After surgery I spent three months on my back popping vicodin. Lost my job and mooched money from my parents and maxed out my credit cards. Crutched myself to class when it started. Started seeing Tiffany again. Like we had just started dating for the first time all over again. Coffee or desserts or movies. Falling back into it. Feeling each other out.
It wasn't much but it was enough for the both of us and her cat. We smoked inside because the lease didn't stop us and the couch we bought came with burns in it from a previous owner and we added our own. We never cooked. Ate out or microwaved hot pockets or boiled ramen. Decorated the walls with beercans and posters for shows and nicotine stains. Spent the weekdays shambling through class and nodding through work then working on a show then drinking myself blind at the bar or home.
I was still flying high on painkillers but these were some of the best days of us. Went to a bookstore together where she pointed me towards Gaiman. I made her read the Wheel of Time and I don't think she ever forgave me for it. We found A Song of Ice and Fire together. Spent afternoons sitting in the shady patio of a cafe reading and smoking and drinking endless glasses of iced tea.
It was good.
Then I ran out of money and went back to work and those days ended. Shows started back up and between work and class and Shakespeare both of us spent most of our time away. Wasn't until I was allowed to walk without crutches that we decided to move in together at the cast party for a Midsummers Night Dream, drunk and sitting on a couch in the middle of a crowd, yelling over loud music and nodding at one another. Three weeks later, and we had a place.
It wasn't much but it was enough for the both of us and her cat. We smoked inside because the lease didn't stop us and the couch we bought came with burns in it from a previous owner and we added our own. We never cooked. Ate out or microwaved hot pockets or boiled ramen. Decorated the walls with beercans and posters for shows and nicotine stains. Spent the weekdays shambling through class and nodding through work then working on a show then drinking myself blind at the bar or home.
Let my credit card go into collections, because paying it would have meant giving up being with her when she went to the bar. Paid for her drinks and her smokes and told myself I loved her.
In a way I did.
Poor Players started work on Troilus and Cressida. She picked up the stage manager slot. I worked lights. It was the last show we'd ever work on together.
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