He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t make a sound. He just turns away from me and walks to the door.
“Joshua,” I whisper.
His hand is on the door handle, and I feel like if he walks out now, he walks out forever, and although I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to convince both him and myself that nothing can happen between us, the thought of him walking away fills me with a deep sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my throat tight with unshed tears. “I didn’t know how to do this right. I didn’t even know what right looked like.”
He pauses for a second, and I think he’s going to come back and talk this out some more. But I’m wrong. He looks back away from me and he opens the door and steps out, letting it close behind him with the softest click imaginable.
And still, it echoes through the room like a gunshot to my heart.
CHAPTER 43
MOLLY
The silencein my apartment is deafening after Joshua leaves. I sit there, unmoving, just staring into space as the light fades outside and the shadows lengthen on the floor. The apartment is still, strangely so without Autumn chattering away to me.
My chest feels hollow, like something inside of me has been scooped out and thrown away. I finally did it – I told Joshua the truth about Autumn. I finally laid it bare. And he left, the only proof he has even been here is the smell of his cologne lingering in the air. I waited too long. I should have told him as soon as we reconnected. But I can’t change the past, so instead, I will just sit here and dread the future.
Part of me expected Joshua to react the way he did. That’s why I kept the secret from him for so long in the first place. But the expectation doesn’t dull the ache of the reality.
After a while, I force myself to move. I can’t just sit here and wallow in self-pity. I start by texting my mom to make sure Autumn is ok. Normally, I would have called her, but I’m worried she will be able to hear the pain in my voice, and if she asks me about it, I won’t be able to hold the tears back. I wait forher reply to come – and yes, Autumn is fine – she has had her dinner and she’s going to go in the bath soon.
I decide to just give up and go to bed and feel sorry for myself for this one night. I don’t care that it’s barely six o’clock. I don’t care that I haven’t eaten. I get a clean pair of pajamas out and then I strip off and go to the bathroom where I brush my teeth and use the toilet and then I sit down on the side of the bath and take my bandage off my ankle. The bruising there is really coming out and I wince as I get into the shower.
I shower slowly, taking my time over washing and conditioning my hair, being careful not to miss a step as I wash myself. Being slow and methodical helps me to focus on what I’m doing rather than what I’m feeling. It helps, but I know it won’t last forever.
My ankle hurts if I put any weight on it, and my ribs hurt whenever I lift my arms up, but I don’t care. I barely even notice. And when I step out of the shower and look at myself in the full-length mirror, the purple and blue bruising barely registers with me.
I dry off and head back to my bedroom. I can’t smell Joshua’s cologne anymore and I feel a pang of pain as I sniff the air. It smells like nothing. The scent of him is gone. I ignore the pain in my heart, the tears building behind my eyes and I put the clean pajamas on and then I rebandage my sprained ankle.
I lay down on my bed on top of the duvet with my legs pulled up to my chest. I close my eyes and try to sleep, but it’s no good. All I can see when I close my eyes is Joshua. His smile. His eyes. The way his face twists as he comes. The way he looks when he’s sleeping. The way the corner of his mouth curls upwards when he smirks at me in that sexy way I love. What the actual fuck have I done.
I wonder what he’s doing. Drinking? Sleeping? Staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment like I am? I have the suddenurge to call him, to ask him what he’s doing, and hear his voice, to beg him to come back, tell him that I will do whatever it takes to make this right. But I don’t. Because I can’t handle another rejection, and I feel like that’s all I would get.
I wonder what he’ll do when I’m back at work. Hell, I wonder what I will do when I’m back at work. How are we meant to work together now. I don’t think we can. I’m going to have to leave. I’ll need to find a new job first though. I can’t just leave without something lined up. I hope he understands that. At least I haven’t done anything he can fire me for. I’m pretty sure not telling someone they have a child counts as work related.
I wonder, stupidly, if he’ll still remember to bring the muffins from that bakery he always stops at on Fridays and leave them in the kitchen. I always take mine home with me instead of eating it at work, because they are the ones Autumn loves. He doesn’t know that. But I do. And now he never will.
The tears come then, silent and slow. I don’t fight them. I just let them fall.
CHAPTER 44
MOLLY
Each minute stretches outinto hours, weeks, years.
I’m cried out and I still can’t sleep. I’ve given up trying and now I sit up, my mind in a fog. I watch the shadows crawl across the floor as the streetlamps flicker on outside. It feels like a lifetime ago that I lost Joshua for good, but the truth is that it’s only been an hour since he left. Sixty minutes. Three thousand six hundred seconds. I’ve felt every one of them like a paper cut to the heart.
I can’t cry anymore. I think I ran out of tears somewhere between minutes thirty and forty. Now I just sit, hollow and exhausted.
I’m not expecting the knock on my front door, even though it’s not loud, when it comes, it breaks through the silent gloom I’ve found myself in. I’m slightly curious about who it might be but I don’t get up to answer it. It has to be a neighbor because my intercom didn’t go off, and I don’t really want to hobble to the door just for it to be something trivial that can wait.
The knock comes again - one, two, three knocks. They are louder this time, firm and insistent and I decide I can’t justignore a knock like that. What if something is wrong? One of my older neighbors might need help or something.
I stand up, every part of me aching. I should use my crutches, but I’m still not confident on them, so instead, I hobble along, holding the walls, furniture, anything for support as I go.
I finally reach the door, and my hand grabs the handle. I pause for a second, wondering if my face is all red and tear streaked. I don’t think it will be. I think I ran out of tears long enough ago that I will look reasonably normal except for the bruising.
