Page 112 of The Fix

“Leo would not let me off the damn phone,” Jonathon continues as he swaggers back into the living room with needle nose plyers in one hand and cut wires in the other. “Not until I swore I would get you to return his calls.”

I slump back into a completely unladylike, cross-legged heap on the floor. I sigh out and flip through the picture frames in my lap. “No. And I’m not going to any time soon.”

“Why?” He stops beside me, his looming presence requiring me to lean all the way back to catch his eyes.

“Because noneya. I’ll call him when I’m good and ready to.” I huff, narrowing my sight on him.

Jonathon holds his full hands up in surrender. “Just the messenger, ma’am.”

He’s already moving when I growl at him, halfway down the hall when I dart after the couch and find a throw pillow to lob in his direction. The soft material plops against the door he slams closed, his laugh echoing from inside the room.

“You’re as bad as the rest of them!”

Sighing when Jonathon doesn’t emerge from his fortress, I let my attention drop back to the photos discarded on the floor in front of my open cardboard box. It’s the last one to unpack, all of my furniture and knick-knacks in their rightful places, leaving this box.

The one I didn’t want to have company for when I opened.

The one I’d rather have left in the storage unit, all on its own.

But apparently Jonathon’s not leaving anytime soon and paying for a unit that houses only one box seemed ridiculous. Plus, leaving a singular box unpacked in my apartment was unacceptable to my quirky brain.

I force my feet to move back to the box, dropping to my knees.

I drag in a deep breath and shove my hands inside, grasping at the contents and pulling it all out at once.

Photo albums hold the stack steady from the bottom as I pull it from its cardboard prison and lay it all out on the hardwood beside me.

The albums are old school, probably purchased in the nineties when my mother used to think photographing everything was her life’s work, and could use replacements.

But it’s not the books themselves that have me questioning my sanity and desperation to keep the pain in my chest at bay.

It’s what’s housed between the covers, attached to a spine that crinkles when I open the first page.

My fingers feather over the glossy surface, touching a face I haven’t seen in nearly twenty years. A face too young and precious for a world that she entered, completely unprepared for what she’d find when she got there.

Slamming the book closed, I toss it back to the floor and push to my feet, swiping at my teary eyes as I go.

“Anna,” Jonathon calls out, and I sniffle back the emotions.

“Yeah?” It’s weak and waterlogged, but enough to get a response from the oblivious bodyguard.

“I’m starving. You mind if I order something?”

I tiptoe over the pile of devastation laid out on my floor and approach the closed bedroom. Swiping at my face one last time, I try my best to suck in a modicum of steadiness before pushing the door out of my way.

“Egg rolls good?”

“Nah,” Jonathon says, his face still trained on the device he’s tweaking in his grip. “I was thinking chili dogs.”

I freeze.

“Burgers, maybe,” he continues. “Something to hold me over.”

“O-okay, I think I saw a place nearby. I’ll look it up.”

Eventually things won’t remind me of him, right?

“Aw, thanks,” the man answers with a small smile, his attention never wavering from his task. “I was going to do it.”

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