Late to the Party ✔

11. You can sleep while I drive

There was a faint light behind the windows, and when she knocked, she almost expected Uncle Carl to call out for her to "come in, unless you're a cop or a churchman".

Instead, a shadow moved behind the frosted glass, getting closer and closer until it swallowed up most of the light in the hallway. "Who's there?" a very different familiar voice called.

Her response, "it's me", was awash with relief and was met with a sigh of the same kind. Clicks. The scraping of a latch. Turn of a lock.

The door swung open, and there was Jeanie, a toothbrush sticking out from between her lips, a smudge of toothpaste on her chin. She didn't seem surprised to see her, merely guided her inside by the elbow, craning her neck to check the street left and right before locking up again.

Jeanie mumbled something, cupping her hand under her mouth, and hurried off to where Mary knew the bathroom to be.

This was as far as her plan had gone, if you could even call it that. She stayed where she was, listening to the sounds of water running and being spat out, gurgling down a drain that should've been unclogged a long time ago. Her body was heavy, the tip of her fingers like scale weights, as was her mind. She didn't really want to think; she just wanted to go back to fifteen minutes ago, when she was still alive with the magic of folk songs and spinning around on a hardwood floor.

Jeanie returned to the hallway, coming to stand before her. Brown eyes took her in, inquisitive, yet it didn't feel like criticism when it was Jeanie doing it. She was already ready for bed; curls wild and loose as people deemed her to be, jeans and shirt exchanged for a tight tank top. She'd taken off the key necklace, and the freckled skin of her chest seemed forlorn without it. Not that Mary was looking. No, never that.

Her balance was a little woozy again, and she forced herself to focus on Jeanie's face, the sharp, minty scent of her toothpaste. There was a pile of boxes next to her, towering high and blocking off half of the space, and she could all but restrain herself from using it to keep herself upright.

"This a sleepover?" Jeanie broke the silence.

Mary was nodding before she'd thought it through. "Yes. I have no desire to sleep in the same bed as my husband right now."

Jeanie nodded too. "You don't wanna go to your mom's? I only have the one mattress, y'know." She said it so casually, scratching her neck, gazing up at her from under her lashes.

It unlocked one of those memories that only surfaced when she'd had too much. The last time they'd shared a bed, not knowing it wouldn't happen again, tangled limbs under the sheets, the window open to let out that sweet smell of forbidden love. How they'd ever been able to sleep with their bodies flush against each other was a mystery to her; as an adult, she needed her space, from George, the kids when they were young, or she'd lie staring at the ceiling until the sun rose and set their room alight.

This was exactly why she shouldn't be anywhere near any alcohol. With a clear head, she wouldn't have stayed out so late. She wouldn't have argued with George. She wouldn't have ended up here. And she would've never in a million years said: "Can I borrow a T-shirt, like old times?"

But now she did.

Something had shifted. Before, this had seemed like a short excursion away from her current life, something temporary she'd be looking back on with fondness in a couple of months, when Georgie would be married, she'd be a devoted grandmother, and Jeanie had returned back to her bar and her colorful collection of friends. Something she could get back from.

Now she stood next to a mattress on the floor, in a borrowed T-shirt that referenced some sort of punky band that Missy would surely have known, and her knees buckled, and her breathing came heavy, and there was a tingling in her belly that was bordering on nauseating. The shower she'd taken had sobered her up enough to grasp the reality of what getting into this bed could, no would, mean, and she wasn't sure she had the guts. So far, she'd justified her every action with the fact that she was allowed to have a friend, especially if she'd be a godly influence on the person.