Regarding Love and Television

Episode 5

"You smell like someone planted an herb garden on you," I inform him, but my words come out fuzzier than I would like. I ignore it and settle onto the couch criss-cross-applesauce.

The light in the room has a thin, clear, distinctly morning quality about it, and I realize that I may in fact be half asleep. My eyelids struggle against the sun. When they open again he's there, with soggy, towel-dried hair and his minty smell that's more like the plant than the candy.

"I'll take that under consideration." He replies, far too articulate for the unholy hour. I'm not conscious enough to remember who's idea it was to meet at eight o'clock in the morning on a summer day, but when I do I will strangle them. Even if 'them' is me.

He looks around for the remote and, not finding it at first, reaches into the cracks between the leather cushions.

"Ah-ha!" he eventually exclaims, "It fell into the abyss." He looks to me with a wild smile full of false bravado, but it's too early for pity laughs.

Instead I collapse face first into the armrest, then feel around the back of the couch until I find an afghan to pull over myself.

"Start it already," I whine, but considering I'm speaking into the armrest and still sound hoarse enough to be a pack-a-day smoker, it probably comes out more like the garbage disposal.

"I already made coffee," he isn't so much replying to me as making a general statement. Very chirpily.

I turn my head, but no more than is required to speak clearly. "You suck. Black with sugar please."

"Coming right up."

"I don't like seeing you in the mornings," I call to him as he clanks and clatters around the kitchen, "I'm supposed to be the happy optimistic one. You're the realist. That's how this works."

He laughs and it sounds like about five dishes fall to the floor, miraculously not breaking.

"Well, for your information, I'm not exactly happy, I'm simply awake on a nice day and about to be sitting with my best friend for hours watching the best show ever. I have very realistic reasoning behind my good mood."

"Ugh, why do you always have to make sense?"

"No comment."

"Fine, just get me some coffee so that the balance of the universe can be restored."

He doesn't say anything else, only smiles so hard that I can feel it all the way from the couch. Those things are contagious. I have to bury my head in the armrest again to hide my own ridiculous grin.

In the silence that follows, I think about bringing up Matt, but can't bring myself to do it. Sating my curiosity isn't worth ruining his few stress-free moments. Knowing him, he had been freaking out all night about his brother anyways.

I'm still preoccupied with worrying when he comes back.

"Hey. Copper Top. You in there?" he prods.

I open one eye, not because I hear him, but because I can smell it. Coffee.

"You're gonna have to give me a hand," I tell him, flopping an arm in his general direction to emphasize the point.

"I'm holding a mug that is full to the brim of scalding hot coffee."

"I don't think you realize the enorma- enormo— I need your help, okay! Look at me, I can't even talk!"

"You know what? You're so enormously pathetic that I think I might help you."

He disappears and I hear the mug click against a table.