“But we aren’t done gossiping.”
“I have some things I need to do before work,” I explained. Like shower and take a nap. Contemplate my entire existence. Things like that took time.
“You’re leaving because of him.”
Putting my back to the rest of the room, I faced my friend. “I have to. Being in the same room with him is hard.” I wanted to climb him like a tree. Cuddle him like a Koala. Convince him I was worth loving.
Love shouldn’t take convincing. It should choose you without hesitation.
And he didn’t just hesitate. He fled like I was a chalk outline at the scene of a crime.
“Maybe you should talk to him. Ask him why he left.”
I shook my head once. “He left because I wasn’t important enough to stay.”
“The way he looks at you says otherwise.”
“I know this sounds…” I fished around for the right word but came up empty, so I just went with the truth. “Pathetic. But in all honesty, when I woke up to an empty room after that night… it hurt.God, had it hurt. More than it should have.” And for someone who was conditioned to and practically expected pain, it was a hard truth to choke down.
“That’s not pathetic.” Haz comforted me, but I shook my head and kept going, suddenly needing to say it out loud.
“I fell for him,” I blurted, shoulders slumping. “I fell so hard I didn’t even fight to get my heart back.”
“Even more reason to stay.”
“What happens when he leaves again?” I countered.
Hazard frowned. “He won’t.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Haz’s lips pressed together as uncertainty clouded his eyes.
“I love him in ways I can’t protect myself from,” I whispered, the place where my heart used to be nothing but an aching bruise. “So I have to go.”
Nibbling at one of his fingernails, Haz nodded.
I grabbed my shoes from where I’d thrown them when we’d rushed in last night and bent to stuff my feet into them. My knees and ankles cracked, and the headache I’d been ignoring reminded me it was still there.
Plopping down on the floor, I gazed up. “Do you happen to have anything for a headache?” I asked, pointing to the bruise on my temple.
Haz went back into the kitchen while I tied my shoes, then came back with a bottle in each hand. “These,” he said, shaking an orange bottle with a white lid, “are the pain pills Doc left me the other night when he came to stitch me up.”
Did I mention Haz had stitches in like three or four places? It made me feel a little less clumsy, to be honest.
“And these,” he said, shaking a white bottle with a blue label, “are over the counter from the store.”
I reached for the white bottle.
Haz hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want one of these?” he asked, gesturing to the bottle from Doc. “They’re stronger.”
To be honest, I did want them. Just looking at the bottle tempted me in a way it shouldn’t. And it made the breakfastI’d just hogged down want to reappear. The last time I gave in to temptation, it got me in trouble… How much trouble, I wasn’t even sure yet, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good.
“No, these are fine,” I said, grabbing the bottle and shaking out three round tablets into my hand before tossing them into my mouth.
Haz made a sound and grabbed my half-full coffee off the island and carried it over. “Here.”
“Thanks,” I said, swallowing it down.
