Once Spice World ended, another movie followed, and then another. Not even 15 minutes in to their latest viewing, Jodie failed to suppress her yawns.

“Hey, go to sleep,” Mitch nudged her.

“’M fine,” Jodie swatted at him, and sunk further into the mattress. “Besides, it’s been forever since we’ve hung out like this.”

“Yeah, but you’re tired.”

This exchange went on for far too long, until Mitch snatched the remote away and held it out of Jodie’s reach. She pouted while being haphazardly tucked in by Mitch’s functioning arm, but passed out before he even turned the light off. Unlike her, Mitch found himself unable to sleep, but thankfully he had his phone this time. He sent an email to his editor, which briefly touched upon the chaos he’d been plummeted into; a part of him worried that this could result in the loss of yet another columnist position, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care.

Multiple messages were drafted and ready to be fired off to Calvin, only to end up being deleted. On Facebook, he saw that Calvin wasted no time in changing his relationship status change to single, and Mitch’s immediate reaction was to deactivate his own account. He cried until he just barely passed out, only to wake up before REM kicked in, and then repeated this cycle so much that he lost count.

In a small way, he was thankful for being miles away from his now-ex (a thought he couldn’t process yet, since it made his heart feel as though it was physically dissolving). Being apart meant that he wasn’t at the base of ground zero, staring at the surrounding rubble in a daze. Presently, his best friend kept him safe and sheltered in both a physical and emotional sense, and he appreciated his small fortune.

Yet, he yearned to be in a familiar environment, even if it killed him, if for no other reason than for a moment of privacy. He wouldn’t dare complain, but being in the house that Jodie’s abulea had passed away in less than a year ago was uncomfortable; there were still traces of the woman everywhere, but at least Jodie had overcome her grief enough to take down the numerous crucifixes that once adorned all of the bedroom walls.

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(However, she hadn’t removed the very cool velvet Jesus painting, which now stared at Mitch in the darkness from across the room.)

Also, all of his shit was back in Connecticut, which he’d eventually need but had no clue how to go about collecting. At the bare minimum, he had a few day’s supply on hand of various medications, so his life wasn’t in jeopardy. But no matter what, he couldn’t ask for Jodie’s help with this one; not only because of the extraordinary generosity that she already demonstrated, but also because he had no guarantee that she wouldn’t disembowel Calvin on sight.

It’d be nice to have clean clothes, as well as his laptop. And if he got ahold of his camera and guitar, they could both be pawned off to help keep him afloat for a bit. When feeling helpless got old, he shifted his thoughts towards what he had control over. His work was backed up onto a cloud network, so he could technically write articles on his phone even if it was sub-optimal. He briefly entertained the idea of getting more dates booked, only to be struck by the ridiculousness of that scheme when he remembered the injury which occurred a little over 24 hours ago.

“Goddammit,” he hissed, pressing the heel of his palm into his eyes in frustration. Immediately, he whispered “sorry” in velvet Jesus’ direction.

For a distraction, he finally replied to all of the well-wishes that he’d been tagged in. The sheer volume remained inconceivable, but it meant that Jodie’s hard work and investments were at last paying off. Ever since she became her father’s business partner, she took charge of modernizing his wrestling school’s marketing and operations. They had an online presence now, which up until then was non-existent, and she secured professional equipment to livestream, rather than rely on shoddy DVD sales. Two years later, enrollment shot through the roof, and her pet project, Monster Mash Wrestling, gathered a decent cult following.

But in Mitch’s microcosm, the temporary high from the ego boost drastically plummeted as he found himself completely unprepared to handle the attention. Anxiety churned as he glanced through notifications, and he stared in disbelief at a message from Toby, of all people. His hand began to tremble ever-so-slightly.

“Uh. No.” Mitch powered his phone down and slammed it on top of the nightstand. It didn’t matter how desperate he was to pour out emotions to a familiar face -one that knew him, the real him, and not just Zevon- there were no circumstances that Toby could be that person.