Page 84 of The Likelihood Of You

He'd be someone who believed in her beautifully outrageous dreams, so much that they felt possible for the first time in her life.

It was a dream so pure that I was convinced I’d wake up and all my hurt would be gone.

It was the disposable pictures of Jacob, from our night exploring the city, that I’d stuck to the corkboard next to my bed that made this all feel real. I had to drag my eyes away from them, incapable of taking any more tears. My eyes were so sore, and my voice was almost completely gone.

It was natural for sleep to capture me. I had nothing else to do. Eventually, I’d get around to picking up the fragile little pieces of my heart, but today wasn’t that day. I wasn’t even sure that tomorrow or the countless days after that would be the day. Until then, I’d leave my heart alone.

As for Jacob? I genuinely didn’t know whether I’d see him again. I couldn’t tell this early.

I knew there was still love for him somewhere in those broken pieces, but I feared there were just one too many pieces for me to ever find it again.

Chapter thirty-one

Jacob

Iused to think there was only one moment that defined your life, one that made you look at the world differently. Perhaps you didn’t even recognise it because it was such an insignificant thing at the time that you barely paid attention to it. But later on down the line, the lesson you’d learned since would eventually come into focus, and you’d list it as your defining moment.

As it turns out, I’ve had a handful of those moments, both good and bad.

But what happened seven days ago, although it appeared to be another key moment that shaped me like the rest had, this one felt so much more cataclysmic.

This wasn’t just an earthquake that made the local five o’clock news; it turned the heads of the entire planet, the largest record inhistory. My history. To be eternally remembered as the moment that I felt my life change.

I didn’t know what else to reflect on, to focus my thoughts on as I lay face down on the bed. Not a clever move on my part, considering her scent was still penetrating the sheets. Swallowing me up in a haze of spice and wood, tormenting me with layers of honey. Drowning me in the memory of her.

Wallowing seemed to be my new pastime, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more pathetic. But if the reruns ofGilmore Girlsmy Moms made me watch growing up taught me anything, it’s that wallowing was good. Healthy. It helped Rory get over Dean, didn’t it?

But as a twenty-six-year-old man, I couldn’t help shake the patheticness of it all.

I hated using that word, but it was exactly how I felt. So useless that I had barely moved from this position in the week since she left.

When I was up and walking, when I needed to give Bagel some fresh air and time to explore, I was walking around on autopilot. The lights were on, but there sure as shit wasn’t anybody home. And when Iwaswalking, there was a weakness in my steps. Like I was walking on broken legs, or what I imagine it's like to walk on water.

Nothing was right.

Apart from Bagel, there wasn’t anything else to distract my mind from replaying what happened that morning. Which is also why I was running on about five hours of sleep, and that was over the course of the week. Every time I shut my eyes, all I could see was Florence. I remembered every little detail of her face, how the green in her eyes had dulled, that glow well and truly dimmed, and her cheeks pink and wet with tears.

Tears I’d put there.

My hands could still feel how badly her shoulders were shaking. I could cry at just how much I still felt them. Nothing made me want to curl up into a corner and scream my lungs out more than how broken she looked, and felt. But I didn’t even deserve to cry about it, because it was me who made her look like that.

I was a wreck. I didn’t know how to navigate things without her. I needed her near me to see things clearly. But I didn’t deserve her. Not anymore. The thing I’d promised her I’d never do, I did. Sure, it wasn’t voluntary. I didn’t seek Darcie out and force her to put her mouth on me. That was all her. But as much as I told myself that, the message never seemed to travel far enough to reach my heart, and my heart was missing her like crazy. I really fucking missed her.

Although my face was embedded into the sheets, that didn’t stop my ears from pricking up at the sound of my front door opening and then closing with a slam a second later. Hearing that while I was still in the bedroom, knowing someone had just walked into my house, should have panicked me, but I could barely gather any energy to lift my head, never mind move my entire body to find out if I was being robbed.

A small part of me hoped it was Florence, but I knew it wasn’t.

I wasn’t left guessing who’d broken in for long; it became clear after a period of silence, followed by the unmistakable high-pitched “Hello!” that he did every time he answered the phone, that it was Nate.

I reluctantly peeled myself from the bed, pulled on the same sweatshirt I’d sported for the last few days, and went to the living room to find the intruder.

For the first time in days, the sun spilt through the window, which made a nice change from the lightning storms and torrential rain that had consumed the city all week.

Just pathetic fallacy playing its dirty tricks again.

The brightness almost pulled a smile out of me. Almost. For that to happen, I’d need more than vitamin D exposure.

I reached the end of the hallway to find Nate, holding a newspaper and a bag of something. With his million-dollar smile and perfectly groomed hair, he looked how I wanted to feel: fresh and happy and like his life was still intact.

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