Page 29 of Caught A Vibe

Talk tmrw

??

I set down my phone, unreasonably disappointed I won’t get to talk to her after all. I am left alone with my spinning thoughts.

Did she have any water before she lay down? Take a Tylenol? Check for fever? All things I can’t ask her now because she is sleeping, but not knowing the answers is only adding to my spiral.

If I lived closer, I could just pop over to check on her. If I lived closer, a lot of things about our relationship would be easier. Including sex. If I lived closer…

The idea percolates as I idly search rental websites. What if I move down to LA? I have to move anyway. What’s keeping me in San Francisco? It certainly isn’t the bustling nightlife with everything shut down.

If I’m being honest, the city lost its luster long ago. I’ve stopped trying new things for fun, but to try and outrun boredom. It isn’t my job, which has gone fully remote for the foreseeable future. I don’t even have lease loyalty holding me back now. I don’t have a good answer. Maybe it’s time for new questions…

PENNY

Apiercing sound rips me from sleep and I blindly slap at my nightstand to shut my phone up. It isn’t until it hits the floor in a blaze of light that I realize a) my phone was ringing with a call, not an alarm, and b) I’d slept in until eleven.

I never oversleep.

“Shit.”

I half roll out of bed to get my phone and instantly regret the movement as my lungs protest the stretch with vigorous coughing.

I manage to get to the phone and answer it, but my coughing fit hasn’t subsided enough for speech.

“Hello? Hello? Penny, are you there?” Dash’s worried voice carries over the cacophony.

“Here,” I croak.

“God, you sound terrible. Are you okay?”

“Hang on.” I stumble to the sink in my bathroom and get a glass of water. It soothes my parched throat but the rest of me is burning up. I wet a washcloth for my forehead and head back to bed and my phone. At least I can speak now. “I’m here. I feel like shit. I just woke up.”

I try to clear my mind and pull up my schedule for the day, but it’s like trying to walk through quicksand. My fire swamp of a brain is pulling me back under the blanket of heat, and I don’t have the energy to fight it. If any rodents of unusual size show up, I’m screwed.

“How can I help? Do you need anything?”

I am already climbing back under the covers. “No, I just need to go back to sleep…”

“Have you eaten anything today?”

I hear his question, but my eyes close before my mouth can open, and I give in to oblivion.

The next thing I know, it’s nine p.m. and my head is throbbing.Water.It is the one thought I hold on to.

Crawling out of my bed, I make my way back to the sink in the bathroom and down an entire glass of water. I’m not convinced my legs will get me back to bed, so I sit on the floor to gather my strength. The icy tiles feel good against my overheated skin. Maybe I’ll just take a nap here…

Pounding on the front door, coupled with my name being yelled at full volume, rouses me from my stupor. Who in the hell could that be? Is that what woke me up?

Still on my hands and knees, I crawl into my living room.

“I’m coming,” I call out, sparking another round of coughing.

“Penny? It’s Dash. Open the door.”

Dash? Here in LA? I don’t understand what’s happening, but his voice radiates through the door, and I’ve never been so grateful to hear it. I reach up and undo the locks before slouching to the side against the wall so he can let himself in.

The door swings in and there he is, mask on and hands full of plastic bags he drops on the ground when he sees me.

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