Page 103 of Sunflower Persona
Without my friend to distract me, my mind drifts back to Yellow. My perfect sunflower woman. Is she handling this as poorly as I am? I’m falling apart at the seams, and I’m not the one who got plucked from the soil and discarded like a weed. She must be devastated. The thought of her going through that alone sends another wave of nausea washing over me, but this one I’m able to push back down.
I should be there with her.
I never should have hurt her in the first place.
What the fuck was I thinking yesterday? That’s right, I wasn’t, and I destroyed the only good thing in my life in the process. Asif I didn’t hate myself enough already, now I have to live with this.
I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror as I splash icy water over my face and brush the layers of grime off my teeth. The clothes I woke up in are surprisingly clean, and not what I was wearing yesterday, so I throw them back on. Someone must have forced me to change in the night, but I have no memory of it. The last thing I remember fully is sitting on the floor in my kitchen, surrounded by chaos, with a fourth of the bottle of vodka left. After that, it’s only flashes.
The smell of coffee and cooking grease greets me as I open the door, and my stomach lets out an angry growl. The last time I ate anything was breakfast with the Wrights, and if Karis is covering my classes at the gym, that was over a day and a half ago.
Shit.
I follow my stomach out into the kitchen and find Nathan has made himself at home at my stove. The room is cleaner than it should be—I was sober when I trashed it—even though some of my stuff is missing and nothing is in the exact right place. I’ll add fixing my place up to the list of things I need to thank my friends for.
“You ready to talk?” Nathan asks as he sets a coffee mug on the too-empty counter and turns back to cooking.
I nod as I take a sip of the liquid gold in front of me.
“Okay. So talk. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Which part? Making the worst decision of my life and ending things with the woman I love, or going on a bender?”
I choke on my next breath as the truth of those words weighs on me.
“Fuck, I love her.” The confession spilled out without conscious thought, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’m in love with her…and I broke her heart.
A sharp pang radiates from that void in my chest.
Fuck.
“Both. But start with the first part,” my friend says.
“I was thinking that she deserves more than being saddled with me for the rest of her life. I was thinking that I was only going to hold her back.”
“So you were being an idiot,” he says.
“And a coward,” I agree.
“Glad you recognize that. So what are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do about it?”
I broke up with her. There’s no coming back from that.
“Fight for her, goddamnit,” Nathan growls. “Go to her and beg on your knees for forgiveness.”
“What if I don’t deserve her forgiveness?”
“If that’s your attitude about it, maybe you don’t.” He sighs and shakes his head. “But if you want to fix this, your window is closing.”
“What do I do?”
“You eat, drink some fucking water, and then I’ll drive you over to her place so you can beg for her to take you back.”
“What if she doesn’t want me anymore?”
“Then you learn to live with it.”
