He frowned. “Uh, Darvon,” he said.
“What? Darvon? That was banned years ago.” Stella used to take Darvon for period cramps way back in college, getting an endless supply from her roommate whose father was a doctor. She stopped only when her roommate had transferred to Stanford, but she hadn’t really missed it. She couldn’t remember what the pill had looked like back then, but she remembered bathing in its comforting buzz. “How’d you even get it? Who gave it to you?” she asked.
“Kevin.”
Of course. Kevin always had one thing or another to take him up or down. He always winked at her when he saw her, like he had some secret he wanted to share with her. He brushed past her just a bit too close sometimes. She once caught him in the bedroom, snorting coke off her hand mirror. “Stop that,” she said. And he had, but that didn’t make her like him any better.
Simon set both pills on the table, her choice whether to take one or not. “We’ll do it together,” he urged. “It’ll make us both feel better. Like we used to.”
“Together,” Stella said. She didn’t know what the right thing was to do anymore. She was tired and sad and scared, too, and maybe this might help clarify things.
“What about the Sudafed I took,” she said.
“What Sudafed?” Simon said. “I didn’t see you taking anything.”
She frowned, trying to remember, to unloosen the knot in her mind, but she was too drunk now. She picked up the pill and studied it. It looked so innocent, and she put it on her tongue. Ready or not, here I come, she thought. Blast me back to the past when everything was so good with us. Just a taste. Just a memory. It might be all she needed, like a reboot. She swallowed, and then he leaned over and kissed her. “This will be good for us,” he said. “I promise. Maybe you’ll even change your mind about coming with me.”
“I don’t think I will.”
He folded his hand over hers and she felt an old familiar jolt of desire.
They hadn’t been passionate together for weeks now because he was so consumed with anxiety about the new possibilities for the band and she was so intent on the apartment and a family. She missed it, the way he’d tumble her to the kitchen floor, running his hand up her skirt. The feel of his mouth on her thighs, the heat from his body an electric current into hers. She lifted his hand up and kissed it. “It’s going to take the edge off,” he told her. “You watch. We’ll get all nice and mellow again.”
Right, she thought. She hated that word, mellow, and she’d never been anything even remotely resembling mellow. She wondered if Simon was just buying time, hoping that she would wake in a better mood, be more receptive to giving up the argument.
“It’s a onetime thing,” she said, and he nodded.
Simon turned on music, Bruno Mars. Oh, she liked that. It buoyed her, made her want to move. She began to dance. She felt him watching her, drinking her in like his wine. Then he stood and joined her. She swayed, bumping against him, but her limbs suddenly felt too heavy and she couldn’t keep him in focus. She narrowed her eyes to a squint, trying to keep him in her sights. “Come on, let me twirl you,” he said, and he took her hand, and she bumped her hip against the edge of the wood table, wincing.
He stopped and poured them more wine and then clinked his glass against hers. I’m with a guy in a rock-and-roll band. How unlikely. How sort of ridiculous. He was on the road seven months of the year, the bassist and sometimes singer with the band Mighty Chondria, and as soon as Stella had heard the name, she felt a thrill. “I know all about mitochondria!” she told him. “It’s my favorite organelle.”
“Mine, too,” he said.
She couldn’t help feeling that that band name meant something, that it was a sign, somehow, that they were connected, that they were meant to be together.
She set her wineglass aside and leaned her head against the crook of his neck. He was warm. Oh, he was so warm. She shivered and cozied closer to him. She trailed one hand through his hair, which was as thick and curly as her own. She still loved how he smelled, like bread rising, like green grass. Like Simon. He wrapped his arms around her and dipped her down low so her hair was brushing the floor, then he glided her back up.
“You’re staring at me,” she said.
He turned up the music and swung her to him, swaying his hips. She used to dance all night long, but now her legs ached from being on the hospital floor all day. Her ears were buzzing from the pill, and she kept missing the beat. She stopped dancing and braced a hand on the wall, which seemed to move beneath her fingers.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Her head was splitting now. The wall was spongy. She felt woozy and tense, and nothing was happening the way it should. This wasn’t the Darvon that she remembered. Simon was talking to her, getting her to the sofa, sitting down beside her, his words like an undertow, pulling her down, his skin breathing. She reached for the wine and drank more. I shouldn’t drink, she thought, then downed the wine.
She looked out the window. Everything outside was dark. She was suddenly afraid.
“I love you,” Stella blurted. “I love us.” She waited for Simon to say it back, the way he always did. He tilted back his head so his hair brushed his shirt.
She set down her wineglass, her head so foggy she couldn’t see the edge of the table, and her glass tumbled to the floor. She couldn’t remember ever being this tired, ever feeling this strange. She was outside her own body somehow. A song was strumming in her ear, growing louder, but she couldn’t make out the lyrics, and she tried to rest her head against Simon’s shoulder. “We fit,” she said, but he had moved away and she toppled over.
Her skin felt clammier now. She swore she was wearing a suit of flesh. Her nerve endings felt on fire, and she took off her earrings. She couldn’t bear them to touch her neck. The music felt like claws scratching into her. She tapped one arm to see if she could still feel her skin, and when she couldn’t, she pinched it. And felt nothing.
She wanted to turn off the music, but she couldn’t. Suddenly it was a message to her. Bruno Mars was singing directly to her, telling her how her life was going to go now. “When I was your man,” he sang. Stop, she thought. Stop, stop. This is just an argument. Arguments ended. Peace was struck. Starting to feel panicky, she found she couldn’t speak to Simon, couldn’t move her arms or legs, couldn’t go over to him and pull him back to her. It all seemed impossibly scary, like she was on the edge of something. She felt a weight on her chest. She tried to cough, desperate to dislodge something, but her muscles slept instead. The music was louder now, tiny drumbeats in her cells, but she couldn’t remember anyone upping the volume.
“Stell,” Simon said, weaving toward her. “Are you all right?”
Something was happening. She felt that with certainty, almost in wonder. She heard the words in her head, as if they were spoken by someone else, someone she didn’t know, but she couldn’t shake her head to dislodge them. Simon was repeating over and over to her, “Are you all right? Are you all right?”
But was he all right? She felt him circling her, like blips on a radar screen.
She was falling now. The world was growing darker around her. She tried to grab Simon’s hand, but a roaring started in her ears and began traveling through her body into her cells, and it was so loud. She shut her eyes and then there was nothing.