Catch My Fall Read Online Free

company, content to be together, but separate. It was nice – for about four minutes. That’s how long it took for me to remember why I’d left the book for a month. It was terrible.
    I joined Stellan on the couch. So much for intellectual relaxation. “Remind me never to buy a book based on its title again.”
    Stellan didn’t look at me. “Never buy a book based on its title again.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Anytime.”
    We sat watching a documentary on the making of a Coen Brothers movie and quietly melted into the couch.
    Stellan shifted. “What was the title?”
    “Pussy King of the Pirates.”
    “Well, if you’re not going to read it -” he said and went to snatch it out of my hands.
    I swatted him away and laughed. “No, I can’t in good conscience let this book out into the wild. It must be destroyed.”
    “Should I get the blessing salts?”
    “No. This must be scoured by fire.”
    The two of us silently rose from the couch and walked to the fireplace on the other side of the front room, my favorite room. It spanned the width of the entire house with windows on three sides. It was bright and open, separated at the middle by the bottom of the staircase, and along one side of the stairs was the hallway to the kitchen. On the other side of the stairs the front room curved around, leading to the office and dining room. Over the years, my mother had managed to gut the house of all remnants of carpet and seventies wallpaper, leaving it to look like a Home & Garden spread. Someday, I hoped to have my own house, just like it.
    We hunched over the fireplace and Stellan started chanting, ominously, holding his hand out for me to hand him the book. I did and joined the chant.
    Yet, when Stellan suddenly produced the fireplace lighter I snatched it back from him. “I’m not seriously going to burn this, you jackass!”
    He feigned devastation. “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Something about book burning just doesn’t settle right. Call me weird.”
    “You’re weird. And no fun,” he said and crossed back to the couch. I tossed the book back onto the bookcase and promised to choose a different book the next time I felt like reading.
    We wore divots into the couch for an hour. I hadn’t left the house in weeks and a part of me missed the outside world. Then, as evidenced by the embarrassing ‘splurf’ of my gastrointestinal workings, I apparently missed food as well. Stellan rolled an eyeball in my direction, and I smacked his arm.
    “Don’t look at me like that.”
    He hopped up off the couch, towering over me as he held out a hand. “I gotta get back to work, but come on. Let’s get you some grub.”
    I followed him into the kitchen.
    He’d gone a half hour later, and I found myself stewing on my mother’s couch. This felt rather pointless, given the battle it took to get me out of bed.
    After an hour of soap operas and old game shows, I texted Stellan, Meghan, and Jackie in the hopes that one of them would be free for something – anything to distract me from the passage of time. I’d become dependent on them for human contact. I stood in the middle of my front room, sipping raspberry tea with honey when boredom inspired an unexpected thought.
    I went into the office and sat down at the computer. I pulled up a job search website, one I hadn’t even considered for a month or more now, and began searching. This act had become tedious over the months after I moved home, and I found myself despondent to the idea the longer I went without luck. I’d managed to find one job during that time, one possible savior onto which I clasped with every ounce of my being. All my hope, my gospel, my self-worth, lay weighted on that one position. Head of Marketing at Endine, a position that offered perks, sixty plus hour work weeks and a comparable pay grade to the job I’d recently lost. I played that interview like a fiddle, regaling my interviewer with ‘anything to please the client’ talk. I’d retold every