Page 32

It Was Worse Than a Breakup

I t took Helena all night to clean up what remained of the infested kitchen. When Rafferty went back through the circle, the tendrils and growth went with him, as well as the majority of the eerie detritus. As well as her coffeemaker and toaster. Her crockpot had been half dissolved and the dishwasher made a funny noise now, but it still worked. The inside of the fridge was also fine. Everything was still coated with the gross, unnamable film. It took most of the night to clean up. Amazingly enough, Rafferty’s cleaning concoction, when she sprayed it on and left it for a few minutes, wiped the mess away almost instantly. She did the counters and walls first, the surfaces of the remaining appliances and then her windows before finally mopping up the floor, throwing away a month’s supply of paper towels, so it was lucky she bought those sorts of things in bulk at the local warehous e outlet.

The whole time she went through a bevy of emotions from outright heartbreak and melancholy to even laughing at some of their shared memories. If anyone had been watching her, they would have thought she had been dr iven mad.

This was worse than a breakup, sh e decided.

Finally, just when dawn started to crest, she finished enough for her to go to sleep. She knew she would need to do this level of cleaning again for a while, but at least the sick feeling it gave her was much, much less. Yet, as she dragged herself to her bed, she caught a glimpse of herself in th e mirror.

“Crap, I got to shower,” she told her re flection.

The water burned as it hit her skin, like she had been out in a snowdrift. Leaning against the wall, she pressed her hands into the tile as she let the water hit her from above. Hanging her head, her hair streamed a curtain around her face. She endured it and after a few minutes of slow breathing, it got easier. The water slipping down the drain was black and greasy brown, reminding her of oil. It took everything she had to hold on.

“Rafferty, I am so sorry,” she whispered. She knew she couldn’t imagine the pain he had to be suffering at that moment; hers was definitely nothing in comparison. But she hoped he could hear her, wherever he was, and that it gave him some comfort.

After washing her hair twice and simply standing in the water until it ran cold, Helena made her way back to her bedroom, moving freely without fear of anyone else seeing her natural state for the first time in ages.

Though would it have really been so bad to let him see me naked? She had seen him in such a vulnerable state. Despite her newfound freedom, she felt cold all the way down to her bones and dressed herself in her warmest, fuzziest pajamas complete with socks. Then she buried herself under her comforter and only then did it occur to her that she needed to call in sick at work.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” she muttered before she realized that her choice of words were the wrong ones. If Rafferty could still hear her from the depths of hell because of the circle, then she needed to only send him good, comforting words. “Bless it,” she amended, then wondered if actually, because of his circumstances, that would just hurt him in reverse. Bless a demon, curse an angel?

It was too much logic for her brain at that moment, and she just forged on, navigating her phone to call her least favorit e person.

“Hi, Yosef,” she said when her nemesis answered. Good, she thought. I sound as croaky a s I feel.

“Hi, what’s up?” he asked, already sounding like he had run laps around the city before b reakfast.

“Well, as you might be able to hear, I am sick as a dog this morning, so I think I should not come into the office,” Helena said, adding a sniff to the end to emphasize h er point.

“You’re not coming in!” Yosef practically shouted into the phone. Helena didn’t realize she had a low level headache until he did that, but he made it ring now. “We have less than a month until the Winter Rose Ball, and you haven’t even picked a cat erer yet!”

“I know, I know. I’ll be working from home,” she said. After I get a few hours of sleep, she thought.

“Oh, you’re going to work from home,” he said sarca stically.

“Well, I could come in, but I don’t know what I have and…” Helena had to think fast. “And I’m concerned about giving it to the rest of the office. Especially with Scarlet and ev erything.”

“Oh,” Yosef said, his ire cooling quickly. “Yeah… yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, okay.” She could practically hear him physically reset himself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for my overreaction. What you’re saying is sensible. Okay, how about… you make a list of the things you need from the office, and I’ll have a messenger bring the m to you?”

“Um okay, I’ll do that, but I’m going to try to get some sleep here so let the messenger know that if I don’t answer the doorbell right away, they should call my phone,” she said, putting Yosef on speaker so she could look at the clo ck on it.

“How about I schedule to have them delivered at 1pm. Will that give you enough time to get so me sleep?”

“Yes, actually that would be great,” Helena said, relieved. “I just feel if I got a few more hours, I might be okay, you know.”

“Don’t push it,” he said, though it sounded absent-mindedly distracted, like he was reading something. Probably hiring a courier v ia an app?

She waited until he c ame back.

“Okay, we’ll get this sorted. Feel better,” he said and then he was gone before she could say anything more. Which was fine.

She let her phone drop onto the bed beside her, then rolled over, not caring if she tossed it off the bed or not. Laying there, her thoughts still buzzing, she thought she would never fa ll asleep.

But she did.

The next couple weeks went by in a blur fo r Helena.

Even though she spent a couple days at home, to cover for her “being sick” excuse, she worked just as hard as if she had been in the office. In some ways, she was more productive, having the extra 45 minutes she would have taken otherwise for her commute. There were so many things to plan, from seating to flowers to entertainment to etc. etc. And it all had to be done now or yesterday. But item by item, she got things sorted out and untangled, and she could start to see how this Winter Rose Ball was going to come together.

She would need to present everything to Scarlet soon for her final approval, which dragged her back into the office. Everything needed to be perfect, and if it meant she clocked in double the hours at the office, so be it.

“Get out,” Yosef said near the end of the se cond week.

“What?” Helena exclaimed, lifting her head up from where she had buried it among the guest list seating arrangement plans. She had been moving and shuffling cards around for hours, trying to accommodate as many requests as she could when Yosef had made his strange prono uncement.

“You’re going crazy. You’ve started talking to yourself,” he said, plucking the cards from her hands. Helena felt her cheeks flush. She hadn’t been talking to herself. She had been talking to Rafferty. But Yosef couldn’t k now that.

“When’s the last time you ate? Or even went to the bathroom?” Yosef asked, gently pushing her back from her desk to look under it for h er purse.

“Um. I don’t know… I guess…”

He found it and pressed it at her. “Exactly, you need to get out of here for a bit. Go get something to eat and some fresh air,” he said as he marched her over to the coat rack by the door.

“He’s right, you know,” Scarlet called from her own desk where she had been working on making personal phone calls to specific donors to guarantee that they RSVP’d. It was one of the few things she couldn’t farm out. “This job is about pacing, m y child.”

“But I am almost finished. I just need to—” she tried to say, but Yosef started putting her coat on for her like she was a kinder gartener.

“It’ll still be here when you get back,” he assured. “And besides, I need to give Scarlet her massage. So don’t come back for an hour.”

Any other protests were met with deaf ears, and in a trice, Helena found herself thrust out of the office with the door firmly shut be hind her.

“Well… okay,” she said to it, feeling almost hurt but realizing too that they were probab ly right.

She pulled up the phone app for a nearby Thai place that wasn’t as good as the one on Little Thai street, but they also had a decent selection of Ramen Bowls in a sort of hybrid fusion thing that sounded appealing to her. It was winter after all, the best time for soup. “I wish you were here to try the Ramen. It’s another Asian thing you would ha ve loved.”

“Oh, yes, that sounds delicious!” one of the other office workers said, who had also been waiting at the eleva tor door.

She hadn’t noticed them, but she forced a smile. Okay, maybe she was talking out loud a little too much.