Page 27 of Broken

“You are allowed to feel what you’re feeling, and you’re allowed to feel more than one thing. It’s okay to hate him and love him at the same time. It’s okay to be worried about Julia, and frustrated that she isn’t handling the separation as well as you. You need to learn to accept that your feelings are just as important as theirs.”

Maybe to her, they are, but not to me.

“That easy, huh?”

Doc Miller smiles sadly.

“Nobody said anything about acceptance being easy. Things that are necessary rarely are.”

My alarm goes off to remind me of my meeting with the lawyer in two hours.

Things that are necessary indeed.

“So, what’s next?” I ask, then clear my throat when I sound like a tweenage boy whose balls just dropped.

“You tell me,” she prompts, back to the standard routine we often fall into.

I don’t want to talk about what’s next. Not until I’m forced to do it.

“Pizza,” I offer instead, trying to deflect the conversation.

Doc Miller tightens her eyes in a knowing glare.

Sometimes it would be easier if I could lie to us both.

THIRTEEN

REMINGTON

I can’t sleep. That’s nothing new. But usually on the nights I’m in my bed I’ve at least dozed off by now, lightly, chasing dreams of Justin and Julia. Tonight, sleep eludes me like my lover’s arms. It’s after three in the morning. Nevertheless, I’m wide awake, stretched out alone in my bed, staring at the nothings on the walls.

I look at my phone again, for the millionth time in a thousand seconds, to see if time really has started to go backward. Or at least that’s the way it feels at three in the morning. The witching hour. The time of night that’s supposed to be the darkest, where witches are the strongest in their powers. A strange and unnecessary fact that I only know because Justin told me.

How much of the random information floating around in my brain is there because Justin read it and shared the knowledge with Julia and me?

My phone is burning inside my hand. I try to tell myself it’s the charging cable heating the device from the inside out, but in reality, it’s the need to hear Justin’s voice that’s literally set my soul on fire.

I miss him. I miss the way he says my name. I miss the way his hand would run a course between my head and Julia’s as we fell asleep to him reading a book. But this late, even Justin should be sleeping, pulled to slumber under duress, his mind finally succumbing to his body’s demands.

Once Justin is asleep, the walking dead can’t wake him. His phone lives on vibrate under his pillow or on his bedside. His body has a natural alarm clock that rouses him minutes before his alarm goes off, but at three a.m…

I could hear his voice on his machine, without the risk that he’d answer the phone.

I run my thumb over his name in my phonebook, my heart in my chest, my blood coursing so fast I’d be dizzy if I was standing up. It’s been weeks since I called him, but he’s still my emergency contact. He’s still pinned at the top, always my number one. They transferred all my data over from my smashed phone to this one, and I didn’t change a thing. Not the picture of the three of us as my background, or the fact that I still get their family texts a dozen times a day.

I love Julia. I love the way she smiles and the tiny huffs she makes in her sleep. But Justin was my rock long before Julia blessed our lives with her presence. Justin is and always has been my person. I miss my lovers, but I miss my best friends more.

I bring the phone to my ear when the pressure on the send button finally trips the hair-trigger of my need, and listen to it ring.

I’m not surprised when he picks up on the first ring.

I should be.

I’m not.

“You should be sleeping,” he says quietly, first and foremost concerned about me. “What are you doing awake this late?”

There’s a soft thud on his side of the line, and I imagine him placing his book on his side table, uncaring that he’s just lost his spot. Or maybe he held the phone to his ear with that broad expanse of shoulder and slipped a marker into his page, so he could pick up where he left off.

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