Sophie’s babbling coupled with her eagerness puts Will on edge and causes him to freeze, but he finds that he cannot stay that way for long. Missie, who has to be all of a hundred pounds soaking wet, tries to burrow into his chest, and the simple shift in weight causes Will’s knees to buckle. He suddenly feels incredibly vulnerable between his wife and their friend.
“Billy, I gotta sit down,” Missie says, and they do. Missie curls up, an impossible little ball on her husband’s lap, and Will kisses her crown and her temple and adjusts the comforter that she is still wrapped in over her feet. Missie eyes him and swallows convulsively. “So we’re –” She shudders and turns her gaze on Sophie. “–smokin’ … pot, now, is that it?” Any attempts at laughter, and there are some, die to whimpers. “Can it help me sleep?” Missie croaks, her brown eyes filling with tears. “Because I’d really jus’ like t’ …”
“It, uhm,” Sophie croaks past the lump in her throat. Missie radiates something so sobering Sophie starts to deeply doubt her little plan. She forces herself to nod, to project confidence and comfort though she feels almost overwhelmingly naïve. “It should help you sleep.”
Sophie can’t bring herself to maintain eye contact with either Markey as she strikes the lighter she’d lifted from the dealer and slowly, carefully brings the end of one of the joints to a smolder. It’s a good roll, firm between her fingers, and it’s purpose is entirely medicinal, but she’s never felt more like a delinquent teenager in front of Missie and Will. “This won’t, uhm-- this won’t be like smoking a cigarette,” she murmurs. “It’s-- slower. Gentler, too, and you'll start to feel it faster than you would a pill-- if your pills did anything for you.” Sophie relaxes her thumb and pockets the lighter, then lifts her gaze to Missie, but not Will.
Tears shock to her eyes. “Missie,” she manages, voice wavering, but only just. “If you don’t like it, or don’t want it, just say, hm? This should help, I want it to help-- but if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. We’ll find something else.”
jacobvanloon
