One Week Later
I stood staring at the door. I must have stood there for minutes, but it felt like hours. I squeezed the key so tightly I felt the jagged edges imprint in every one of my fingers. I stared at the swirling colors on the wood. Mom had painted it when we moved in. My gaze moved to the flowerbeds, once blooming with the same color that Mom filled her life with, dead and wilted. It would all be like that. Inside, all the color would be damp, lifeless.
I didn’t want to go in. The heaviness on my chest was almost too hard to bear. I almost reached into my bag for my inhaler, but I stopped, having to remind myself this wasn’t a physical problem. The air trapped in my chest was not a failure of my lungs, but a failure of my mind. Trapped in my own head, I was the only one who could repair it.
I wished Asher was here. That Bex was here. That I could have them beside me, borrow their strength. But Bex was back at the club, practicing her routine for the next night. Her bruises had finally faded, and Carlos had grudgingly taken her back as if she’d inconvenienced him by being brutalized. Asher was away on a “run.” I didn’t get much more of an explanation, only that he would be gone for a few days. We had just lost our constant shadow “Skid,” as Asher had been reassured we’d seen the last of Dylan. He left three days ago, and although he called me every day so far, I missed him. That too had left a sour taste in my mouth. Three days. Three days I felt lost without him. How would I handle the rest of my life when something happened to tear us apart?
So I had to find the strength to walk through that door and to withstand the memories. So then I could try to build my life around the ghosts that haunted me. The pain that plagued me. I ignored the pressure in my chest as I took a tentative step forward and put my key in the lock.
I pushed through the sweaty, inebriated sea of people toward the line for the bathroom. I too, may have been slightly inebriated. I situated myself at the end of the line, trying not to focus on the fact that I was alone in the crowded bar, drunk as I may be, being in a place full of people I didn’t know, dressed like I was. It had ants tickling the bottom of my belly. I had to find Bex. She had melted away with the crowd when we were dancing, I hadn’t been able to find her in what felt like hours. In reality, it was probably only a handful of minutes. Time moved differently when you were full of alcohol, and when people kept bumping into you, stumbling around. Apart from this small detail, I was happy with the way alcohol was making me feel. Or more accurately, not feel. The afternoon sorting through Mom’s stuff was nothing short of torture. The pain, I thought could never have gotten worse, showed me a newer depth and a further emptiness. Asher’s absence contributed to it. So it had been a small victory that Bex’s demeanor seemed to mirror mine when I got home and she declared we get, “shitfaced.”
If I’d been of a more stable frame of mind, I might have asked her what haunted her eyes. But I was too wrapped up in myself. A fatal mistake.
I took another deep breath as my eyes darted around me in a line that felt like it never moved.
“Do you think he’s good looking?” a girl in front of me asked her friend.
Her friend squinted over my shoulder, looking toward the bar. “Yeah, I think so….” she paused, swaying slightly. “Definitely.”
The other girl followed her gaze, her eyes glazed over with the slightly vacant look I had seen on myself in the mirror at home. The one where alcohol made everything fuzz at the edges.
“Yeah, I’m so taking him home tonight,” she exclaimed before they both burst out laughing.
My mind started to wonder about my current situation with a man who I didn’t have to ask anyone about his looks. I knew he was swoon worthy. Sexy as sin. I had known for years. Now he was back in my life. Somehow wanted to be part of the mess that was my life.
The dull ringing of my phone was almost lost underneath the pounding of some song I didn’t recognize, the only way I noticed was the buzzing coming from the tiny bag I had clutched to my side.
“Hello,” I shouted as I fumbled to answer it just in time.