Tea - Chapter 18

Chapter 18

The hangover Miles awoke with was nothing epic, though it was too much to ignore. He succeeded in removing himself from the bed without waking Sophie to fill a mug with water and immediately drain it several times before bothering to find a larger vessel to share with Sophie when she woke up.

A headache kept Miles awake and thinking through all the ways he may have offended Sophie the night before. After a half hour of mulling he could remember nothing specific that could have caused her reaction, which worried him even further. Miles shrugged to himself, quite certain that Sophie would detail any grievances soon enough.

When she woke up Miles offered her the glass of water. She took it and drank until it was nearly gone. Miles was certainly not looking forward to whatever Sophie had to say because his head was still throbbing, but the look in her eyes when she finally turned them toward him was not puppy love.

“Do you even realize what you do when you’re like that?” Miles did not respond because he barely understood the question Sophie had asked. “You treat me like shit. You make fun of me; you make me feel like a burden to your good times. You want to fucking chase the moon all night, go ahead, but don’t blame me for not feeling the same way. But I can’t do this over and over again. After all I’ve given you to be here to have you do that do me? What the fuck, Miles?”

“Over and over? I’ve been drunk a grand total of three times since I’ve been here. I’m twenty-fucking-three, not sixty-three.”

“So that’s your excuse for treating me like a damned Uni fling? You can’t decide to cop out with that now when you’ve decided to marry me already, which by the way, will last until you’re sixty-three. Or haven’t you even thought that far ahead?”

“Sophie…”

“Am I supposed to wait for you to outgrow this? We’re making decisions that will affect the rest of our lives, Miles. We’re in the real world whether you like it or not. Having good times is not the issue. You treating me like shit when you’re pissed is. Miles, you’re so sweet and perfect most of the time. But these times when you go football hooligan on me are unbearable. I’m not being overdramatic, either. I won’t stand for it.” Miles still could not speak. “I’m not saying don’t go out and have fun, but I won’t be a part of it. I can’t be around you when you’re like that. I don’t know what makes you act the way you do…Do you feel like I’m holding you back from something?”

“No!” Miles finally found his voice, and he had used the time to think. “No, it’s nothing you’ve done. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I just…I just want to still be what I was, I guess. I love you so much and I hate that I hurt you and I want to be with you for forever but I’m not comfortable with the feeling. What I know is being single and doing whatever I want. This feeling with you…it’s an uncomfortable feeling. I like it most of the time, but it scares me. Every once in a while I have to go back to being me by myself, with no ‘you’ because I feel completely at ease that way. There are no complications. If I overdo it it’s because I know that I only have a rare shot at completely letting go of the ‘us’ feeling and reveling in the ‘me’ feeling for a while. But I shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve done something wrong. You’re completely right. I would hate it if you made me feel bad. But you would never do that. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“That’s a good start. Maybe we just need to have some alone time now and again. But, what makes you feel uncomfortable about us?”

“I don’t know. I’ve made a lot of dumb decisions in my life, but they didn’t hurt anyone but me. Now, everything I do affects the both of us. If I don’t make the right decision, we both pay for it. Sometimes I like to make dumb decisions just for me. To get it out of my system I guess. I like to do things that are just for me because I don’t feel that pressure of you being involved.”

“That makes sense, I think.”

“Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, well, mostly all the time, I love being with you. I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I didn’t love being with you, but now that we’ve gotten over the new-lust stuff, I start to remember a little bit the things I used to do before. And they’re pretty much the same things I do with you, but different. I don’t know. This drinking thing…I would get drunk when I was in a rebellious, ‘fuck everything’ mood. Not angry, but that mood where there’s no tomorrow, live for one night of debauchery and memories with friends, hangover be damned. I guess I feel that more and more because every single day we’re thinking about tomorrow. Before you I never really had a rhyme or reason for the feeling because I didn’t have the opposite side of the coin. I was rebelling against eight o’clock classes and never getting past a double-digit checking account balance. This…this is actually important and it scares me. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Neither do I, Miles. But we’re supposed to lean on each other for that, not booze.”

“I’m not supposed to lean on anyone, though, Sophie. I’m supposed to figure all this out for us.”

“Oh Miles, come on now. This isn’t the nineteen-fifties. I’m just as much a part of this as you are.”

“I guess. I don’t know. I’m just sorry, Sophie.”

“I know. Just, tell me about things like this from now on before I start thinking the worst of you again. Not that you’re completely in my good graces, yet.”

“I’ll try. I’m not used to it, so I might screw up sometimes, but I’ll try, Sophie.”

“I know.” Sophie hugged Miles’ arm and pressed her lips to his neck. “Meeting adjourned?”

“I second.” Miles kissed the head below his lips. “You know, not to make light of all of this, but we were the first people to leave and we were both…well, you were tipsy, I was just plain drunk. I wonder how long they stayed out there until. I’m betting a few people are in far worse shape than I am right now.”

“Shall we go see?” Miles agreed to Sophie’s proposal and after getting decent they unknowingly made their two-hundredth trip to the staff lounge at the end of the road.

Even though it was almost midway through the day the pair met no one in the lounge. They saw evidence of and after-party in the place and out of ennui as much as graciousness gathered cups and bottles and other party favors in a garbage bag. After the impromptu housekeeping Sophie rummaged through their cupboard which was being purposefully depleted.

“We still have that instant oatmeal,” Sophie said, while absently sliding boxes and cans around.

“That really gross dollar box? Donate that to the common shelf. Someone will eat it.”

“We’re not really going to touch it again, I guess,” Sophie agreed and tossed the breakfast in question to Miles. He stuffed the box onto the shelf that had started out as holding common food for everyone. Over the months the common shelf had become a graveyard more than anything else. Bags of solidified sugar, cheap spices, unmarked bags of noodles, and strange powdered beverage packets made up the majority of the inhabitants on the shelf. Miles did not look back after leaving the tasteless maple and brown sugar pouches to fend for themselves. He had a feeling that if he and Sophie were to visit the camp out of nostalgia in ten or so years, that box would still be on the shelf, only a serving or two shy of what Miles had left in it.

Eventually Sophie came to the conclusion that there was nothing in their cupboard that could combine to make any kind of meal. A few more items were sent to Food Row, leaving their claimed space nearly barren.

“I guess that settles that then. Where would you like to go for lunch?”

“Either Mexican or an omelet.”

“That was quick. And a very strange set of options.”

“Have I ever told you how sexy your accent is?” Miles asked the question in the same tone he had used to put in his lunch requests but it did not keep Sophie from snickering.

“Yes, especially when we shag.”

“Ooohh, that’s the best.”

“Piss off,” Sophie laughed, while trying to sound infuriated. The action made Miles laugh back at her. They met in the middle of the room and buried themselves in one another’s necks until their giggles subsided.

“I love you, Sophie. I’m going to do everything I can to keep things like this. You’re amazing.”

“Oh, Miles, hush. I know. I love you, too. Let’s get out of here.”

“As long as you know.”

“I do. But it’s nice to hear you say it now and again as well.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here.”

“I just said that.”

“My mom is getting ridiculous with this whole wedding thing,” Miles gasped after he hung up with the Chicago end of the nuptial planning.

“Just stepping stones, darling.” Sophie stepped into Miles’ arms and stood with her man in the lounge’s kitchen. “Pretty soon all of this will be behind us and we’ll be living perfectly normal lives.”

“I don’t think you and I will ever have a normal life, Sophie. I mean that in a good way.” They pressed their lips together in one of the hundred different ways they had kissed a thousand times before.

“I figured as much. We’re far too interesting, aren’t we?”

“What do you want to do now?”

“We’re running out of options, aren’t we?” They had just come back from lunching at their Starbucks; nostalgic for the last ten years before the last ten years were done.

“Well, tomorrow and Wednesday we have that school group coming in for an overnight, so anything you want to get done, we had better do it,” Miles finally said.

“God, there’s so much going on right now that I hardly remember we’re still working here.”

“Not getting any hours makes you forgetful, too.” Miles stated. Sophie rolled her eyes in time with Miles’ own. Their finances, which they had long ago pooled without any formal ceremony, were showing the effects of the few short days they worked during the final weeks they had in their contracts. Even a silver lining such as having more time to spend together did not sparkle as brightly as it once had once the realization of Forever had set into their minds.

The time was close to one in the afternoon. One in the afternoon on the last day off before a work week is a tricky time. On one hand, there is an entire afternoon to be enjoyed if one is looking for that sort of thing. Looming on the horizon, however, are the groans of early mornings and the short attention spans of children. The day can go either way depending on whether pessimism or optimism wins the arm wrestle of the psyche. Love has a heavy hand.

Miles and Sophie decided to spend their last afternoon off in the lounge. If someone happened to wander in and something got started, then so be it. They stretched out against one another on the cleanest couch and made small talk during Home and Garden Television commercial breaks. From time to time someone would breach the hull, adding two shiny new cents, but for most of the afternoon the lounge was even less important than a weigh station.

The couch potatoes could have been in California, for all they cared. The place they found in one another’s company turned a blind eye to even the bleakest of New England weather. That place was what gave Sophie the confidence she needed to live on the other side of her ocean with a man she had met three swift months ago. That place was what gave Miles the courage to grow up and move ahead even though he did not know what ahead had in store for him.

They regarded the television as though it were a comedian that had not yet said anything funny while the same thoughts ran through their heads, mostly at different times, every once in a while crashing into one another in word, thought, and deed.