Dry

“You’re giving up what?” Mary asked.

“Milk,” Dennis said with a smirk that asked for a smacking.

“For Dry January,” Mary prompted.

“Yep.”

“You don’t even like milk.”

“I know,” Dennis said, shrugging like that wasn’t his fault. “Should be relatively easy to stay dry, right?”

She gave him a shrewd glare. “I know you want me to say it, so I’m not gonna say it.”

Dennis raised his beer, a double IPA with notes of orange peel and coriander, and took a slow, indulgent gulp. Mary watched in disgust.

“So what movie are we going—"

“You’re missing the whole fucking point!” she exploded.

Dennis laughed. “Look, some people give up meat for Lent, others give up licorice or some obscure shit they won’t miss anyway. I’m with those cats. If Jesus is cool with their sacrifice, I don’t see why you’re getting all judgey on me for my choices.”

Mary shook her head, apoplectic with indignation but realizing that any further argument would just make Dennis happier.

“You’re a mule, you know that?”

“A mule who likes his beer,” he replied with another swig.

It was January 1, and she knew he was going to make her life miserable for the rest of the month.

“So are you giving up all milk? Or are you, like, still cool with oat milk and whatnot?”

Dennis placed a hand on his heart. “Now that’s just hurtful, Mare. I take my convictions seriously. No milk from any animal, nut, plant or … what else do they make milk out of these days … whatever it is, I am foregoing all milky products. Hell, I’ll do you one better. I won’t even go near cream or half-and-half.”

“Ice cream?”

He gave that some thought. “I don’t feel that’s really in the spirit of Dry January. It’s about what you drink, not what you eat.”

“You going straight to hell, Den. I mean like on a bullet train.”

“Yeah, okay. On February 2 when you’re blacked out drunk, we’ll talk about your virtuous ass.”

Mary didn’t see Dennis again until Friday. Between work and school and more work, she barely had time to remember her vow of abstinence. When she did, her thoughts turned to Dennis and her mood soured, then fermented further as the need for a drink itched at her after a long day. By the time the weekend rolled around, she was sober, defiant, and irritable. She knocked on Dennis’s door, expecting him to greet her with bourbon in hand, that oaken, spicy musk beckoning like incense for a monk.

“Gimme a second,” he called, and she heard him scrabbling around, probably looking for his keys again. When he finally emerged, Mary was surprised to see that he neither looked nor smelled like he had touched a drop of liquor. Dennis wasn’t as heavy a drinker as she was, but he liked to get a little sauced before going out.

“You all right?” she asked, examining the dark smudges under his eyes, cracked lips, greasy hair, and Miami Heat sweatshirt that was more sweat than shirt. Dennis was as vain as a Greek god, almost as hot, and twice as careful about his appearance.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine. C’mon,” he said in a clipped, almost angry voice.

“Uh, okay. That felt totally regular.”

They walked to the diner in a silence that didn’t belong between them. Mary tried to nudge it out of the way by telling Dennis about her week, but it was like talking to a fish.

“Dude, Siri is more interested in my life than you are right now. You wanna just bail and meet up tomorrow? I’m too tired to be ignored.”

 “I gotta show you something,” he answered. Mary huffed and called him things that would have hurt just a week ago. But she followed him into the neon embrace of the Flashback Diner, past the twirling display case of cakes that sagged with age to the mechanically cheerful host, who grabbed two menus like they were the Ten Commandments and led them to a turquoise-colored booth next to the bathrooms.

Mary scooched to the end of the seat and Dennis took his place opposite her. A waiter named Antonio appeared with two waters crammed with ice and asked how their night was going.

“It’s great, and yours?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he said, and she wanted to believe him.

“We already know what we’re getting. I’ll have the Philly cheesesteak, hold the peppers, with fries and a sweet tea.

“Corn flakes. Bring the milk on the side.”

The waiter paused and glanced at Dennis, clearly checking for drugs.

“That’s it?”

Dennis nodded.

“You want those to come out together?”

Dennis nodded again and the waiter left, giving Mary a look that told her how sorry he was for her.

“Cereal? Milk on the side? What the fuck, Den? Is this you dragging out a joke that wasn’t funny last week? Because I’m still not laughing.”

“Just wait.”

Mary waited, her anger sizzling. For the first time in the three years she had known Dennis, she couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to him. Even after she told him she might be in love with him, and he had smiled and told her he kinda suspected it but said nothing more, even then she found the words to stumble over and pretend like she was relieved to get the confession off her chest. But in front of this disheveled golem, she felt impotent. She turned to the jukebox on their table, fished out a few coins from the assortment of pockets in her jacket and jeans, and flipped through the selections until she landed on Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation.”

With a mean smile, she paid the price and punched the button. If Dennis got the joke, he didn’t comment on it. She felt like reaching under the table and squeezing his nuts until he snapped back to reality.

Elvis left the table, and Dennis slurped his water.

Antonio came to the rescue, setting the cheesesteak in front of Mary with exaggerated panache, and then plonking down the bowl of Corn Flakes and a small pitcher of cold milk.

“Y’all enjoy, and let me know if you need anything else,” he said and vanished.

With the appearance of the food, Dennis came to life like a robot who just had its batteries replaced.

“Okay, watch this,” he said. And then, he raised the pitcher of milk and poured it over the cereal.

At first, Mary didn’t see it. Then her gaze shifted from the bowl to Dennis, and she noticed the naked hunger in his dark chocolate eyes, the white-knuckled grip on his spoon, the drool trickling from his open mouth as he watched the milk fill the empty spaces in the bowl. The flakes crackled, and Dennis moaned.

“Den, what’s wrong?”

“It’s the milk,” he stammered. “I want it. I want it so bad.”

He put the empty pitcher down and bent forward, the move so sudden and violent that Mary jumped back, until his face was inches from the milky surface. Dennis breathed deep, the pasteurized smell expanding his nostrils and dilating his pupils. He clutched the table with both hands, his muscles bunched and trembling with what Mary could only describe as longing. He looked ravenous and bestial.

“Dude, you’re freaking me the fuck out.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t control it.”

“Control what?”

“The hunger.”

“For milk?”

He nodded.

“Then drink the fucking milk, Den! Here, I’ll order you a goddamn carton of it.”

Dennis grabbed her raised hand and slapped it on the table, hard enough that she cried out and the neighbors noticed.

“I can’t drink it, Mare. I mean, I physically can’t.”

“Dennis, what the actual fuck are you talking about?”

“Here. I’ll show you.”

And then his spoon was in the bowl, and he scooped up a few flakes swimming in milk and raised it, trembling, to his lips. Before he could so much as stain his dark lips white, Dennis was puking all over the table.

Nearby diners shrieked, and Antonio appeared as if summoned.

“Hey, are you feeling okay? Was the milk bad? Shit, I’m sorry, let me get this cleaned up.”

They left the diner, no charge for the untouched meal, and made their way back to Dennis’s apartment, Mary using every one of her ninety-six pounds to support his bulk.

“It’s been like this all week,” he said when Mary had tucked him into bed and wiped the stray flecks of vomit off his clothes. “I can barely eat. Can’t drink anything but water. And all I think about is fucking milk, man. All day long. All night. I crave it like I’ve never craved anything in my life. And I can’t touch the stuff.”

“Den, this is cray cray.”

“I know! And you know what’s funny? I was gonna cheat, Mare. Like, literally the day after we talked. Because fuck it, what’s Dry January anyway, right? But you know I hate milk, so I ordered a milkshake. I remember thinking I was all sly ‘cause milkshakes are basically melted ice cream. And then the thing came and it was, I don’t know, like my brain just started screaming. Every blood cell in my body wanted that damn shake, and I grabbed it, tossed the straw, and started to chug. Then I blacked out. When I came to, there were all these people hovering over me asking me if I needed to go to the hospital. I was frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog. I threw up the shake, and I was so crazed that I tried to lick it off the ground, to get at that milk, but the people helping me dragged me away.”

“Jesus, Dennis.”

“I know. I’ve been home ever since. Skipped class, skipped practice, which you know I can’t do if I want to keep my scholarship. I just lie awake and think about milk.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know, Mare. I’m scared.”

“Me too.”

Mary spent the next two days Googling Dry January, pouring over articles about how it was good for you, bad for you, important and useless, necessary and irrelevant. She read about the insatiable thirst for alcohol that heavy drinkers felt in the first few days before the body and mind recalibrated. But there was nothing close to the vampiric hunger Dennis was experiencing. That night, as she walked to his place to report on her meager findings, her phone rang.

“Pick up some milk, please. Full fat.”

“But Dennis—”

“What date is it?”

“What? Oh, uh, January 7th.”

“I’m not gonna make it to the end of the month. I need milk, or I’m going to die. I have to find a way to get it in my system.”

Mary bought a gallon of organic milk and rushed it to him. She tried serving it cold, then hot. She mixed it with chocolate. Whipped it into scrambled eggs, baked it into a pancake, folded it into mashed potatoes. Dennis couldn’t swallow any of it, even as his body burned and his thirst consumed him.

Then Mary had an idea. A wild idea. She poured a thimble of plain milk into a glass and drank it. She swallowed and counted to three. Then she kissed Dennis. He shrank from her at first, but suddenly his eyes went wide.

“I can taste it,” he whispered. Mary nodded and kissed him again. He pushed her away.

“Drink a little more.”

She did. Two thimbles. Count to ten. His mouth was on hers, his tongue prying her teeth apart and snaking into her mouth like a predator. He scraped the molecular milky residue from her tongue, gums, anywhere he could taste them. He heaved and bucked, but forced down her saliva, sucked it into his system.

“Again, Mary. Please.”

She drank the entire gallon that night. Her jaw ached, her lower lip bled from an eager tooth, and she was woozy with the taste of him. She knew his desire had nothing to do with her. It was survival. And maybe it was for her, too.

For the rest of Dry January, Dennis drank her and slaked his thirst. When the calendar turned and the new month began, Mary poured a glass of milk for him.

“Drink,” she said.

“Nah. You drink,” he said.

She smiled and did as he asked.