Page 4 of No, You Hang Up

“Tell him he was a good man?—”

“You made it up?—”

“You lied?—”

“I didn’t!” My hands clasp the coffin tighter, and I finally look up at the faceless crowd surrounding me. “I didn’t make it up! I didn’t lie?—”

A hand suddenly grasps my wrist, cold and clammy. Its grip drags my eyes back down to Uncle Robert, whose eyes are now open and whose fingers hold my wrist like a vise.

“Then tell them you asked for it,” he murmurs from between cracked lips. “Tell them you wanted?—”

“Ididn’t!” I sit upright, shaking, my forehead clammy as I try to place my surroundings. Early evening sun pours into my small bedroom, and belatedly I realize my phone is ringing, and must be what woke me up from the strange, nightmare version of Uncle Robert’s funeral.

May he burn in hell.

“Fuck,” I mumble, groping around for my phone in the comforter. I’ve wiggled my way to the middle of the bed during the day, and it takes a good few seconds to find the vibrating device I’ve somehow thrown almost to the headboard.

“Hello?” I answer, not bothering to look at the name on the screen. God, if it’s Patrice, I’ll lose it.

“Are you back? Finally?”The voice on the other end is much more welcome than my shitty neighbor, and I let out a sigh of relief as Emmalyn’s concern travels to my ear.

“Fucking finally,” I groan. “I’ve just been trying to sleep off…everything.” I’m still tired, still drowsy, and if I don’t go back to sleep right away, it’ll only be because I’d like to order enough delivery food to feed a football team for three days.

Or me for tonight.

“Sorry if I woke you up. Shit—Do you want me to let you go?”Em sounds guilty, and I let out a breath as I flop back on the bed.

“No. Maybe? Not because I’m upset.” I never get upset. Not outwardly, at least. From a young age, I learned how to control the appearance of my emotions, and I hate letting others know how I feel. “I’m just so fucking tired it’s unreal. I did the drive all at once and construction made it longer.”

“Seriously, Kai?”Em sounds exasperated. “You’re ridiculous. You should’ve taken a break. Madalyn would’ve murdered you if you’d died in a car accident.”

“Lucky for me I would’ve already been dead and saved her the trouble.” Dragging a pillow over my eyes, I let out a huff at the whirring sound of Patrice’s smart car pulling in across the street. “God. Patrice is home. Want to bet she’ll be over here banging on my door since she sees I’m back? Maybe leaving for a week is against one of the HOA codes. Maybe I’ll get fined.”

Em snorts at that. “I really will let you go. I can hear how tired you are, okay?”She sounds a little less concerned, a little more like her normal self. She doesn’t push it. Doesn’t ask me how things went, and I’m happy for the reprieve.

Even though I know when Madalyn hears I’m back and alive, she’ll immediately be all over my case to know what happened and if I’m all right.

“Madalyn says we’re coming over tonight.”Em’s tone is a bit dry, a bit humorous as well. “So this is my warning to you. Don’t groan at me.”She waits for me to finish my dramatic noises of dislike. “I’m not going to try to talk her out of it. You sound like you need it, along with another eight hours of sleep. So when we break in later, just know it’s with good intentions.”

“Good-ish,” I correct. “You guys just want to torture me in my time of weakness.” Em cackles at that, but doesn’t deny it, and after we exchange goodbyes, I toss my phone onto the nightstand with a clatter.

“Maybe I’ll change the locks,” I tell the backs of my eyelids, rolling onto my stomach to bury my face in my blankets and pillows. “Maybe I’ll block the door.”

I won’t do either, but it’s worth pretending. At least for now, in the minutes before I’m back to what I hope is a dreamless, worry-less sleep.

Yeah, right.

three

The doorbell rings while I’m on my living room floor in child’s pose. I don’t get up, instead rocking forward to stretch further on the floor with my palms pressed to the fake hardwood above my yoga mat.

“You have a key!” I yell, knowing that at this time of night, it probably isn’t Patrice. Not that she isn’t that desperate, but I’ve decided she’s an anti-vampire who fears the night. Given the fact Em had warned me earlier and they texted me to make sure Mexican food was acceptable, I have a pretty good idea of what’s about to crash through my front door.

Sure enough, I hear the key in the lock and with a click, the door opens and gets pushed inward. From this side of my couch, I can’t see the door, so I just sigh and relax further into child’s pose to ease the ache in my spine caused by my bad posture and the way-too-long drive.

“You look so…live laugh love down there.” Madalyn’s voice is unimpressed as she walks by, not stopping until she’s dropping at least three takeout bags and two grey plastic bags onto my kitchen counter.

“You don’t want to know what I think you look like,” I grumble, still not quite awake even though I’ve been up for over two hours. Somehow I dodged the HOA visit I’ve been expecting for my garbage can being three inches from the curb, and when I woke up stiff as hell, I decided it was time to pull out the yoga poses that were ingrained in me for years.

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