“Enough! I will not watch you do this to yourself again.”
“Nooo,” I whine. “Just leave me alone. Just a few more days, I promise, then I’ll get up.”
“No way. You stink, Chess. Seriously! When did you shower last?”
“How long ago was the parade?”
“Oh, fuck that. Nope. Up. Now.” She attempts to drag my lifeless body off the couch, and I hit the ground hard. “Ow!” Rubbing my hip. “Just let me die in peace.”
“Girl. I didn’t want to do this, but I’m going to.” She takes out her phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Backup,” she replies and walks into my kitchen. I groan and roll into a ball on the floor. I don’t even care who she’s calling. I’m so drainedemotionally after all the press releases, phone calls, TMZ videos. I don’t have it in me to fight anymore.
A little while later I hear Billy and Farrah talking with Britt in the kitchen. I must have fallen asleep because I never even heard them enter the house.
“Ah, sleeping beauty, or should I say Shrek. Jesus, Chessy, all this over fucking Gage?” Billy says.
I flip him the bird.
“How charming. Come on, let’s go.” He pulls me up off the floor and marches me towards the bathroom pushing me inside. “I’m giving you ten minutes,” he pauses. “I’m giving you twenty minutes because you really fucking stink, to shower and come back to life. If after twenty minutes, you do not emerge from this bathroom in at least a bra and underwear, I will come in with my phone and start taking pictures to post on social media. Then you’ll have a new PR mess to figure out.”
I turn to look at him. “Got it?” he says. Again, I answer with a flip of the bird and slam the door in his face.
Huffing out an angry breath, I turn on the shower, strip off my clothes and step under the water. I take a minute to just stand and let it pour over me. Then I take another minute to let myself feel. To hurt. To cry. My tears mix with the water, and I let it all go down the drain. “Gage, don’t leave me,” I whisper to myself. “I don’t want you to go.” The words I long to speak to him, but I’m not selfish enough to do so.
I let him go once. I have to do it again.
A few minutes later there is banging on the door. “You got four minutes Chessy! Don’t test me on this!”
Grumbling to myself about what an overbearing, asshole brother I have, I turn off the water, wrap in a towel and wipe the steam from the mirror. I don’t recognize the woman staring back at me. The content, well-loved woman I thought I knew is long gone and in her place is a grieving crushed soul. Is that dramatic? Yes. But that’s how I feel.
I’m grieving the loss of the life I’ve always wanted, a life I didn’t even know I had already stepped into, until it was taken from me.
I step away from the mirror and open the door to head to my bedroom. I’m greeted by Billy. “Oh Chessy, you’re lucky.” He waves his phone around.” I was just coming in.”
“Fuck off Billy, I’m getting dressed now.”
He gasps, hand to the chest, dramatic. “Nasty! Chessy, you weren’t like this when you broke up with Nick. How did Gage get under your skin so fast?”
“Because I didn’t give a shit about Nick! It’s been Jackson since I was twelve years old!” I burst out and then fall onto my bed, big old fat tears rolling down my cheeks. I hear Farrah and Britt come running in.
“What is going on? Billy, I thought you said she was getting dressed.”
“Oh, Chess.” Both girls come running to my side on the bed and Billy drops down in front of me. “I’m so sorry.”
“Has he even called me? A text?” I look at Britt. She shakes her head no.
“I mean, I guess he wouldn’t. I guess it’s done. I saw him after the parade, in the locker room. He was distraught! But I convinced him this is what he wanted, what we were trying to do together for him. He already signed. He was talking to the team and then, he’ll go. I just thought... I just… thought it was real. He said he wasn’t faking, even before we started faking, he said it was real.” Tears cloud my eyes again.
“Neither of you were faking. Thiswasreal, Francesca,” Britt says. “Thisisreal.”
“Then where is he? Why am I left alone to weather this storm? I don’t know how to do it alone. I only know him.”
Billy says, “I think Gage is going through some shit of his own right now. We were all there when he saw Tony and Nick. It was a shit show. If we weren’t there, he would have been arrested.”
“Wait. You were there, too? He told me Tony and Nick were at the Almost Christmas event. Why?”
