Page 106 of Entangled

My eyes sweep the space and I call out again. “Coop?”

Perfectly made bed, folding glass doors shut, no dishes in the sink.

I force myself forward, heart thundering and my stomach dropping with every step I take. Making it to the bed, I drop my bag and spot a note lying on top of the white comforter. I pause for only a second before snatching it up, eyes flowing along the lines of Coop’s familiar script.

Family emergency. Had to leave right away. Will call as soon as I get Stateside and update you. Hope you had a good trip, Princess.

Love you. Even after the end of everything.

- Coop

My body sags as relief pours through me, fingers and toes tingling as my breathing evens out. For a second there…. No, he would never, not Coop. Concern follows quickly on the heels of my relief and I dig through my bag for my phone. God, I hope nothing happened to his sister. I could tell how deeply he cared for her from the way his voice got all soft when he talked about her, and I hadn’t even gotten to meet her yet.

Finally fishing my phone from the bag, I quickly pull up Coop’s contact and hit call. Lips twitching a little at the thought of his antiquated phone ringing. It rings through to voice mail and I end the call without leaving one. My stomach swirls with anxiety and trepidation, but I tell myself he’s probably just still on the plane.

It doesn’t hit me till an hour later that his phone would’ve gone straight to voice mail if that was the case.

***

I’ve waited five days for Coop to reach out and he hasn’t called once. I called him that one time on the first day. Two times on the second. And three on the third, along with every hospital within a ten-city radius, garbling on in a mishmash of Spanish and English asking if anyone that fit his description had been admitted.

They had not.

Yesterday, I had finally broken down and called his phone so many times I lost count, my panic growing with every unanswered call. I had been frantic, my movements jerky, riding the edge of hysteria as I paced for hours last night before grabbing my bottle of tequila and drinking a healthy amount to get to sleep. I woke up this morning to find the sun streaming through the folding glass doors, and with it, the realization that he was gone.

He was gone.

I sit in the middle of our bed, holding my knees to my chest and staring out at the sun. Unable to move as the words play on a loop in my head. He wasn’t injured, lying in a ditch somewhere. He wasn’t not returning my calls because of a family emergency.

He was just… gone.

I snatch the bottle of tequila from the nightstand where I left it last night and gulp it down, the burn doing nothing but punishing me further. That’s what I want though. That’s what I need because I’m the worst kind of idiot. I went and fell in love with a fucking stranger and never even asked where his family was from. An insane laugh bursts from my mouth at the thought. In reality, I wouldn’t even know where to start even if I wanted to find him. Even if he wanted to be found.

I was a fucking moron.

I take another sip of the tequila and swipe angrily at the tears that fall. The reality sinking in that If he wanted to talk to me, he would’ve by now.

He left me and he’s not coming back. He’s gone.

The pain starts in my chest and slowly spirals out until it radiates through my whole body. Why? Why would he do this? Why would he fight so hard only to leave? I look around the house, seeing nothing but memories of our time here. The ghosts of us playing and fighting and fucking. Loving. And I hate it, I hate the memories and I hate this place. This place that finally convinced me that love could be a beautiful thing, even when it was threaded with darkness. I hate every single inch of it and its owner most of all.

Rage begins to burn in my chest, adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream. And as I stare out at the neat perfection of the home he keeps, we kept, I can’t stand the sight of it. I stand up, swigging back another gulp of tequila before turning the bottle over and letting it pour onto the bed as I walk around it. Leaving no inch of it salvageable. He doesn’t get to keep the place where he filled my head with our future. It can die right along with the dream inside of me. I place the bottle gently on the nightstand when it’s empty and turn my eyes toward the bookshelves behind his desk.

Walking over to the bookshelves, I stand there and simply stare at his books for a minute. My heart thundering in my chest as if I’d just run a marathon instead of simply walking across the room. Romeo and Juliet catches my eye and my chest tightens at the memory it brings. I start there, furiously snatching the book off the shelf and throwing it behind me before I start on the rest. I tear every volume from the shelves as if I was tearing into him instead, flinging them behind me with every ounce of my strength, using them as an outlet for my pain. Uncaring of where they land or what they hit. Whether I damage them or not. I want these books to reflect the brokenness of my heart, my soul, my entire being. I want them to be as torn and bloody as I feel so he can’t avoid the truth of what he’s done when he returns to this place one day.

So that he feels it. So that maybe it breaks him too.

I’m panting by the time I empty all of the bookshelves in the house, my body shaking from adrenaline and exertion. The nails on my fingers are torn and bleeding, pulsing in pain, and I welcome it. When I finally turn and see the disastrous reflection of me, I fall to my knees. The books are splayed out across the middle of the house, filling the space between the walls, littering the floor with a kaleidoscope of words and colors and pages. Some are torn, some are broken, and all of them reflect my rage.

Why? How?

I feel like I can’t draw enough breath into my lungs as great, body-racking sobs start to pour out of me and I fold myself over. Head bowed, forehead pressed to the ground and hands splayed on the pages covering the floor. He could’ve let me go so many times. I begged for him to let me go. To not love me. To not be my cause of more pain. Why would he do this to me? Or did he die somewhere along the way? Did he never make it to his family?

Does it matter?

He’s gone all the same either way.

I lie there, sobbing for longer than I ever thought possible, pouring every one of our memories out onto the pages beneath me. Heart bleeding from my chest as I let go of every word, every promise, our entire beautifully imagined future. I lie there and become a ghost of the girl I became with him, or even the one I was before. Lost and floundering in this new world of vulnerability. What am I if I can’t be what I was and I can’t be what I became?

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