Page 26 of Flagrant Foul
I haven’t been sleeping well, and that’s putting it mildly. Sev’s presence in the apartment is huge. A gargantuan, heavy, simmering thing that slithers down hallways and under closed doors after dark. It finds me in the early hours and wakes me, and once I’m awake, it only gets bigger. Louder.
He’s here. In my home. The door to my bedroom is at the end of the hall. His is a few feet away from mine. His door is closed. Mine is ajar.
He's in his bed right now. I finally caved and gave him a set of sheets—and by that I mean I threw sheets and pillowcases at him and laughed as he struggled to fight his way out from under them—so I know he’s snuglytucked in.
White sheets. Soft linen.
A hard, hot body fast asleep.
Right now, in the blue of night, I’m so deranged that I swear I can hear him breathing. Through walls and doors. Through plaster and paint. If I can’t hear it, I can feel it. The gentle in and out groan of a blunt saw. Oxygen filling his lungs and carbon dioxide leaving them.
Now, when it’s quiet, and the overwhelm of his looks and the way he sounds and moves when he’s awake has faded, the thought of him breathing near me takes on a life of its own. In the dark, his sleeping and breathing seem like the most intimate, vulnerable things I’ve ever let my mind stumble across.
I can’t sleep when he’s near me.
Breathing but not mine.
Under my roof, not under my skin.
I can’t rest when his eyes are closed and his head isn’t on my pillow.
It goes without saying that I’m not at my best right now. I’m one of those people who needs a solid nine and a half hours of sleep per night or my mood suffers. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve had less than that over the past three nights combined.
When I was a kid and got like this, I’d overhear my parents talking about me in hushed tones. “He needs anearly night, or he’s going to pop off,” they’d say, shooting worried glances back and forth.
Pop off.
Does anyone else even say that, or is it something specific to my family?
I absolutely hated it when I heard them say it when I was little. Nothing triggered a good popping-off session faster than being told I was going to pop off. Just the mention of it made my face hot. Tiny pinpricks would begin to fizz and bubble, and before I knew it, I was yelling and screaming and being unceremoniously carted off to bed as Nate watched with an expression that somehow managed to portray concern and bemusement. Mid-pop off, it was an expression that only fueled my rage.
Earlier this evening, Sev had come out of the bathroom, hair damp and dressed in pajamas, with a cloud of steam billowing out after him. Objectively, it wasn’t a particularly noteworthy incident. He didn’t say anything, or even really get in my way, but for some reason, the steam damn nearly set me off. It infuriated me.
I can’t explain it. I’ve never taken issue with minuscule water particles before.
It doesn’t bode well.
Least of all because when I’m not romanticizing idiotic things like Sev breathing, I’m playing the conversation I had with Mae over and over in my mind on repeat. During the day, I’m able to hold it at bay, barely, but I can manage; but by two or three in the morning, what she said starts making sense. Perfect, perfect sense. The most sense I can recall anything ever making.
That man didn’t know what he wanted.
Didn’t know what he wanted.
Didn’t know.
Didn’t know.
Seriously, is it just me, or does that make total sense? I mean, when I think about it, it seems so obvious—Sev doesn’t know what he wants. He never does. Not knowing what he wants is pretty much his whole brand. He drifts. He’s a drifter. He cruises through life and lands himself in relationships without any active participation from him. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.
I’ve known this about him for years. It’s just never struck me before that the reason it happens is because Sev doesn’t know what he wants. It’s so simple. He doesn’t know what he wants, so other people make decisions for him.
And I’m people. I’m literally a person who knows what I want, so why the hell am I sitting here, piningand heartbroken, letting him make important decisions pertaining to my happiness?
It makes no sense.
On top of that, when I told Mae about how Sev behaves when other men are interested in me and asked her to explain why he’d act jealous and possessive of me if he didn’t want me, she simply said, “He wouldn’t.”
When she said it, a lightbulb went off.
