When it's over

I fell asleep not long after, but it was an uneasy sleep. When I get sick and have a fever, I often have just really off the wall dreams – and I feel like I’m still awake for some of them, like my eyes are just closed with a movie playing in my mind.

The first dream I was pregnant. I wasn’t sure who the baby’s father was, but I was it’s Mother. I was in the hospital bed waiting for them to bring me my baby – only when they brought it to me it was just a plastic baby doll. Everyone kept trying to get me to feed it and cuddle it, and they acted as if it was real so I tried too as well, but I knew the baby wasn’t right, and I just couldn’t enjoy it.

The next dream I was getting married – but I was alone except for the limo driver, shoved into the back of this limo in a poofy white dress. We couldn’t find the church, we just kept driving and driving and driving and couldn’t find it.

I had a few others that I can only remember bits and pieces of, but after every dream, I woke up, hot and uncomfortable. I was too weak to climb to where John had left the thermometer to see what my temperature was. I was miserable, and sad, and if I could have made it to my phone I might have given in and called John just to have someone take care of me.

Finally morning came, and Sunny knocked on my door.

“Mel? I saw John leave last night, is everything OK? You look like crap.”

“I feel like crap. Please Sunshine, Tylenol and water.” I croaked, and Sunny left the room and returned with ice cold water that felt like heaven on my throat.

“This isn’t all because of John, is it?” Sunny asked, looking me over.

“No. Not all of it. I’m pretty bummed, but mostly sick. Sunny, I don’t think I can manage work today.” I said, uttering words I hadn’t spoken since we took over the business. I had never called off – I had taken a few pre-arranged days off, but never called off, and I hated doing it even now, but the brief conversation I was having with Sunny was wearing me out. I also knew that today was black Friday, and we usually weren’t that busy – people went to the bigger cities to shop and either ate food out, or stayed at home and ate leftovers from Thanksgiving.

“Oh you really must not feel well. Are you sure this isn’t about John?”

“Take my temperature if you don’t believe me, I really am sick Sunny.”

Sunny felt my forehead with the back of her hand, then nodded and left the room. She returned a few minutes later.

“Stay in bed as much as you can. Here are tissues and Nyquil – try to sleep it off. I didn’t think you’d feel like eating, so I just brought you some crackers, but in this cooler is bottle water and a bottle of OJ with ice packs to keep it cold, try to drink. And call me if you need anything, even if it’s just some soup, OK?”

“Thanks Mom.” I said mockingly, but really I was grateful to Sunny.

She supervised me taking the Nyquil and then handed me the remote to my TV and left the room.

I turned the TV on and channel surfed for a few, settling on some trashy daytime TV. My mind was wandering, an every once in a while, a line that John had said would pop into my head and sucker punch me.

“You’re beautiful in the morning. You’re beautiful all the time.” I mumbled to myself. “What a crock of shit.”

I didn’t want to think about John anymore, so I closed my eyes and let the Nyquil do it’s thing. This time I had even weirder dreams, fueled by Nyquil, my fever, and the fact that I had fallen asleep to the sounds of Jerry Springer.

I was on Jerry with my plastic baby. We were trying to figure out who the plastic baby looked like in order to know who the father was. My choices were Maurice, Matt, Noah, or John. I never even said that I hadn’t slept with anyone but John – I don’t know why, and even I agreed that the baby had Noah’s nose.

Next thing I know, Mona’s on stage doing some sort of strip tease and saying she’s here to confess she a senior stripper to Maurice. I hear her heels pounding on the floor as she danced – but then started to realize the pounding was coming from the front door.

I was going to ignore it – I had no idea who would bust in on me in the middle of the day and I didn’t particularly care to find out. But then I realized that whoever it was, wasn’t going away and I really needed to pee so I was going to have to get up anyway.

“Don’t you have a key?” I asked when I opened the door to reveal Noah.

“I do, Sunny said not to use it.”

“Why?” I asked, shuffling back into my room, into my bathroom.

“She said you had a fever and maybe you’d be naked trying to bring it down or something.” He called through the closed door.

“Really? Sunny thinks of the strangest things.” I called back.

“Yeah well…” Noah said, unable to come up with a response.

“I was sleeping.” I said, once I had finished my business in the bathroom and crawled back into my bed.

“I figured. Mona made you soup when she heard you were sick. Sunny wanted me to bring it to you and check on you. She said you had better have drank some water.”

I nodded as I started chugging the bottle she had brought me that morning. “See? Drinking. Like a good girl.”

“So.” Noah said, as he sat down on the edge of my bed. “Are you really OK, with this whole John thing? Because…”

“Because what?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know.” He fiddled with my bed spread. “You’re both my friends, but you were my friend first, and what he did wasn’t cool so…”

“Don’t be mad at him Noah. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He shouldn’t have brought that woman to thanksgiving Mel.”

I shook my head. “Rachel being there was not why we split. And in fact, we didn’t even split – we weren’t together. That’s why we had to stop doing whatever it was we were doing, I just couldn’t do it anymore. John didn’t do anything wrong, nobody had to be mad at anyone, nobody has to choose sides. John and I will continue to be friends. It’ll be OK.”

“He likes you Melanie. I know he does, I don’t understand why he’s being such a tool.”

I shrugged sadly. “I’m not going to force someone to be with me. If he changes his mind, I might still be around.”

Noah nodded, and then looked uncomfortable – we had been friends for a long time, but he had never had to deal with me and guy problems before. It was clear that he was out of his element.

“Well. Eat your soup before it gets cold. I’ll tell Sunny you’re drinking, and we’ll bring you some dinner when the shop closes.” He awkwardly patted my leg and then stood up.

“Thanks. For everything.” I said. He nodded, and then turned and left the room.

What I said to Noah was true – it wasn’t anyone’s fault what happened. But, I was still a little mad at John, and I was more sad than I would really admit. I wanted John to be here taking care of me. Which was stupid, because even if I hadn’t of unofficially dumped him he still would have had to be at work. Still, every time my phone buzzed with a text message, I had hoped it would be John checking in on me. Each time I was disappointed when I would look and see that it was just Sunny.

I tried to tell myself I was lucky to have Sunny – she cared about me an awful lot, and a lot of people didn’t even have that. I also had Noah, and the Mo’s – Mona did make me soup. I wanted to look on the positive side of things, because focusing on the fact that I didn’t have John seemed so stupid when I looked at all I did have. But I was still sad, and try as I might, I just couldn’t will that sadness away.

I ate my soup. I drank some more water and took some more medicine. I channel surfed and watched old re-runs of sitcoms I used to watch when I was a kid. If I laid still, I felt OK – my chest still ached, but my head didn’t pound like it did when I moved. I dozed on and off, when I woke to more knocking on the door.

“Use your key!” I called, expecting it to be Noah again, but the knocking continued so I dragged my butt out of bed. “Matt? What are you doing here?” I said, opening the door wider so he could come in.

“I swung by the shop to give you these papers for the class. Sunny said you weren’t feeling well, she persuaded me to stop by to drop them off and check on you.” He said, following me as I shuffled back to my bed.

“Sunny is convinced I’m dying. It’s just a bad cold mixed with some wallowing and self pitying.” I tried to smile to make it look like I was joking, but I think my smile came out more as a grimace.

“Things with John didn’t go so well last night?” He asked, plopping next to me on the bed and stretching his long legs out in front of him.

“No. We’re done. I guess I can’t really call it a breakup because we weren’t together, but I couldn’t handle being just a thing before. However now I’m sad and feel stupid.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s over.”

“Let me tell you something, Lanie. If it is over, you should count your blessings that you got out as soon as you did, therefore you’re relatively unscathed. However….” He trailed off, suddenly looking like he should say no more.

“However?” I questioned after a few moment of him not saying anything.

“It’s rarely ever over when you think it’s over.” He looked pained when he said this, and I wanted to ask him what he meant, but wasn’t sure if I should pry or not.

Then, as if on cue, there was yet another knock at the door.

“Can you get that? It’s probably Noah again, and one trip out of bed every four hours is about all I can manage right now.”

He nodded and stood. I heard some muffled talking at the door, and wondered who it was – if it was Noah, they would have both just come back in here. Unless they were discussing me – possibly how stupid and pathetic I was, and what they needed to do about it. Just as I was considering trying to muster the energy to get up and spy, I heard the front door closed and Matt walked back in, carrying an armful on beautiful flowers.

“See, kid? Never really over.”