[juice]

He rolled to his right, then his left. He slung an arm over his eyes, slid it back down to his chest, and dropped it to his side. He exhaled, blinked at the ceiling, and tried his other arm. He tried bending his knee; weaving his hands together and putting them between his head and the pillow; and flipping over onto his stomach. Nothing doing.
His eyes squinched shut while he yawned. On the other side of the bed, the sheets made a plush, wrinkled mountain. Past them, the clock read 2:54 in tall green numbers. He’d spent at least an hour flopping around. He yawned again and leaned up to check for the thin strip of light beneath the bathroom door. The light was still on, faint yellow. He sighed.
He kicked the sheets off him and reached for his crumpled jeans at the side of the bed. Once he’d yanked them on, and cinched his belt, he padded across the carpet with his knuckle digging out an itch in his eye. War tried not to think about how in less than four hours he had to get up. Instead, he grabbed his keys and locked the apartment door behind him as he headed down seven flights to the lobby.
A chill bristled up his spine when he stepped outside. Even after all these years, he still wasn’t used to the weather here. No one out during a summer night in Austin ever needed a jacket. But Texas was a world away from Chicago, and he’d rather cross his arms over his chest and brave it than go back.
The lights in the garage spread out, dim and few, shadowing the rows of cars. He ran his hand over the tail end of the Mustang and popped open the driver’s side. No matter how many years, how many times he got in, he felt how well the car fit around him. How the curve of the seat met the curve of his ass. The space given for his knees, and the comfort of the pedals. The smooth touch of the buttons on his stereo, and the intuition of which to press when he turned the key. He flipped through the channels, stopping on the screeching horn and thumping bass he recognized in an instant.
The silver band on his index finger flashed the colors of the street lights as he tapped out the beat. He sang under his breath, “Runnin’ with the devil,” and whistled to Eddie’s guitar riff.
The breeze blowing in through the window kicked up the smell of stale cigarettes. He could really go for a Pall Mall–beautiful, smooth things–but he was on a mission.
He pulled up outside a convenience store and parked at the edge of a fire zone. And as he walked through the glass doors into the artificial light, he repeated over and over again what she’d told him earlier.
She’d insisted in a whisper that she was okay. No, he didn’t need to get her anything. This happened all the time. She just had to wait it out.
After an hour, he asked if there was anything else, anything at all that could be done aside from sitting in the bathroom until it was over.
With a tired voice, she told him cranberry juice, and interrupted herself to say she was fine. He should go to sleep.
Except he tried that. For some reason he didn’t understand, he couldn’t do that. Fuck, War was dying to. If he had any hope of not hitting himself with a hammer, banging his head on a supporting beam, or falling off the edge of the roof his construction team built, he needed some shuteye. He didn’t get it. When he lived alone, he had no issues. He crawled into bed and that was it–comatose until his alarm went off.
Then she moved in, and he found that if he tried to sleep in his own bed, alone, he’d roll around the mattress and end up still awake when his clock beeped. But when her warm body pressed into his chest, and he could wrap an arm around her, maybe even a leg, he passed out in an instant.
He shook his head and prowled the drink aisle. Orange, purple, pink, and green flashed by in wavy plastic bottles. Red. He stopped. Perused. Blinked.
CranApple. CranGrape. Cherry. Pomegranate. Strawberry. Tangerine. White cranberry and peach.
What the-
His lips pressed together, eyes closed tight, and he ran his palm over the crown of his head. He sighed and looked again. Nope. Not one plain juice in sight.
He thought about going somewhere else. Maybe there he’d find the straight stuff. But fuck, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He clenched a fist and thought about punching the blue OceanSpray logo on a bottle of CranEnergy. Instead, he shoved a bottle of the Strawberry and Apple kind in his armpit, grabbed the peach one, and hoped that at least one of these would work.
At the checkout, the surly black woman working the register eyed his selection. She gave him a good up and down, no doubt seeing the exaggerated slump in his shoulders and the bruise colored smears under his eyes. And slowly swiped each item.
“Pall Mall,” he said, nodding once to the arrangement of small, shiny, cardboard boxes of heaven.
She slid a red box across the counter and took his cash, dropping each coin into the register one at a time. He dragged his feet out the door, not bothering to wait for a receipt.
With the bottles lined up in the passenger seat, and a lit cigarette between his lips, he made his way back home. Parked in the garage. Lugged his groceries back up the seven flights of stairs. Opened and locked the door behind him.
He kicked off his boots and dropped the juices onto the counter. Smoke puffed from his nostrils while he got out a glass and cracked open the CranApple. He flicked his ash into the sink and carried the glass to her bathroom.
“Yeah?” she asked, when he rapped his knuckles on the door.
He let himself in. She had leaned over, crossing her arms on the sink next to the toilet, and resting her head on them. The color had drained from her cheeks. A faint tremble bobbed her lower lip and she blinked tiredly. His eyebrows knit together, and he held out the glass for her.
“We had some?” she asked. Her voice indicated that she’d never intended on playing martyr tonight.
He shook his head and watched her sit up to gulp it down.
“That the stuff?” he asked. He could barely speak through the rawness in his throat and the cigarette clenched in his teeth.
“Mhmm,” she said.
He gathered her glass, poured it full, and brought it back.
“God, this is sweet, Mac.”
“Do I gotta water it down?”
“No, no. You. You’re sweet,” she said.
He bowed his head and shook it again.
She took the second glass slower, drinking in sips and small swallows.
“You gonna be alright?” he asked the tiled floor.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Here, next to her, he couldn’t get his mind off how tired he was. How nice it would be to just drop to the floor and rest his head in her lap. He wondered if he would hear the alarm in here. Aw, who the fuck cared? His knees buckled and he curled up by her ankles, touching his ear to the space above her knee. Her hand curled over his temple, gently removed the cigarette from his mouth, and brushed over his shaved hair.
And he was out like that.