Page 86 of With Love

Adrienne

Owen had a little bit of money with him, so we were able to grab a night at a shitty motel off the highway about 50 miles down the road. He said that we can find a bank and a gas station and figure out a more solid plan tomorrow.

I was exhausted before we got back to the house, now I feel flat out delirious. Laying in my bed for the evening, the sheets around me feel like sandpaper. It’s awful. I look at the surroundings in the room and wish like hell that I was back in my room in my treehouse that Marshall built for me. For us. Tears begin forming again, spilling from the corners of my eyes. As hard as I try to keep my sniffling quiet, I can’t.

“Adrienne?” Owen asks from the double bed next to mine.

“I’m fine, Owen. Please just leave me alone,” I cry.

He does. Before long, I hear the sound of deep breathing coming from his side of the room.

What if I overreacted tonight? What if I didn’t? What if Marshall is telling the truth? What if he isn’t? I don’t know what to think. My mind is racing a mile a minute. I can’t figure out where one thought ends and another begins. For hours, I lay there thinking about nothing and everything. At some point, my mind finally surrendered to the darkness and I fall asleep.

* * *

The sound of Owen stirring forces me to break free from the shallow slumber that I’ve been in the majority of the night. I have my back to him, but I hear him yawn and stretch. I hear the bed groan underneath him with each move. The sound of a zipper being pulled one way and then another across its track can be heard just before his footsteps alert me that he is headed my way. He walks past my bed and into the awful, mint green bathroom. I hear the sound of him relieving himself followed by the familiar pattern of water beating down onto the fiberglass surface of the bathtub.

His presence makes me think about the events of last night all over again. It’s not fair for me to be mad at him. He didn’t do anything, he was just the messenger. But I can’t help it, something feels off. Something about this whole situation rubs me the wrong way. Before I have a chance to evaluate my feelings further, sleep pulls me under once more.

“Adrienne? It’s almost noon. Why don’t you get up and we can go get something to eat?”

I turn over so I am facing him.

“I’m not hungry,” I answer.

“How about some coffee? I have to go find a gas station and an ATM. I can stop in at the motel diner and grab you some to go.”

“Yeah, okay.” I answer.

“I won’t be gone long. There has to be a gas station with an ATM close by. I’ll lock the door behind me, okay?”

I nod. My mind is telling me that I should get up. Maybe take a shower. My body is telling me that there is no way that’s happening. My muscles feel weighed down, like there is steel in my veins.

* * *

“Hey, I’m back.” I feel someone shaking me gently as the glorious smell of coffee assaults my senses. I roll over onto my back and stare at the ceiling. Owen is sitting in a chair next to my bed and it makes me flashback to when Marshall was sitting next to my bed in the hospital.

Stop that, Adrienne. I rub my eyes, trying to force the memory away.

I sit up and take my coffee from Owen.

“Thank you, Owen. I really appreciate it.” I rest my back against the headboard of the bed and take a sip and it hits the spot. The anger I felt toward him earlier this morning seems to have dissipated. I’m glad. It was stupid for me to feel any animosity toward him for what happened.

“May I?” Owen asks, pointing to the empty spot next to me.

“Sure.”

Taking his shoes off, he sits on top of the comforter and puts his arm around me. I lean my head in and rest it on his shoulder. Just like I used to do at Lock’s.

“I don’t know what to do, Owen.” I hear him swallow, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Just take it day-by-day. We’ll figure it out,” he says after a while. He moves some of my hair back behind my ear.

I want his words to comfort me. I want them to wrap me up and make me believe that everything is going to be alright.

But they don’t.

“I just don’t understand. I know that I mentioned to you before about being irritated that they would talk about me like a medical case, which I was. I would find out after the fact that they would talk about me when I wasn’t around, but at the end of the day it really didn’t bother me that much. And I never, ever would have thought that there was anything going on between them. Nothing that they did or said ever led me to think that.”

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