Page 71 of Not Another Yesterday
Leave it to him to use military time.
Me:
And by authorities you mean Morai and Athair?
Dad:
Exactly. And you know that shit is way worse than law enforcement, so keep that in mind if you’re planning to pretend you don’t hear your phone or aren’t home.
I guess my dad’s right on both fronts. My grandparents—especially my grandma—canbe worse than law enforcement. They sure as hell know how to layer on the guilt. And Ihavebeen ignoring him.
It’s all I can do to keep my mind busy, to stop myself from thinking, from feeling that deep, gaping emptiness that opens up every time I pause. The moment I let my thoughts drift, I get pulled under. It’s a darkness so heavy it presses against my airways, suffocating me. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel.
I grab another bottle from the crate and set it on the shelf with a dull thunk. Cold glass against my palm. Simple. Tactile. Safe.
It’s been back to the basics without Cat. Or whatever “basics” means, since before her I wasn’t really living. I was surviving. Wake up, get through the day, keep my head down, stay busy. That was it. And maybe I never really stopped doing that. Maybe I’m destined to keep repeating those cycles.
Now it’s school and work. An hour or two of weightlifting squeezed in five times a week. Anything to stay in motion.
At first, Shane pushed back at my insistence to work extra hours. Even when I told him he didn’t need to pay me. He wasn’t having it.
“Since when do you complain about free labor?” I tried to joke. It didn’t land.
He kept insisting I go home, rest, blah-blah. He didn’t fucking get how dangerous the quiet apartment was until he found me absolutely fucked up one night about three weeks ago.
I have to admit it was bad. Not only had I pounded back half a bottle of Jack, I was also high as a fucking kite. I hadn’t been this drunk in… fuck, I couldn’t even remember. And I hadn’t smoked weed in years. I didn’t think it would hit that hard, but I had barely eaten and the combination was… not great. I ended up on the bathroom floor after trying to purge the alcohol, too out of it to stand, too tired to care.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I hit my head on the toilet bowl hard enough to bleed. I didn’t notice. It was dark, and I was exhausted. So I just… went to sleep right there.
Sure, not my best decision, but hey, at least I was at home.
I have a sneaking suspicion there was a moment Shane thought I had done something really stupid because that look on his face when he finally managed to rouse me spoke volumes. He looked like a damn ghost. Between my sluggish awakening and the blood, I obviously did a great fucking job scaring the absolute living shit out of my best friend, who not only lost his little brother to an overdose but also camethisclose to losing me in the past.
Needless to say, he stopped fighting me on the work hours.
He barely even mentions Cat unless I do first. I know he thinks I made the wrong call ending things, thinks my reasoning is irrational and not based on facts or logic. But even when he disagrees, he still has my back. Always. Even when it means trouble for him. He runs interference when Tori decides to lay into me, works out with me whenever he can, and lets me keep him up until all hours of the night, even when I don’t have anything to say.
I was supposed to be done at five today, but the closer I got to being done, the more apprehensive I got about going home. There were really only two options for me: stay and work until closing time, or go back to the apartment and spend the night with only a bottle of Jack to keep me company. I know I would have spiraled, just like I have almost every single night since I last saw Cat. My fingers would have itched to dial her number, my voice trembling to tell her that I fuckedup, that I want her back, that I need her in my life. But then what? All those things are true, but they don’t negate the fact that I’ll never be good enough for her, and that she deserves only good things rather than being with someone as fucked up as me.
So, work it was.
I finish stocking the bottles, move the crate back in its rightful storage area, then look around for something to do because, well, I’m not actually supposed to be here. There’s no designated table section for me, so I’ve been keeping busy bussing, restocking, cleaning—anything to keep my mind off Cat.
Shane appears in my periphery, and I turn my head, my brow creasing at the look on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sorry, dude,” he says, pressing his lips together. “Tor’s here. With Vada. And… Cat.”
My eyes search the room before I can stop them. It’s like Cat walks around with some kind of beacon, because I find her immediately. My heart lurches—too fast, too hard—and my whole body tenses with this sudden, unrelenting urge to go to her. To just walk over and hold her. I close my eyes, give my head a shake, try to reset something in my system, try to push back against the realization of how fucking much I miss her.
“Sorry, man,” Shane says again, softer this time.
I open my eyes and force myself to look at him. “It’s all good,” I lie, even though I’m already failing to keep my gaze from drifting over his shoulder. She’s here. She’s close. And everything in me lights up like it’s been waiting for her.
Cat is, as always, the picture of perfect. I haven’t seen her in weeks and somehow she’s even more beautiful. Her long wavy hair falls soft and shining over her shoulders, and that cherry red knit sweater she’s wearing? I’ve seen it before. Peeled it off her body before, too. It hugs her in all the right places, stops right above the waistband of those curve-hugging jeans, and I swear my lungs stop working.
“I gave them a booth in Casey’s section,” Shane says gently. “So maybe just… you know. Don’t go over there.”
