One Last Attempt

005

The next day, I wake up groggy, but not hungover. It's a blessing and a curse. I check the floor to make sure that my suit isn't on the ground. When I see the clothes I wore to Ava's party, I exhale. It was all real. Every second of it.

I don't see Baker for the rest of the morning. He doesn't answer when I know on his door. I don't want to seem too clingy, because I don't want Baker to know that I know about his plan. Hopefully he is sleeping off the ecstasy of last night and not plotting out how he is going to throw himself off a building without warning.

For example, I know that I certainly needed the extra hours of rolling in my bed, tossing and turning, praying to whatever thing wrote that contract that I was not, in fact, going to wake up and find out Baker was dead all over again. Every second closer to sleep felt a second closer to Baker's urn.

When it's 2:00 in the afternoon, Baker sneaks out of his bedroom. Almost like a woman in the middle of the night, tempting to grab a snack that doesn't fit his diet. He walks to the fridge and goes to grab the unfinished wrap from last night, a fuzzy blanket draped over his long body.

Baker looks out at me and rubs the sleep piling up in his eye. "Hey, Freds."

"Hey, how are you?"

He cracks a smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes. Then, he winces. "I've got a wicked headache. Remind me to get some Gatorade."

I don't think I'll ever be able to drink a sports drink again, after that week in bed. "That bad? How many drinks did you have?"

"At least twice as many as you," he pauses, taking a bite of his wrap. "Maybe four times? You only had one drink, yeah?"

When I nod, he shrugs and shambles back to his room. I can hear him moving around inside, doing God knows what. Maybe trying to clean something off his desk so that there is sitting room.

Without him in the room with me, I begin to feel anxious. I try my best to prep my cue cards on my own. Studying early isn't really my jam, but if it means I can help Baker afterwards with his final exam, so be it. Although, if I remember correctly, it's a graphic novel project that he has been working on all semester, so it is already practically done.

Why couldn't he submit it the first time?

When 6:00 PM crawls around, I order Baker and myself dinner. It's an awful experience since I hate talking on the phone, but I haven't got much else of a choice. I've never been a talented chef, although I am really good at making comfort food. I order us burgers.

Once they get there, I go over to Baker's room and knock.

"Baker?"

I can hear shuffling behind the door. Eventually, Baker walks up, still wrapped up in his blanket. When he sees the bag I'm holding, he drops the blanket on to the floor, and walks out into the apartment. He's still in his pajamas, but he somehow manages to look cool. I feel overdressed.

"Thanks for dinner," he manages.

I nod, taking a spot opposite him at the kitchen table. The lights above us are buzzing so loudly that they are going to give me a headache, and I'm not hungover in the slightest. I take the first bite of a burger, and realize that I ate solid food last night like it was nothing, and that I am eating solid food now, like it's nothing.

Before, I took so many things for granted.

"Need help with poetry in the 20th century?" I ask, leaning forward. "Maybe a little Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath. Those are the most important ones, right?"

Baker shakes his head. "They never cover the big names. Last year it was Robert Graves and E. E. Cummings."

He leans back in his chair. We move like a seesaw, all opposing forces and opposite movements. Whatever electricity was between us yesterday dissipated into the night.