More depressed than angry

Outside, I pulled the heavy wool around me against the snow and tried to decide what I wanted to do. Curry would probably show up at my door sooner or later tonight, since I’d stormed out of the watch house without uninviting him. I was still undecided as to whether I wanted to be there for that so we could play nice and make up, or if I wanted to fuck off somewhere else and let him show up to a dark apartment with nobody to greet him. It would serve him right, for caring more about his supper than my company, when we hadn’t even done anything together besides work for almost two weeks now, and for laughing at Baggett’s stupid mockery.

I decided that Curry had hurt my feelings more than Baggett, because I had missed him quite a lot recently, and he had made me feel like he barely cared whether he saw me tonight or not. What a laugh—nobody wants to go to Bersk’s place because she’s a fucking child who doesn’t keep real food on hand! And woe to anybody who goes home with Bersk and is sad later when she doesn’t want a relationship—since it’s definitely her fault they assumed they were the one exception to her clearly stated and consistently enforced no exceptions policy!

It soothed my temper a bit, to have better articulated to myself why their remarks had rankled me so disproportionately. Instead of going home I walked around a bit longer mulling things over and eventually decided that Nan’s house was further than I felt like walking with the weather this sloppy and my feet this cold already, and that I’d rather be at home than the local, and that while I’d be fine with it if Curry didn’t turn up, I could also tolerate it, if he did and offered some form of apology.

It was still spitefully tempting to eat myself sick on all the curry buns before he got there.

When I let myself in, though, Curry was already there, which stymied my initial plan to use the time before his arrival to calm down further. But it didn’t hurt things that he’d lit a fire and the apartment wasn’t the freezing cold box I’d expected to come home to. He was standing in front of the crackling fireplace, holding the toasting basket with the curry buns in one hand, and a tumbler of whiskey in the other.

“I poured you one,” he said. “Have you been walking around this whole time? You must be freezing.”

I shrugged, then turned and hung my cloak up next to his on the pegs by the door and began pulling my boots off, being sure to land my stocking feet on dry floor. Just then, taking in the whole of my little apartment and seeing the single, plain room I lived in, it looked foolish and shabby, the kind of place a very immature person would live.

I felt suddenly more depressed than angry. Why shouldn’t they make fun, when I had no proper kitchen or front room, and a person could stand just outside my door and see not only exactly where I slept, but every single thing I owned? I crossed the room and picked up the whiskey Curry had set on the table at the end of my bed, then sat cross-legged on the bed, since I didn’t have anything resembling proper front room furniture, and rarely bothered making my bed into the sofa form it was theoretically capable of.

Anybody would look at this place and reasonably conclude a twenty year old slob lived here, I thought gloomily as I took a long drink of the whiskey.

“You all right?” Curry asked after a moment.

I wasn’t even in the mood to give him shit anymore. “Yeah,” I lied. Actually I felt a bit like crying right now. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried about something, or even what it was. Probably at least six months ago.

He and Baggett had laughed at me, sort of fairly so, because it was less depressing than acknowledging that my apartment definitely belonged to someone who was going to die alone.

“You don’t sound very all right, if you don’t mind me saying,” he remarked mildly.

“Are you and Bag trying to let me know I need to grow the fuck up, without having to just say it outright?” I asked.

Curry turned and gave me a funny look. “Of course not.”

“Tonight really sent home how fucking small and pathetic my life is,” I said in a too-small, too-high, voice, and at that he set the toasting basket on the mantel and came over to sit next to me on the bed. “I hadn’t really done anything with just you in a couple weeks, and I really thought, this exact dumb thought earlier—that maybe tonight would be just like it used to be. That’s how a kid thinks. Not somebody pushing forty.” I took another drink of the whiskey. “And this place is a fucking joke. Everyone could see it but me. No wonder nobody takes me seriously when I thought it was fine to live in this dump the last eight years.”

“Not one bit of that is true,” Curry said, his tone beginning to sound a bit troubled. “Where did all this come from, honey?” He must be getting worried, I thought. Curry only called me honey when I was sick. He was probably right to be a bit worried, at how directionless and untethered a person I was generally.

But I just couldn’t be bothered to care about that right now. I finished the second half of my whiskey, too fast, and held the tumbler out to him. “Would you?”

He took the glass from me, but didn’t move to get up. “I think you should eat something before you have any more.”

“Not hungry,” I said, then flopped backward on the bed.

Curry set the glass back on the table and stretched out next to me, studying me with an expression of distressed concern. “Hey… what’s going on with you today?”

“Literally nothing. I’ve spent my whole adult life curating this empty fucking excuse for an existence.” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, in such stark bewilderment, when he and Baggett already thought I could barely take care of myself. I rolled to face away from him and curled up on my side, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging my arm around them.

Curry moved over and put his arm around me, and for the first time I could remember in all our lives, I had the fleeting impulse to push him away. I didn’t, though, because I really had missed him. “Hey,” he whispered. “I’m really sorry about what I said earlier. I thought we were just fucking about and I was wrong. I don’t think there’s anything the matter with you or how you live your life. I’m so sorry I made you feel otherwise. And for going along with Bag giving you hassle when you weren’t in the mood.”

“I’m not mad anymore,” I said. “It just, I don’t know, gave me a sudden window into how people must see me, and I guess that made me wonder why I’m apparently so determined to fuck my way through every halfway decent looking man in the city just so I can die alone in the end.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Curry said. “You’ve known what you wanted out of life since we were just kids. And there’s nothing wrong with any of it.”

“I dunno. You're practically the only extremely good-looking man I know that I haven’t had sex with.”

“So? What does that matter?”

“So Baggett was right. I just tear through people no matter if they get hurt by it or not.”

“Remind me to break his goddamned jaw so we’ll have a respite from him saying pointless shit like that all the time,” Curry muttered. “I’d like to remind you now of the fact that you very clearly tell everyone up front what you and aren’t open to, and if they choose to take that as a personal challenge instead of a line you don’t cross, that’s not your fault. It’s theirs. You’re allowed to know what you want, and not be made to feel bad about not changing your mind to suit someone else.”

I rolled over and huddled in his arms, pressing my forehead to his chest so I didn't have to look at him. “I think I should move,” I said weakly.

“But you love your little place!”

“It looks like a feral child lives here. No wonder you didn’t want to come over tonight.”

“Oh, Fuzzy.” Curry was now openly distressed. “I’m really sorry. Please don't take any of that stuff from earlier to heart. Let me make it up to you.”

I drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I mumbled against his chest. “I’m just… having a thing.”

Curry held me there a while, which was sort of nice, but after some time had passed he asked hesitantly, “I know I was out longer than I expected handling that city clerk thing for Nan. Did something… happen today?”

I shook my head no.

“You seemed like you were feeling all right this morning when we walked in,” he persisted. “I’m just trying to figure out what changed. This feels more heavy duty than how you’d normally take a bit of Bag’s slagging. Usually that shit rolls right off you.”

“It’s my fault you never found anybody to get married to like you always wanted.”

“What?” He sounded genuinely confused. “How could that be your fault?”

“I don’t give you enough space. Bag made me realize—I can’t stop thinking about the fact I’m kind of just using everybody in my life. I use other men for sex, and I use you for companionship. I’m occupying a spot somebody else should. It fucks up all your relationships before they can even turn into anything.”

“I don’t agree at all,” Curry gently admonished me, then shifted to get a better look at me, touching the back of his hand against my cheek. “You sound like you’re coming down with a fever or something,” he said, half to himself.

For some reason, that was the thing that made me cry. Curry held me, stroking my hair and murmuring to me, until I tired myself out and lay there limp and feeling generally defeated.

“Would you try to eat something if I warm up those curry buns?” he asked. “You said before you were starving. I think getting something in your belly will make you feel better.”

“All right,” I consented, without much enthusiasm, and he pulled over a pillow to replace the spot where I’d been resting my head on his arm. At least the room was cozy and warm now, which was something. “I’m going to use the privy,” I said while he set to work with the toasting basket.