Her hands tremble harder when she lets me go.
I’d stupidly left my bag in his car, and I knew that meant he wouldn’t be far.
My fingers quiver when I take the spare key I’d discreetly snatched from Nan’s on my way out, attempting to unlock the dented door at my trailer. I jiggle against the curved metal when it becomes stuck.
“No, no, no…” I rear my foot back in panic, giving the base a solid kick.
The lock clicks, and relief settles in my chest when it pops open. I step through, slamming it shut, then I make good on shifting the locks, along with the deadbolt that sits at the top, before whirling around and pushing my tailbone into the door, sliding to the floor.
I try moving, only my bones halt me, screaming in agony. I let go of my breath.
I don’t try again.
I had never much liked storms, nothing good ever came from them. Thunderstorms fed on the weak, and in the eye of Chase’s storm, I knew there was no chance I’d survive.
Stippling my fingers at my side and shifting to my knees, I rise to my feet and walk slowly across the room until I’m inthe kitchen jamming a glass of water under the creaky faucet, moistening my dry and aching throat, trying not to choke.
“I needed her, too.”Chase’s words whirl a sick spiral in my head.
I want to chew on the glass, and swallow the shards to puncture my heart.
Chase had never been a liar, and yet, he’d mastered telling the truth all while withholding the core information that sat at its roots.
How did I know that?
Because you didn’t need someone that you purposely spent three years away from, unless there was something you neededmore.
It’s why I believe he let go in the midst of our storm.
Grief was the clear answer, but we were both battling that. I knew it was something else.
Perhaps it was drugs. Maybe he’d learned to numb the same way my mother had, and maybe he was trying to save me from all of that.
He knew what it had done to me, how it had violated me, as a daughter who had just wanted to be enough for her mother.
A sick sensation leaks into my gut.
Maybe that was where Chase had been. For three years, quietly numbing. It would make sense, and I hated that—I hated so much that it did.
I worry my bottom lip with my teeth, turn on the faucet, and kill another glass of water.
If he was using, he’d be fucked for life. In my lived experience, I knew that there was no return from a release that reminded you things could be quiet again.
I fight down a tide of rising nausea.
I saw what drugs did to my mother. I’d watched the festering that gnawed behind her hollow eyes. The kind that took to herpulse and coerced it to beat for the release, for that chemical high. And the truth is, I never want to experience that again. If Chase had started using, I believe he knew that too. It was the only honest explanation for his lengthy absence.
And maybe that was why he was back now, maybe he’d been one of the lucky ones that somehow made it out. But there was a pain inside of me that told me that I didn’t need to know the roots of his truth, that I needed to leave them buried, to abstain from tugging at a possible malignant growth.
I swallow, wrapping my fingers around my throat, then I sink the tips into my carotid, pressing against the heightened beat when a loud bang sounds behind me.
A sharp, single rap. The pound of a fist.
The glass in my hand slips, shattering into the sink, and when I whirl around, grappling for the bench, I catch the meat of my palm on a shard of stray glass jutting out of the countertop.
“Fuck,” I cuss, pressing the wound to my mouth.
I suck back on it, holding my breath, waiting, hoping that it’shim,and also praying that it’s not.
