Page 59 of Stay Awake
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Two Years Earlier
Amy’s hand hovers over the box of truffles as she decides which chocolate to take. She settles on a milk chocolate truffle with white chocolate drizzle.
“Don’t eat it!” I call out as she’s about to put the chocolate ball in her mouth.
“What?”
“Don’t eat the chocolate.”
“Why not?”
“It’s spiked.”
Amy looks dumbfounded. “What makes you think it’s spiked?”
“I ate one earlier. I couldn’t keep my eyes open afterward. It felt as if I’d been drugged.”
“Liv, none of the chocolates have been eaten yet. Take a look.”
Amy hands the gold foil box to me to inspect. “See! All the truffles are in the box. Nobody’s eaten any of them.”
Amy’s right. The box is full. None of the chocolates are missing.
“I guess I must have dreamed it,” I say, mortified.
“Liv, what has gotten into you lately?”
Amy sits next to me on the sofa and inspects the finger I hurt earlier when I opened the bouquet of roses.
“What do you mean?” I ask as she opens her first aid kit.
“You’re paranoid about everything,” she says, taking a sterile needle from the kit to remove what she says is a thorn in my finger.
“Like what?” I wince as she teases the thorn loose with the tip of the needle.
“Well, let’s start off with the fact that you called the police because you thought someone had ransacked your bedroom when all I did was borrow a few clothes for my vacation,” she says. “And then you wanted them to do a full-blown criminal investigation into how a carton of milk got into our fridge. Now this drama about the chocolates being spiked. Liv, I’m worried about you. Your paranoia is off the charts.”
The way Amy puts it, I have to admit that my behavior does sound deranged. “It must be stress,” I say, defensively. “Work has been intense lately.”
I grit my teeth as Amy pokes the needle deeper into my skin and then takes out a set of tweezers from the first aid kit.
“You should take a few days off work, Liv. Go somewhere relaxing.”
“I wish it was that easy.”
“It is that easy. Tell that boss of yours, Frank, that you’re taking a couple of personal days. You work long enough hours that he should cut you some slack.”
“I need all my leave for my vacation with Marco in October.”
“Vacation? Where are you going?” Amy hovers the tweezers over my fingers before pulling out the thorn.
“France. We’re thinking about doing a cycling trip in the Loire Valley.”
Amy doesn’t respond as she cleans my finger again with antiseptic lotion and puts on a bandage.
