Page 38 of Alpha & Omega

Dad rushes to the car and takes off, and I yell after him to come back.

I sit on the dirty street, which looks like an alley. There’s no one around, and it’s dark. I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do.

After crying for who knows how long, I grab my suitcase and walk around the city to find a place to stay for the night or to finda phone.

When I walk past what looks like a bar, I step inside. The bartender yells at me to get out because kids aren’t allowed, but I beg him to allow me to use his phone. That my parents abandoned me here, and I have nowhere to go. I just need to call my grandmother to come and get me.

Thank god for nice people. He let me sit in his office and call my grandmother. He even gave me aCokeand some peanuts. I kept her number memorized in case of emergencies. It was her idea, and my parents never knew because they didn’t get along with each other.

When she answers, I start crying. After I explain what happened, she says, “Don’t you worry, dear. I’ll be right there.”

I cry again, relieved I have a place to go. There’s no way I’ll be able to find my way home. And do I really want to? I can no longer trust my parents to love me unconditionally.

I wiped my face dry with my hands and drove off again toward home.

Themorningwaslate,and I didn’t feel like getting up. I’d barely slept at all, tossing and turning from conflicting emotions like anger and sadness, ending with the loneliness I’d been in before. If I couldn’t even find happiness with my ‘perfect match,’ how would I ever find it at all?

Harley and I had been dating for a month, but it felt so much longer, making the loss seem that much harder.

Why had I even listened to my family and put my profile up on the dating app? In fact, I grabbed my phone, opened the app, and deleted my profile—no more. My relationship was to my bar and my crew. Without it, my Rejects wouldn’t have jobs, and even worse, they could lose their homes. They were dependenton me.

Before I set my phone down on the nightstand and rolled over to go back to sleep, my phone buzzed. I ignored the fucking thing and pulled the covers over my head, knowing Harley was trying to call me. He’d texted me all day yesterday, but I ignored him and deleted his messages unread. I should’ve blocked him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

When the calls stopped that afternoon, they started up again in the evening.

“Goddammit! You’re getting blocked, Harley. I don’t want to hear your fucking excuses,” I yelled at my phone.

I grabbed it to find it wasn’t Harley at all, but an unrecognizable number. He wouldn’t call me on a different phone, would he? Pissed all over again, I answered it so that I could lay into him.

“What?! I’m going to fucking—”

“It’s Cueball,” said the deep voice on the other end.

I sat up and took a deep breath to calm my anger. “Hey, what’s going on? Why are you calling me, man?”

“I thought you should know there’s something wrong with Ajax. I think he’s… suicidal. He’s had some sort of mental crash, and you need to come over right away.”

I scrambled out of bed and put my phone on speaker while I quickly got dressed, no longer focused on my own issues. “How do you know this?”

“Blaze called me in a panic, said Ajax was talking about killing himself and how no one cares about him. He’d been teetering on the edge of his apartment building’s roof as he said these things. Blaze managed to get him down, back into his apartment, and into bed. But when Ajax told him he needed help, Blaze called me, and now I’m calling you.”

I pulled on a pair of jeans that sat on the floor and zipped them up before tossing on the T-shirt I’d worn yesterday.

Fuck, fuck, fuck… I didn’t need any of my boys getting hurt or sick again. I couldn’t afford it.

Whatever. At the end of the day, I’d do it all over again, no matter what. Damn the consequences. Ajax needed me.

“Okay, let me brush my teeth, and I’ll be right there.”

We hung up, and I took a piss and finished getting cleaned up before I ran out the door with my keys in hand.

I tried not to panic, knowing that Ajax was alive for now, but my hands shook, and sweat gathered in my pits, which had nothing to do with the warm and humid late morning.

I jumped into my car and drove as fast as I could to Ajax’s place. Once I found a spot to park near his building, I ran to the lobby door to find Cueball outside, running a hand over his completely shaved head, leaning against the building, waiting for me.

We shook hands and walked inside the building. “How is he?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen him yet.”

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