Page 33 of Organized Chaos
I didn’t deny the accusation.
Milo, who was generally reserved with his expressions, looked so taken back by my silence that I knew I had lost the last speck of credibility. He didn’t believe me for shit.
For the first time since he picked me up from the police station, Milo voiced no more opinions, nor did he lecture me.
I closed my eyes. “Listen, man. I-I just need you to trust me. It was a coincidence that no one else saw her, but she was real. It happened,” I emphasized, embedding the thought deep inside me.
Leaning against the wall, Milo crossed his arms across his chest. His face was covered in either sadness or pity; I wasn’t entirely sure which one.Neither of us spoke again, quietly listening to the never-ending branches scratching at the windowpane.
***
Six Months Later
TO SAY THINGS WERErough was putting it mildly. Losing my parents paled in comparison with losing Maya. It made no fucking sense to mourn someone I barely knew. Not to mention, others had declared the entire episode as temporary insanity.
I tried to move on, tried to leave it all behind. Returned to New York and everything. But the very first step into my home ruled out the possibility of resuming my old life.
An immaculately beautiful condo greeted me, yet I couldn’t force myself to step inside. It was deafeningly quiet, dull, empty—lacking in all happiness. I stood at the front door, waiting for things to change.
It didn’t.
This house needed to be loud, filled with a particular woman’s giggles, spouting on endlessly with her talkative nature.
Still, it remained lifeless.
My legs moved on their own—unable to take the silence—exiting the apartment building and into a taxi, finding myself back at the airport.
Fuck returning to that hollow life.
Fuck everyone else.
No one else understood the kind of loss I was experiencing and how meaningless my life had suddenly become. She lived in Paris. If there was a chance, a smidgen of the possibility of finding her, then I had to search the city, live there if need be, comb through every alley.
And that’s precisely what I did... for several months. New York for work, then off to Paris at every chance, searching for a nameless girl.
I had to stop.
Many times, I tried to eradicate all thoughts of her. I failed miserably, the void inside me only growing with each passing day.
And then there was the maddening lust.
My body craved her touch, desperate to feel her pulse around my cock again, to watch her perky tits bounce as I fucked her... Goddamnit.
This desire for her was so sickening in its need that it left me with the urge to empty my guts out. The erotic thoughts of her had my hands trembling, my body ready to burst, screaming that I couldn’t take one more second without feeling her writhe underneath me.
Like a hole punctured in a plastic water bottle, life was seeping out of me until one day, I knew it’d end with meeting my maker.
This—how I was living my life—wasn’t feasible. Something had to change, but nothing could fill the emptiness she had left me with.
At this point, I was fairly certain that I had cooked up the entire weekend because Maya was what I needed to get through my father’s death. Even as a fictional character from my imagination, she had instilled such faith in me that I was ready to spend an eternity in search of that feeling once more. Optimism was funny like that, never allowing you to diminish the light flickering within.
In my determined attempt to cling onto hope, I found myself in Nice once again for the damn bi-annual convention.
Only six months ago, I had met Maya right here. Same hotel, same convention, same bar, but luckily, new management who didn’t recognize my face. I even sat in the same damn chair to set up the exact scenario.
I didn’t expect the night to amount to anything. Yet, I already knew—I’d return until the end of my days in hopes that she’d show up one day.
