Chapter 5

5

“Delphie? For fuck’s sake. Delphie? Wake up.”

I frown, opening my eyes to see a pair of eyes so dark they’re almost black. The man’s face is so close to mine that I can smell the soap on his skin, something clean and expensive. He’s saying my name, and he seems really pissed off. It takes me a few seconds to recognise the patrician tones, and when I do, I feel a sharp spike of dislike in my belly. I sit bolt upright and push the man’s face away from mine.

“Christ.” A brief look of relief crosses his despicable face. “You’re alive, at least.”

I wipe multiple beads of sweat from my forehead and mash my lips together, mouth dry. I look around. I’m on the floor of my apartment. I’m alive? I gasp for air and take a huge gulp of it in when I realise there’s no restriction. Beautiful air. Wonderful, beautiful, life-giving air.

“Holy shit.” I stand up with a wobble, noticing as I do that my phone is right there on the side table. There is zero sign of a microwave burger anywhere in the vicinity. My TV is switched off and my laptop is closed. “What the fuck?”

Cooper from downstairs towers over me, his treelike frame making my living room look even tinier than it is. He holds his hands up as if he wants no part in answering my question. “I came to bring you that,” he says stiffly, pointing to a cardboard parcel on my kitchen table. “They delivered it to me again. Your door was ajar and I came in to find you passed out on the floor. But you’re clearly not dead. Hurrah. I should go.”

“Wait!” I say, pulling down my nightie. “How long was I passed out? What time is it? Where’s my burger gone? I don’t…” I look towards my window. The sun is setting. I squint at my clock. Eight p.m. “Two hours have passed?”

Cooper regards me coolly. “Are you drunk?”

I grab my throat. “No. No…the beefburger is gone,” I mutter. “Completely vanished. Was that a dream? The launderette…Was it not real?” I shuffle over to my coffee table and scan it. “If there’s no burger, that means…What does that mean?”

Cooper steps towards me and uses two fingers to push my shoulder so that I plop down onto the sofa. “Starting to feel like I should telephone a doctor…” he says, mouth settling into its usual grim line.

“No. No…I’m fine.” I wave him away. “I think…I think I just had a really weird dream.”

Cooper glances around my little living room, a single eyebrow raised. I suddenly see the place through his eyes—faded old floral wallpaper I never got around to changing after Mum moved out, unopened boxes of oil paint stacked high on the teak side table, a row of second-tier knickers drying into cardboard on the radiator.

His eyes snag on the underwear for a moment before sliding back to me with an expression that rests somewhere between mild boredom and outright scorn. Ugh. This guy thinks he’s so much better than everyone else. He’s dressed, as usual, like some wounded yet enigmatic French guy. The kind of guy who reads sun-burnished paperbacks at the bar because he wouldn’t dream of being tethered to an iPhone. The kind of guy who smokes just for the aesthetic. Like if Timothée Chalamet had an extremely tall, extremely brooding asshole of an older brother. Black leather jacket, plain black T-shirt, black jeans, black boots laced neat and tight. Thick stubble because he’s just too clever and mysterious to shave.

When Cooper first moved into the building five years ago, he looked totally different—dark hair much shorter rather than the jumble of curls it is now. He was clean-shaven then, strutting about in obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirts and board shorts, a pencil tucked behind his ear. There was far, far less scowling. In fact, the day he moved in, I remember thinking his eyes were the most glittering, cheerful eyes I’d ever seen, which goes to show that first impressions are mostly bullshit.

That was all way back before I’d frequently bump into him in the building lobby, waving off yet another beautiful woman he’d clearly just entertained for one night only. Back before he told me to fuck off the morning I politely asked him to turn down the music he was blasting at 6:00 a.m. After that interaction his eyes looked significantly less glittery to me. I’d studiously ignore him if I passed him in the hallway. He stopped wearing a pencil behind his ear and would snipe at me every time one of my parcels got accidentally delivered to his place on the ground floor. People say I’m prickly, but I am rainbow-stuffed sunshine compared to this guy.

“Right.” He rolls his eyes. “All very normal. And you’re sure I don’t need to telephone for help?”

“Telephone? Alright, Downton Abbey. No. You don’t need to telephone anyone. You don’t need to be here at all, in fact.”

“Good.” His eyes travel down to my nightie and then back up to meet mine. “I’ll let you get back to sparkling and shining, shall I?”

“I’ll let you get back to Rydell High. The other T-Birds are wondering where their shittest member is.”

“I sincerely hope you find that missing beefburger.”

“I sincerely hope you don’t get a heat rash from wearing leather on the hottest day of the year.”

I smile but it’s not real.

He glares and it’s very real.

He turns on the heel of his dumb boot and strides out of my flat, not shutting the door behind him, which I know he did on purpose. Grumbling, I go and close it, locking all three locks and double-checking them.

“And stay out!” I call after him, although my door is already closed, and Cooper is probably back in his own flat now. God. Irritation might be my default setting most of the time, but my goodness does that idiot know how to conjure it.

As soon as he’s gone, I scan my flat once more for evidence of the burger, or the plant I knocked over on my frantic run to the kitchen chair to Heimlich myself. I find nothing.

I pick up my phone. No notifications, no calls, which isn’t a rare occurrence. No notifications and no calls is exactly how I like it.

Hearing the sound of Mrs. Ernestine from downstairs giving grief to someone on the street, and the hum of my fridge, and smelling the scent of the roast chicken in the air coming through my windows—the things I encounter every day—it occurs to me that what just happened was almost certainly the world’s most disturbing dream.

There’s an unexpected roll of disappointment in my gut. I mean, of course I’m delighted I’m not dead. Obviously. But if none of that was real, then that means Jonah T. wasn’t real either. Just a figment of my clearly outrageous imagination. Huh.

Lying on the floor in the setting sun has made my skin gross and sticky, so I strip off my nightie and dive under a tepid shower. I soap my body and stare blankly at the pale pink wall tiles. How did I end up passed out on the floor? Am I unwell? Am I dehydrated? Jan at work told me I needed to drink more water to account for the buckets we’re all sweating in this heat wave.

I think of Jonah T. as I wash my hair with my favourite sweet apple shampoo. About how my body had felt in that dream. How just for a moment I was excited about the possibility of…I don’t know what. Something better. I think about his eyes and his hair and the way his hand felt in mine. My chest aches with longing.

“Get a grip, Delphie,” I say out loud. “It was just a weird dream.”

After climbing out of the shower, I pad about from room to room feeling desperately uneasy. My flat feels too hot and too small. The sun is still too bright for 8:00 p.m. I stare at the spot on my new striped rug where I collapsed. Where I’m certain the air left my lungs. God, it felt so real.

Inspecting the fridge, I spot the offending burger. It’s unopened. I quickly grab it and dump it straight into the trash.

Then, at a loss for what else to do and with absolutely no-one to talk to about this strange occurrence, I switch the TV back onto Netflix and turn on The Tinder Swindler, picking right up where I left off.