Page 14 of Hot Doggin'
Huh? Aw crap. I reach for his hand and squeeze, trying to ground him in the present. “You’re staying here for a while, remember?” Of course, he doesn’t remember. “You have fleas. Your landlord is exterminating.”
His thick, dark brows scrunch. “Fumigating?”
“Whatever. Your clothes are in that box.” I point to the box we left next to my front door.
Stiles rubs his temples, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “My head is killing me.”
He always gets these headaches when he forgets. It’s usually worse at night when he’s tired. It’s like the old chicken with the egg scenario. Does the headache cause forgetting, or does the forgetting cause the headache?
“Why don’t you go lay down in my bed? I’ll get you some painkillers.”
“What about you? Where’re you gonna sleep?”
“I’m fine right here.” I slap the couch cushion and a cloud of dust billows into the air. It’s old and worn, like my body, but comfortable. “Go, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Slowly pushing to my feet, I go through his box and pull out a clean pair of his boxer shorts and a T-shirt. From the kitchen, I grab two pills and a bottle of water. Stiles is spread out on top of the black comforter, half asleep.
“Sit up and drink this.” I place the pills in his hand and unscrew the cap from the bottle.
“Thanks,” he says in his gruff voice, deepened by exhaustion and pain.
“Don’t go to sleep in your clothes. Change into these.” He struggles to sit up and I slide my arm around his back to help him. “Do you need help with the rest of it?”
“No, I think I can change my pants by myself.”
“Just throw the dirty ones on the floor and I’ll take care of it.” I grab my hot dog blanket from my closet before shutting the bedroom door behind me.
I settle back down on the couch and slide my prosthetic off, propping it beside the couch. It’s made of carbon fiber and is pretty lightweight. Even has an artificial knee and ankle. I’ve got about five different prosthetics, each one cooler than the next. They’re not cheap, and without the financial assistance of BALLS, I couldn’t afford them. I'd be stuck with a solid plastic hunk of junk, a standard VA issue. Next, I roll the protective sleeve down my thigh and lay it on the coffee table beside the pizza box. My skin is slightly red and itchy. Usually I rub it with lotion, but it’s in my room and I don’t wanna wake Stiles.
I hate that he forgets.
I hate the look on his face when he remembers or realizes he's forgotten something, like he’s disappointed in himself.
Helping him keep everything straight is my responsibility. One I took on willingly. Our friends are close, but nobody knows Stiles better than I do. He often smoothes over things he’s forgotten and plays it off like it’s no big deal. But I know when he’s forgetting something. And I know when he’s lying or smoothing things over. He doesn’t do it as much with me, because he knows he doesn’t need to.
It’s one of the many unwritten rules of our friendship.
No lying or bullshitting each other.
Sometimes life gets ugly, but we’re here for it. I can show Stiles my messy, ugly, toxic bullshit, and he can be perfectly imperfect, damaged, fucked up, and insecure around me. It doesn’t change a damn thing. In fact, I think it makes us stronger—our friendship. It can survive anything. God knows we’ve tested it so many times.
When he comes over in the middle of the night because I can’t get off the kitchen floor, stuck in the past. When the ankle broke on my prosthetic, leaving me stranded in the bathroom after we ate Mexican for lunch. It was either call him or crawl. I called.
The night I had to take him to get his forehead stitched because he forgot the name of the woman he was in bed with, and she hit him over the head with a wine cooler. She wasn’t buying his short-term memory excuse. Every time Stiles loses a job because he’s too hungover to make it to work, I’m there to pick him up out of his sorrows and help him turn things around.
With Stiles, I don’t have to be the best version of myself, but he makes me want to anyway because if I don’t have my shit together, I can’t help him be better.
I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me.
I lay my head down on the throw pillow and spread the soft blanket over my legs. Reaching for the remote on the coffee table, I click the TV to the guide channel and look for something to watch. Damn, there’s a Pimp My Bike marathon. Hell, I can’t watch it without Stiles. It feels like… cheating. I can’t cheat on him.
Instead, I choose a documentary about seabirds. It doesn’t matter, I just need something to fill the silence. Background noise. Too much quiet freaks me out. Voices from the past… memories… they creep into my head to occupy the void.
Stiles always complains that I talk too much, and maybe I do. I definitely do. But it’s because I hate the silence so much.
I don’t even realize I’ve fallen asleep until I jolt awake, startled by a dog barking down the hall. Pain shoots up my leg. It’s cramping because there’s no room to stretch out, and in my sleepy confusion, I grab my crutches propped against the wall beside the couch, and shuffle into my bedroom. It's not until I feel the solid weight and warmth of Stiles’s massive body at my back that I remember he’s in my bed.
Fuck it. I’m tired and he’s asleep.
