What am I going to do? I'm a twenty-eight-year-old woman in soaking wet pajamas having a breakdown in a basement at four in the morning because I can't turn a stupid valve.
Mom's in Mexico, probably doing tequila shots with men she describes as "Picante."
Dad's been dead for four years.
I'm completely, utterly alone.
Callum's voice echoes in my head.You're nothing without me.
My eyes burn. My hands are slipping on the metal. My omega is having a full meltdown, flooding my system with panic hormones that aren’t helping.
"I'm not nothing," I tell the valve. Tell the universe. Tell Callum's ghost. "I can do this. I turned you before when you were being difficult. I can turn you again!"
I plant my feet, take a breath that tastes like basement mildew and determination and possibly some spider web I accidentally inhaled, and wrench the handle with everything I have.
It moves.
Just a fraction of an inch.
"YES!" I pull harder, throwing my whole body into it. "That's RIGHT! Take THAT, patriarchy! Take that, Callum! Take that, stupid VALVE!"
The handle turns. Squeaking and protesting but finally, FINALLY giving.
The water stops.
The sudden silence is deafening.
I collapse against the water heater, panting, shaking, completely soaked. Dad's t-shirt is plastered to my body. My hair is dripping into my eyes. I'm pretty sure I have a spider web stuck to my shoulder but I'm too exhausted to care.
And I'm crying.
Full body, ugly crying. The kind where your face gets all scrunched up and you make sounds that would embarrass a wounded animal.
I slide down until I'm sitting on the cold concrete floor, hugging my knees to my chest, sobbing in Dad's basement.
"I miss you," I whisper to the empty room. To his jacket on the hook. To the coffee mug on the shelf. "I miss you so much and I don't know what I'm doing and everything is terrible and I really wish you were here to tell me I'm not completely screwing up my entire life."
The basement doesn't answer. Dad's ghost doesn't materialize with helpful plumbing advice.
But I turned the valve. By myself. While having a panic attack. In a spider-infested basement.
I did that.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand, which just smears everything around since my hands are wet, and force myself to stand on shaky legs.
"Okay," I tell myself. My voice sounds like I've been gargling gravel. "Water's off. That's step one. Step two is assess the damage. Step three is figure out how to fix it without selling a kidney."
Step three is definitely going to require help.
I climb back upstairs.
My bedroom looks like a crime scene. Water everywhere, at least three inches deep in places. The carpet is making sounds that it shouldn’t make. And the ceiling has a dark stain spreading across it like a bruise, yellow at the edges, growing bigger as I watch.
"Mold," I say flatly. "Well," I announce to the flooded bedroom, "that's some middle-of-the-night psychological revelation I didn’t sign up for. Thanks, universe. Really needed that on top of the plumbing disaster."
I need professional help. The plumbing kind, not the therapy kind, although let's be honest, I probably need both.
My phone is on the nightstand, somehow still dry, like it's the only object in this room that has its life together.
