Page 106 of The Leaving Kind
He’d do his yoga, clear his head, and then call.
One step at a time.
Victor winced at the series of pops along his spine as he pushed his hips up and back into downward facing dog. There had been a time when he’d imagined his vertebrae exploding into dust and his body collapsing into a loose heap. He might have been high. Had most probably been high, and not pleasantly so. Why he’d been doing yoga instead of digging a hole in a beanbag chair so he could spend seven hours in contemplation of the webbing between his fingers and wonder whether he was descended from mermen was a mystery for the ages.
After counting off thirty seconds, Victor lowered to his hands and knees. The pressure that had been building in his skull eased, the pounding against his temples fading to a dull throb. Dear Lord, his head.
Dexter hopped up from the corner of the mat, where he’d been systematically poking holes in the rubber, and wound through Victor’s arms. Victor pressed a kiss between the cat’s silky ears and choked back a sob.
Maybe it was too early for yoga and repentance. He wanted more wine. More oblivion. More impenetrable darkness and the suffocating but somehow comforting weight of the entire world on his chest.
He wanted not to be moving.
He also wanted not to have Tez discover him clinging to the couch in his underwear.
Cam did not strike him as a man who issued idle threats.
His throat tightened, and the sharpness that appeared only when one was quite sad cut deep.
Your own damn fault.
Victor pushed his sore body up into another downward facing dog and counted silently to thirty. His head filled with regret and pain and his temples pounded fit to burst. His back screamed. His throat posted a sign reading “None Shall Pass.” At thirty, he dropped to his knees, then his elbows, and then his side, and lay on the rubber mat, sunlight streaming cheerily through the studio windows, and listened to the sound of Dexter chewing the fur between his toes.
He curled his knees up and wrapped one arm around them, folded the other arm under his head and closed his eyes. Time drifted for a while, and the sunlight shaded into a comfortable orange, darker at the edges and traced through with spidery lines of dark brown. The warmth of the light felt like a blanket. Dexter’s licking and chewing faded away. Victor clung to the edge of consciousness for a while before giving in to the drift, the slope, and the downward rush of sleep.
When he awoke, no time seemed to have passed. The sun still warmed him. Dexter hadn’t moved. The arm tucked beneath him had not turned numb. Victor blinked and smacked his lips.
A soft vibration drew his attention to the floor. His phone had woken him. Someone was texting him. Uncurling his arm, Victor reached for the phone and pulled it into view. He registered no surprise whatsoever in seeing Cam’s name at the top of the screen.
The text read: Have you been outside today? Followed by: Not answering this text will result in a call to you know who.
Sighing, Victor put the phone aside.
Let him call her. Let her come. Why did any of it matter? If Tez stopped by today, she’d find him already showered and dressed. He was doing yoga for the love of all things breakable. And it would take her at least forty minutes to get up here from Stroudsburg, giving him plenty of time to relax his fetal curl and push into an inspiring pose.
Minutes rolled by in an easy quiet, the house creaking companionably around him, the smell of old wood, dust, and paint comfortable and familiar. Outside, a bird squawked and another answered. The icemaker rattled from the kitchen.
The cat door thwacked open, and Sinister chirped his way into the studio, spied a ghost in the corner of the family room, and took off at a run.
Dexter resumed chewing his paws.
Victor drifted in one of his favorite places: the in-between. Where he felt neither happy nor sad. Nothing poked or prodded or begged. He just was.
Of course, it couldn’t last. His phone vibrated again. Victor snatched it up, opened the text without reading it, and swiped his thumbs across the stupidly small keyboard. I sent you away for fuck’s sake. My health and well-being are no longer your concern.
He tossed the phone aside and sat up. Waited for his blood to equalize and pushed to his feet. Maybe he’d beat everyone at their own game, including himself, and go outside after all. Cam’s team had finished building the steps and had already packed them with dirt. The gravel for the top lay piled in the driveway, in front of the garage. Victor would fill a barrow and wheel it to the path. Spread it. Rinse, repeat. He’d finish the damn project and make the path entirely his.
He would not think of the beautiful man who’d taken his vision and run with it. The plants they’d chosen together. The extra steps. The afternoon they’d sat at the top to admire the completed framework. How rough Cam’s lips had been after a day out in the sun with not enough water. The calluses on his fingertips.
His phone rang. Victor snatched it up. “What?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Oh, Tez, sorry. I thought you were Cam.”
“Ah.” Then, “Do I need to come up there?”
“Has he already called you? Jesus. It was, what, ten minutes?”