last minute and a half, because I don’t know how to crawl my way out of it. But he yanks me hard, too drunk to be cautious, and it ends with me whipping my whole body to face him.

Whatever look is on my face, I don’t want to know. It makes him shrink back in instinctive, protective fear. He lets go of my shirt immediately and takes a step back, his gaze dropping to the floor, and I feel like the scum of the fucking earth.

None of what’s happening here is right, but I’m still standing here, not stopping it.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, this time a whisper. The flush on his cheeks is even darker than before, and there’s a sway to his body that he’s trying and failing to hide.

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