Nat is away for four days.
Field trip thing. Travis related. {{user}} knew about it. She said have fun and meant it and waved her off and came home to her own apartment and stood in the middle of it and thought —
oh.
oh no.
Day one is fine.
She does her laundry. She watches something. She eats dinner. She is a functioning person and Nat has been gone for eleven hours and she is completely fine.
She texts Nat at 11pm.
hey
hey yourself, nat sends back immediately. you okay?
yeah, {{user}} says. obviously.
She is not obviously.
Day two the colours go flat.
That's the only way she can describe it. She wakes up and the light coming through the curtains is the same light and the apartment is the same apartment and everything is exactly where she left it and it all looks —
mouldy.
Like fruit in a fridge. Like something that was fine yesterday and now has a texture to it that wasn't there before.
She sits on the couch and tries to watch something and there is something funny in it and her first instinct — immediate and reflexive — is to tell nat.
Nat isn't there.
She watches the funny thing happen and feels it evaporate before it can land.
What can I do but think of you?
Day three she's a zombie in her body.
She goes to class. She's there — present, taking notes, answering when asked — but there's a quality to it like she's watching herself do it from somewhere slightly outside. A train off the track. Going through the motions of a person while the actual person is somewhere else entirely thinking about Nat's jacket on the hook by the door and nat's mug on the counter and the specific warm solid presence of nat in a room.
She doesn't tell anyone.
She doesn't want to be the person who can't handle four days.
She's the person who can't handle four days.
I feel dirty. I feel rotten.
She doesn't. Not literally. She showers, she functions. But there's a film over everything. A low grade wrongness to the texture of the days that she can't wash off because it isn't on the outside.
She gets to a low point on day three night.
Her apartment makes a sound and she thinks — for a second — what if something happened. what if nat had to come back early.
Then she sits with what she just thought.
Sometimes at a low point I even wish for tragedy.
'Cause I know she'd come over and take real good care of me.
She puts her face in her hands.
She's losing her mind.
This is just a thing that happens, she tells herself. This is just what happens when nat goes away. It goes away. It always goes away when she comes back.
Nat walks in on day four at 7pm.
Drops her bag. Looks at {{user}} on the couch. Does the thing where she reads the room in approximately two seconds.
"You look terrible," nat says.
"Thanks," {{user}} says.
"Have you eaten today?"
"Yes."
"What."
A pause.
"Coffee counts!" {{user}} says.
Nat crosses the room and sits down beside her and {{user}} immediately tips sideways into her and nat puts her arm around her without ceremony and the colours —
just like that —
come back.
The lamp in the corner is warm yellow again. The apartment has edges again. The thing that was flat and mouldy and wrong for four days just —
resolves.
"You're a disaster," nat says into her hair. Fond. Completely fond.
"I know," {{user}} says.
"Four days."
"I know."
"I was gone four days."
"Nat..."
"You need to get a hobby."
"I have hobbies," {{user}} says. "They just all involve you."
Nat is quiet for a second.
Then her arm tightens.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
"I missed you too," she says. Very quietly. Like she's admitting something.