My cellphone had been ringing non-stop since I’d left the bar I’d forgotten the name of. Hours had passed, I knew because it was dark outside. The reflection of the opened window stared back at me through the mirror. I’d been sitting on the bathroom floor, listening to the drainpipe leak from inside the motel walls. The occupant next door had flushed the loo numerous times over the last few hours. Poor chap must’ve not been feeling well, and I’d made a game of his misery.
With every flush, I’d grab a new beer bottle from the grocery bag beside me.
No matter how many bottles stacked to my left, the ringing from the mobile wouldn’t bloody quiet. Over and over, I banged the back of my head against the opened bathroom door I’d sat against until the pain lessened inside my chest.
It never did. The ache only worsened.
“Ollie.”
I looked up.
Travis stared down at me, terror in his features. From this angle, he could’ve passed for James Franco in the movieSpring Breakers. I only knew of this movie because it had played in the tattoo parlor one time when I’d gotten my ink done, though Travis’s hair was blonder. Perhaps Marshal Mathers, if the talented rapper had blond braids, facial hair, and angel wings tattooed on his neck.
“You can’t throw it all away,” Travis stated, taking a seat on the floor across from me against the sink cabinet. “You worked too hard.”
“I’m not throwing anything away. Momentary relapse,” I grabbed a bottle from the bag and tossed it over Travis’s lap, “Mia’s alive. I’m going to find her.”
“You’re in denial.”
I ignored his nonsense and took another sip.
He wasn’t listening. No one was listening.
Even the alcohol wasn’t fucking listening.
“You know, you never did tell me about her.” My blurry vision settled on him, and he continued, “Who was the girl who stole Oliver Masters heart?”
“Is,” I corrected, pointing at him with the bottle.
“What?”
“You’re talking as if she isn’t here. As if she’s …” I couldn’t say the word, so I just let the sentence stall like my life had. Travis turned his eyes away from me into the space between us. The person in the next room flushed the toilet, so I finished off the bottle and grabbed for another. “It’s pointless because no matter what significant words I could come up with to describe what we have, it would never sound as amazing as the way we’re connected. And right now, we’re connected. That, my friend, is how I know her heart is still beating. I’ve memorized that sound. I could pick her heartbeat out in a line-up. But just as much as I know the sound, I feel the hard and steady beat inside my chest. It mirrors my own.” I dropped my head back against the door and allowed the beer to slide down my throat. “No matter how far apart we are, I can still feel her.”
“You and your words,” Travis sighed, “And what happens if Mia’s gone? What then?”
“I’d die.” It was as simple as that.
“From?”
“The disconnection.”
Travis smacked my leg with the back of his hand. “I think you’ve had too much to drink, wouldn’t you say?”
I pointed the mouth of the bottle at him. “Ah, you think I’m joshing, yeah? Read a book. You may learn a thing or two.” I’d read about it before. Dying from a broken heart was a scientific fact—death of the desperate and lonely.
“Alright, brother. Let’s get you into bed.” Travis jumped to his feet and pulled me up from the bathroom floor.
And that was the last thing I recalled.
There wasa split second upon waking when everything seemed all right in the world. Mia wasn’t missing. I wasn’t experiencing a gruesome hangover. I hadn’t made a deal with Satan. I was an honest man, living an honest life. A poet in love. For a fleeting second, my heart didn’t ache, my head didn’t spin, and my soul was free.
But only for a mere second until everything had come crashing down.
Groaning, I rolled over and opened my eyes to see Travis’s cheery face with a trash bag in hand, cleaning bottles from around the motel room. “What are you still doing here?” I sat up and dropped my feet over the edge of the bed upon the stiff carpet.
The bloody headache returned.
“Here, drink this,” Travis threw a water bottle at me, and I caught it mid-air, “You’re going to need it.” I fed my thirsty soul from the poison of last night. After downing the entire bottle, Travis held up the bag, and I tossed the empty bottle into the rubbish. “It’s half-past three. Dex rang.”
