Isha, Unscripted, page 16
I took another shower to get the dirt off, to wash away this mess, to pretend anxiety was draining away along with soapy water and grime. Afterward, I slathered on scented lotion and deodorant and slipped into all fresh clothes and made my way back to my room.
Everything went into the hamper to be washed tomorrow, and the hamper went into the laundry room to keep the stank out of my room.
Rogue was a grumpy pants when I took her outside to potty in the cold dead of night, but she wasn’t about to wake me up in four hours to potty.
Regardless, she took forever and it was two a.m. when we finally got back inside.
My parents were still in their room, their door closed, but as I walked by, their voices permeated through the door in sharpened jabs aimed at my heart.
Disgraceful. Shameful. Pity. Wasted potential. Bad influence. Possibly creating a rift with Rohan’s parents. Intervention to come. Community elders to get involved.
Crap. Having them involved meant total lockdown, total backlash, a hammer to the nail in my coffin. The community would see them differently if they involved the elders, all because of me. They were willing to get shunned and gossiped about if it meant getting me on the track they wanted me on.
Anxiety whooshed into the pit of my soul. I clenched my hands at my forehead. I wanted to scratch it all out of my brain.
Was I an utter, unredeemable failure? It seemed that everyone thought so. A failure at college, a failure at getting a full-time job, a failure at jump-starting a career, a failure at selling a script, a failure at keeping an agent, a failure at being religious enough, a failure at being the guiding elder sister.
I placed Rogue on the bed, closed my bedroom door, my back hitting the wall, and clutched my chest, heaving and panting.
Red crossed my vision. I went straight to my whiteboard and Post-its and notebooks and let effing loose.
Eventually, maybe minutes later or hours later, who the hell knew, I crashed into bed beside a quiet, watchful Rogue, my glasses on my bedside table next to my charging phone.
I rolled onto my stomach, shoved my face into the pillow, and stifled a scream. What a mess!
I wasn’t a bad person. Right?
Still. If Rohan’s parents found out, this would be all they’d see every time they looked at me. They wouldn’t even recognize how mature Rohan was tonight. He took responsibility where he needed to. He never ditched me, never let me wander off and suffer alone.
Sure, neither of us fit the mold of the perfect child, the kind our parents felt they could brag about to any auntie and uncle within a fifty-mile radius. But the bottom line was this: my cousin was the best.
He never let me down and always had my back.
Rohan was the ultimate bro—the Brohan and true to the name.
Chapter 15
Rogue’s telepathic glare was the only thing that could get me up the following morning. Well, and also the headache splintering my brain into a jigsaw, the rawness clawing all the way down to the inside of my throat. I hissed upon waking up.
I draped my arm over my eyes, pretending to not have noticed her. She scooted closer and closer to my face, extending her neck until her little twitchy nose almost touched my face. And she stayed just like that. Unmoving. In a blinking contest to the death.
“Go to sleep,” I muttered, my voice hoarse. I might’ve been hungover, but I did recall having taken her potty before going to bed.
She chirped.
“Hold it in,” I mumbled, letting the grogginess of sleep lure me back into its clutches.
She chirped louder.
“Just wait,” I grumbled, and went to roll over, flinching.
Who knew running around, climbing things, and falling into dumpsters and onto lawns would leave a body feeling like it’d just spent three grueling hours hitting the gym?
By now, Rogue-alicious was not having it. She padded onto my stomach, somehow adding weight to herself, and I almost puked when she walked onto my chest and sat all six-point-six pounds down. I couldn’t breathe.
“Fine. I’m up!” I rasped, gently sliding her onto my side again.
With a groan, I checked my now-charged phone, ignoring the text notifications. It was almost ten. I could’ve slept all day, but my little girl was probably about to pee, and poop, on my pillow.
I set Rogue down on the floor and drowsily walked her through the overwhelming quiet of the house and out to the backyard. I didn’t bother putting on glasses, just in case my parents were around. If I didn’t see them, they weren’t there, right? That’s how things worked?
Thankfully, no one was around. Of course, my parents were up and about somewhere. Their usual routine was to be showered and offering prayers by eight every morning. They must’ve made their breakfast offering to their idols and partaken of it themselves before going on with their day. Wherever they were, I was just happy not to have to see their disappointment or hear another lecture.
Rogue did her business fairly quickly. We went back to my room, my ankle forcing me to limp every few steps. There, I filled her water and food bowls. As she chomped away, I downed a few ibuprofen for the killer headache throbbing at the base of my skull and radiating outward, tingling on the edges of my shoulders. The lingering effects of drinking had me wanting to lie down in the dark for the rest of the day, but I had some things to get done.
I started laundry, then returned to my room to sit down and put on my glasses to deal with today when I finally saw, in clarity, the state of my room.
What. The. Hell. Had I done last night?
The detailed storyboards on the whiteboard were streaked clean, leaving remnants of lines and curves here and there. My notebooks were splayed open and all over the place with pages ripped apart in a brutal paper massacre. Half of my scriptwriting books were jammed into the trash can with a few haphazardly piled between the bin and the wall.
Exhausted. Defeated. Deflated.
My barely rigid shoulders slumped and sagged. The burden of a hundred doubts and failures encumbered my bones. I could practically feel my shoulders splintering from the weight.
These stories floating around the room, the things that once gave me life and brewed unparalleled excitement, slowly wilted into items that incited pangs in my chest.
“Oh my lord . . .” I muttered, overwhelmed between the headache scratching the inside of my skull and the heaviness of my shoulders, the ache in my chest.
My brain throbbed, like it was expanding inside a suddenly too-small head.
What was the point? Also, I was certain my skull was going to explode any second, splattering this room full of my stories with brain matter. Seemed poetic in a sense: death over the very thing I loved.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” I grunted, took my glasses off, placed them on the bedside table again, and flopped onto my pillows. Nope. I couldn’t deal with today, after all.
Even opening the blinds to let in much-needed air and light, much less cleaning up the shrapnel remains of my work, was too much effort.
My phone pinged.
It was probably Rohan. Who else could it be?
It took everything in me not to emoji-sob to him and ask if he hated me, or had lost all respect for me, or had gotten into trouble, or was feeling bad in the case that my parents had hammered into him.
But no. I didn’t because all the guy wanted to know was what I was up to today.
Nothing. Pure and simple. But maybe at some point I’d sweep through the room and collect the shards of my dignity and glue them back together into what was sure to end up being a hideous conglomerate of rubbish from my so-called career.
He texted again, asking if I wanted to do something. Anything.
Nah. I didn’t feel like leaving this bed, even as depression ballooned up behind me, as if coming out to say Hello, my dear friend. It’s been a while.
But he persisted and kept texting me, making sure that I was all right. But the thing was, I wasn’t okay. Perhaps my parents were in the right. Maybe I was a dire failure, an utter and lost fool to think I could make something of myself in the entertainment industry. I wasn’t well-connected. I didn’t have beyond-amazing talent that made others want to snatch me up in a heartbeat, apparently. This whole up-and-down roller coaster of highs and lows? Maybe I wasn’t fit for this after all.
I texted Rohan back, so that he wouldn’t worry or fret over me. Aside from the obvious reasons why I might not be feeling okay, Rohan was quite perceptive. Especially when it came to me. He knew, even if no one else did, when I was down. We were cousins, which meant we’d seen each other get into trouble a million times. It wasn’t anything new, particularly when we were so similar and tended to get into trouble for comparable issues.
But he knew things were a little harder for me, or at least I viewed them to be a little harder on me. Because yes, being an elder meant I had to be pristine and proper and good in setting examples for others. I had little to no room to err. I was nearing thirty, which meant I had expectations that I was not quite meeting: degree(s), settled career, sufficient if not lucrative income, possible marriage partner in sight if not already married. Not to mention I was female, which meant there were double standards to face off against in already tedious uphill battles. Women shall not drink, smoke, curse, dress or behave immodestly, or have sex (what’s that? Ha! Just kidding!) before marriage.
With Rohan’s intuitive sense of knowing me and how realistic the odds of last night sending me tumbling down into a rabbit hole of despair and depression were, he didn’t relent. I supposed there were a number of things that he could’ve homed in on, and no, I wasn’t going to count them off again.
Yet Rohan didn’t focus on any of those things.
Rohan: Want to grab a pizza at that place I took you to a few months back? The one that personalizes every order? My treat . . . just don’t do that thing you did last time. :P
I smiled, albeit faint and fleeting. The guy loved his pizza and had grown into a connoisseur. The place was expensive but simple. You created your own pizza. Each one was the same size, the same price, thin crust, and personalized. It was basically walking down a line of sauces and toppings, then a quick fire-roasting, and ta-da!
The last time we went, Rohan had gone for what he called his usual: spicy red sauce, very little mozzarella, lots of onions, and red bell pepper. I had hemmed and hawed for the longest time before he prodded me in the side and told me to hurry up. I’d attempted to replicate this fabulous white pizza that I had at Gotham Pizza in New York City. I had them make my pizza with cream sauce, a little mozzarella, a sprinkle of parmesan, and lots of ricotta topped with spinach and crumbled feta.
“Ew,” Rohan had said, pretending with great conviction that my pizza looked gross and pale.
“It’s really good,” I had said after a bite. Very close to Gotham, but not quite. “It’s called ‘white pizza.’ ”
He shook his head. “Damn shame. You and your racist pizza.”
Rohan: All right fine . . . you can have your racist white pizza.
I let out a little smile and sent him a laughing emoji. I lay on my stomach, the pillowcase digging creases into my skin, and contemplated going out. It would help. To get out of the house, away from my parents’ disapproval and this mess, for some much-needed food in my belly and to apologize to my cousin for being such a wreck in life. He really deserved better from me.
Flickers of last night came back to me no matter how hard I tried to fight them off. My stomach turned in on itself. I lurched up and bent over, dry-heaving.
My body, from my skin to my bones, was on fire.
I gulped water from the water bottle beside my bed only to glance at it after setting it down. The water bottle Mummie had given me last night. Her sorrowful tone chimed through my thoughts.
Lord. I’d thought things would feel better the next day, less extreme after sleeping it off. But no. It was even worse because there was a certain clarity amid the skull-cracking headache. Seriously. Was my brain about to explode? This couldn’t just be all from drinking. I’d never been this miserable.
Maybe all the details weren’t there, but there were a few things.
Rohan: You there?
Rohan: Hello? You ghosting me? Or did you fall asleep?
Rohan: Okay, well I’m hungry. Ima take a shower and be at your place in twenty.
Isha: It’s okay. I don’t feel up to going anywhere. Thanks, though . . .
I just wanted to play my sad playlist and sleep. As I closed out of Rohan’s messages, I noticed an unread one from earlier this morning.
Thirst-Trap: I won’t bother you again if you’d rather I not text you, but I wanted to make sure you were doing well this morning.
I smiled softly, then cringed. Knowing that he’d seen the worst of me had another wave of nausea rolling up my throat.
He . . . had been so unerringly kind. He gave me drinks on the house and a shirt to cover up with, cleaned up my mess, and drove all the way to the lake to get us out of a jam. And he didn’t even know me! I couldn’t even remember his name! He deserved more than an embarrassed apology uttered in mumblings from the back seat of his car from a drunk woman wearing crotch-hole parachute pants. He deserved to hear it in person, to his face, and from a clean and stink-free version of me.
I drew in a deep breath until my chest expanded as far as it could go, until my ribs ached, until my back cracked. I shouldn’t miss an opportunity to be an adult and face my issues. I had to at least make one thing right, if nothing else. At least confront one disaster.
Rohan: Just gonna mope all day, then?
Isha: Actually, I need to apologize to your friend’s brother, the bartender.
Rohan: You don’t have to. He probably gets that all the time.
Isha: No. I really should. And I’m sure he does NOT get that all the time. He went very much out of his way and saved both of us.
Rohan: You’re right. That’s a good idea. I think they’re open today.
I looked up the pub on GPS and viewed their website and hours, and sure enough, they were indeed open on Sundays. Maybe he was there, maybe he wasn’t. But if he was, today seemed like it might be slow enough to talk to him.
Rohan: Want me to come with you? I can drive.
Isha: That’s okay. Thanks. I need to drive around and figure some things out.
Rohan: You’re okay . . . right?
Isha: I will be.
I dropped the phone onto my lap and looked around the room.
Sitting around would just allow plentiful time to wallow in misery and mess. I would probably end up eating junk food in the dark and binge-watching Netflix for days. Although not a horrible idea.
No. I had to do the mature thing. This guy deserved an apology and a decent thank-you. He had done too much for a stranger . . . way too much.
I groaned and shook off a shiver. Even though I’d showered last night before getting into bed, I swore the lingering odor of vomit still clung onto my nostril hairs for dear life.
First, I called the pub to make sure he would be there.
“Which bartender?” a woman asked.
I blew out a breath. “Um. I don’t know his name. He worked last night.”
“There were three male bartenders who worked last night. One is here.”
“Oh. Hmm. Okay. I’m a little confused. All I know is that he’s tall and handsome and has brown skin and black hair in a man-bun and makes beautiful off-menu drinks.”
She laughed. “Ah, okay. There’s only one of those. He’s here right now.”
I snapped my finger as more tidbits came back to me. “Ah! The owner.”
“Yep. That’s him.”
“Great! I need to drop something off for him in an hour or so.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks!” I said, and hung up, my hands clammy and shaking.
Why was I so nervous? And a better question: why hadn’t I asked for his name and for her to let him know that I would be coming? I supposed I could text him.
No. No way were my strung-out nerves going to let me. I could see myself hemming and hawing and the next thing I knew, I’d talk myself out of going altogether. Just go already . . .
“All right!” I smacked the edge of the bed and pushed myself off.
With determination to offset the dread of my entire existence, I put the laundry into the dryer and took another shower and washed my hair twice more. As I shaved, letting conditioner sit in my hair, I contemplated the best ways to apologize to a guy while ignoring the teeth marks on my bar of coffee-and-sugar-scrub soap. Not to mention, a good enough way to apologize to my parents and Rohan.
For them, I knew that laying low and being seen at home was important. I might (gasp) even have to attend mandir to appease their worry that I might be on a downward slope into hedonism.
And Rohan? It seemed that I could do no wrong in his eyes. Not that I was particularly important or perfect, but he had a wide range of forgiveness. He understood, but he also didn’t think things like this were a big deal. It wasn’t as if I’d ratted him out.
But Thirst-Trap? How to apologize to him? And why did I feel the gripping need to do so? We weren’t close enough to warrant anything expensive or extravagant or too thoughtful. We barely knew one another, strangers in passing, really.
I hadn’t messed up so much that I needed to beg or grovel or get emotional.
A card? No. That seemed cheesy. What would it say anyway? Sorry I puked all over your lot and you had to clean up my nastiness?
Flowers? That seemed much too . . . intimate.
Food? Ah, yes. Food was the way to the heart. Apologies were practically insta-approved if they came with food.
