Twenty-twenty started strange, and would very quickly get stranger.
After Violet's New Year's Eve surprise blowjob, I didn't see much of her for the next couple of weeks. She was taking every shift she could at work, telling Pete and I one day as she ran out the door, "gotta get ahead of tuition."
I understood that with her classes starting up again soon, it would help Violet out a lot to not have to take as many shifts. She was going into the last couple of semesters before she graduated, and it wasn't any time to stop paying attention, or take her focus off school any more than she had to. It did mean that she gave me a lot of space... too much, really. I was thinking about her more and more, and the times I did see her, I was finding myself desperate to reach out and touch her.
She'd said that Christmas Eve was the best mistake we'd ever make, and I realized that she'd been right. Thinking back to the sex, but also just the little things, like talking with her as we walked home arm-in-arm... I wanted that again. I'd been terrified for a long time after being wrongly accused of rape a few years before, and thankfully cleared in record time, but I had to get over my fear of getting involved with a tenant again, which had led to the whole disaster in the first place. My world was feeling like it was going a little mad with the tension and absence of Violet.
The news was insane too. The orange halfwit down south was constantly doing something stupid around growing fears of a plague, and then his puppeteers were doing something unbelievably evil while everyone was horrified at his stupidity. The world felt like it was starting to spin off its axis. You could feel it in the air. I spent my days as I often did, packing up orders and subscriptions, trying to keep ahead of the week before releases were delivered Wednesday, and then getting things into the mail and delivered by Friday.
It was good work, it kept me moving, kept me paying attention, and it also gave me lots of time to think while I did the menial stuff. Before the holidays, Vi would often come hang out with me before heading out to classes, but now she was usually just saying good morning and heading out after she ate something, often leaving me a meal behind too. Pete, always leaving to get to work at the medical supply warehouse he worked at, was always gone before I was up in the morning. He would often come home and walk around with me as I did drop-offs for local customers.
January just disappeared in a blur, but the other thing in the news finally hit. Covid.
By the start of February, a lot of businesses were closing their doors, there were rumours of states of emergency being declared, and by mid-February, toilet paper was going for exorbitant rates. Violet's classes had gone on hiatus while the school figured out what to do, and every day, she was looking more and more nervous when she headed out to work.
Pete was too. They had him wearing gear at work to deal with pickups by customers, masks and eventually gloves and face shields. It came on fast, but then one day, Violet came home from work and I heard her coughing as she headed upstairs to her room.
It was almost March, and she'd been complaining that they should have closed the club's doors for a while. A few of the girls who had something or someone to fall back on had quit, so she was getting asked to do a lot of shifts. Despite that, the money sucked. There weren't many people going to the club.
I was watching news on my computer while I worked during the days, and the federal government was urging the provinces, mostly run lately by windbags like the yankee-doodle-dumbass, to limit movement, maybe even lockdowns as the Covid numbers rose... it was looking bad.
Pete popped his head into my little dining room workspace as I was pulling an order of vintage comics for a regular.
"Hey man, have you talked to Vi?"
It was his day off, but he'd gotten up to a call to come in to cover the night shift. Too many of the guys he worked with were down sick.
I looked up from the package I was packing and thought about it. "No, I heard her come in last night, but..."
Pete tossed me a mask, one of those medical masks that doctors and dentists wear when they examine you. He'd brought home a couple of boxes and a few others things a week before. "I heard her coughing too. Put this on, we need to check on her."
She was sick. It'd hit her like a freight train, and she could barely raise her head from the pillow.
Pete didn't go into work, and I couldn't go out on deliveries. Within a week, we both had a hard-hitting case of Covid to go along with Violet's.
*
I was down for almost two weeks once it hit me. I'd been trying my best to take care of Violet, bringing her chicken soup I'd made, making sure she got lots of water and ginger ale, all the stuff you're supposed to do when someone's sick. Pete kept his distance.
"Guy wanted a dance, and he coughed right on me," Violet had told us sleepily, her fever burning hotly through her blankets already.
We'd headed downstairs, Pete, his job making him hyper-aware also making him panicky, he swore under his breath. "Fuck. Fuck fuck, what we get for living with a ripper."
"You knew?" I was surprised. Pete had never said anything. Hell, he barely ever said anything about girls he liked, always keeping it under cover, rarely more than the odd one-night-stand a couple of times a year coming through the house on his behalf. He looked at me and shook his head mournfully.
"It didn't exactly take a genius, Dan. Whenever Eva's over they girl talk about customers when they think we can't hear them."
That was true. I'd kind of ignored it since I'd found out, but Eva played the part more than Violet seemed to.
"I'm not complaining, I'm just... fuck."
*
I was the last to drop in the house toward the end of the first week. By the end of my two week bout, Violet had started to bounce back, and was trying her best to take care of us. Pete had it worse than me, childhood asthma coming back to haunt him. Luckily, we were both young enough and healthy enough that it didn't put us in danger... but it didn't stop Pete's mom from calling multiple times every day and bemoaning the 'pernicious, insidious, virus,' at great length.
Violet managed to coax me and Pete both to the big L-shaped couch in the living room, getting us set up at either end with blankets and pillows, tissues, and all the basics, making it a bit easier to bring us food and keep an eye on us. She was coming out of it fast, the twenty-three year old constitution giving her an edge over two guys in their early thirties.
One day, when Pete was in the bathroom, she came in, still pretty much living in her fuzzy housecoat and full pyjamas and bunny slippers. She set about clearing up some plates and an empty bowl of soup I'd had. I reached out and took her hand as she went to check my forehead.
"I'm okay, I think I can probably help out soon," I told her. Violet's big blue eyes examined me, the dark blond eyebrows furrowed across her pretty elfin face.
"You don't have to do that, just get some rest," she protested. "I feel bad enough-"
"Stop," I interrupted, "it's not your fault we all got sick. One of us would bring this home, it was just a bad draw for you." I held her gaze a beat, and something in me fell away, "you and I, Vi, I want to-"
"You stop," she gripped my fingers tightly, almost painfully. Down the hall the toilet flushed.
Violet began to pull away, turning to check the hall. She'd been keeping the distance she'd told me she would, treating me mostly the same as she did Pete... except for little moments like this. I'd caught her checking my forehead with a kiss when both Pete and I had been out cold a couple of times. Caressing my face as she brushed sweaty fever-soaked hair from my eyes. The pandemic was raging, but we still had a fire smouldering between us.
Her eyes softened, "when we're all better."
*
