The Truth About Love

chapter ten

I'd always thought that anyone who found themselves confined to their bed the day after a night of drinking was being melodramatic, or that they were frankly lazy and wanted an excuse to do nothing all day.

Boy, was I wrong.

The killer headache I currently have is taunting me, laughing at me. I can just hear it chanting the word fool again and again; copies of the word spin round in my head, forming a tornado. Each throb it inflicts upon me spreads through my brain like seismic waves. I sit upright, resting my neck against the headboard. The need for me to vomit is growing with each passing second.

And the sight of Mason's bombsite of a room might just be enough to push me over the edge.

It's even messier than I recall it being last night. If I wasn't feeling so nauseous, I wouldn't hesitate to clean everything up. The last time I came here, I folded all of his clothes and organised them by type and colour: it was a truly wonderful feeling and I left his house with a strong sense of satisfaction.

I should've known that he wouldn't be able to maintain it. His drawers are wide open with clothes spilling out of them, evidently not in the colour-coordinated format I had left behind a few weeks ago. His socks are in the trouser drawer and his trousers in the sock drawer; it's a catastrophe.

The thing that stands out in what may as well be the aftermath of a natural disaster, is the bookshelf in the corner of the room. Unlike everything else in the room, it's organised meticulously. It's almost comedic how neatly arranged it is. The spines of the leather books have a shine to them like they're polished every day. The books themselves are arranged alphabetically by the author's surname. And in the center of it all: Mason's collector's editions of War and Peace. They're his most prized possessions. He won't let me touch them- I don't even think he lets himself touch them.

In a way, it kind of says a lot about him. He has so much going for him; he's an all-rounder- there's no denying it but out of everything in his life, his books- literature is what matters the most to him. Everything else is kind of just there, an inconvenience at that.

The bedsheet on the mattress by the foot of the bed that Mason must have slept in is ruffled, the duvet spread haphazardly like he'd kicked it off him when he woke up and then simply walked off.

I catch sight of the maroon leather-bound notebook I gave him for his birthday last year. I bought it for him when I was in Nepal that spring. I thought it would be useful to him as I know how much he loves writing poems. He normally writes them on scraps of paper and ends up losing them; I've read his stuff and trust me, they're worth saving.

The main reason I bought the notebook for him though, is because it's made out of recycled elephant dung. I thought that was funny.

The notebook lies open on his bedside table, atop his battered copy of War and Peace which he's had since I first met him all the way back in Year Seven. His favourite fountain pen is lying on the right-hand page without its lid on. The ink from the pen seems to have leaked and has left a coin-sized pool of black ink beneath it, which has by now no doubt bled through to the rest of the pages.