No Tomorrow

The promises.

A sensation creeps over me, similar to that feeling I get when I forget to put my watch on, and then for the rest of the day my wrist feels strange and oddly amputated.

Blue isn’t in bed with me. I’m a wrist without a watch.

My back and neck ache in protest when I sit up and stretch my arms high up over my head. I’m not used to sleeping all tangled up with another person. Or being stretched and bent and bit and sucked.

On my way to the balcony, I pick his T-shirt up off the floor and slip it over my head, then slowly slide the glass door open to step out into the warmth of the sun, which doesn’t wake me as much I hoped it would.

I desperately need a latte to fight off the lingering brain fog from lack of sleep. In fact, I could probably use a gallon to help me get through the interrogation I’m sure I’ll be enduring from Josh and Lyric when I get home. But first, I need to use the bathroom and take a long hot shower. Then we can have breakfast in the café in the lobby and figure out how I’m getting home and where we go from there.

And somewhere in there, we need to have a serious talk.

When I step back inside he still hasn’t come out of the bathroom. My bare feet pad silently over the plush carpet as I cross the room to the marble tile hallway that leads to the bathroom. Pausing, I turn my ear toward the heavy door. There’s no sound from the other side.

“You okay?” I call out awkwardly.

No answer.

“Blue?”

A cough. “Gimme a sec, babe….”

While I wait, I tidy up the room, which other than our clothes all over the floor, is surprisingly neat. Two large suitcases are on the floor with their lids open, exposing his wardrobe of jeans and T-shirts. And cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarette packs.

Five empty water bottles and two empty liters of lemon soda line the top of the dresser.

Even though I know a maid will be coming shortly, I make the bed and smooth the wrinkles from the comforter, then sit on the edge with my feet dangling, waiting for him to come out. I’ll be upset if he decided to soak in that huge tub without me.

A cold chill suddenly courses through me. What if he changed his mind about us and now he’s hiding from me, devising an escape plan like he did five years ago, but now he’s got himself cornered in the bathroom with no way out?

No. That’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t do that.

I exhale a steadying breath, growing more impatient and worried, and search for the television remote, hoping to distract myself. Instead, a book on his nightstand catches my eye, and I realize it’s one of his notebooks, with the pen I gave him for Christmas years ago sitting on top of it. The pen brings a smile to my lips. He kept it, and he’s using it. Which means it must remind him of me. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I pick up the notebook and flip through the pages.

The pages are filled with nothing but harsh jagged scribbles.

My mind races back to the shed, to the first time I noticed the pages of scribblings. But I saw him on the floor, with one of these books, writing and tearing the pages out, throwing them around the room, then starting all over again. I distinctly remember him telling me he was trying to get the words right. He was distraught, literally agonizing over the words and the notes.

What words? Where are the actual words?

And why were there stacks of these exact books piled in the shed of the old house?

I finger the notebook, trying to make sense of it, but I’m clueless.

What is he doing?

Taking the book with me, I walk back to the hallway and knock softly on the door.

“Blue? Are you okay? I need to use the bathroom.” I wait. I hear a faint rustle. “Can you come out? We really need to talk before I leave.”

Nothing.

I debate opening the door. We’re definitely nowhere near sharing bathroom activity status, but worry soon takes over any fears of humiliation. Turning the knob, I push the door open a few inches.

I wish I never had.

In fact, I wish I had never come here to begin with.

The sound of the notebook falling from my grasp to the floor startles him, and our eyes meet for a quick second before I turn and run back to the bedroom with my hand over my mouth, suppressing the screams threatening to rip from my body.

Hot tears well up in my eyes and slide down my cheeks as I frantically pull on my clothes, and he stumbles out of the bathroom, still holding the needle that was inserted in his vein just a few seconds ago.