Page 10 of Croc Food

Did she think I wanted to split up? Nothing could be farther from the truth! Bitsy and I were absolutely soulmates. And I knew she was the only girl for me the first time I’d ever seen her.

But maybe I had taken her for granted. Fuck.

I had been the worst kind of idiot husband.

The room hadn’t stopped spinning, and I tore at my hair in despair, knocking my head into the door several times.

If only I could have knocked some damn sense into myself before talking to Bitsy like that!

If this hadn’t happened, I’d never have dreamed of taking time off when it was so critical to make partner, but Bitsy was the most important part of my life. She always had been and she always would be.

I gave myself a second to see if I was going to throw up, then I lunged for the stairs again.

There was no time to waste. I had to get down to Bitsy’s hometown right now and make this right.

And I couldn’t risk waiting around, because I remembered from the times we had visited before that there was only one flight per day and Bitsy had already taken it.

And, unfortunately, I had always gotten the feeling that Bitsy’s family didn’t exactly like me. . .

I leaped into my car and started to drive. Every now and again I tried texting or calling Bitsy, but she never picked up.

I drove all day and through the night, guzzling energy drinks, unable to eat anything with how twisted my stomach was with anxiety.

This had to be a misunderstanding!

I couldn’t lose Bitsy.

The very thought was like a freaking horror movie. Sometimes my bros would joke like I must be sad that I couldn’t go out clubbing because I was married. But I never cared about shit like that.

What could clubbing give me? Nothing. Nothing to compare to an evening with my wife.

It wasn’t until the sun shone over the horizon and I began to see long, willowy trees and creeping moss that I finally arrived at Bitsy’s tiny hometown.

But then I encountered another problem here, and it was that my map app did not appear to like or grasp the location of the Swamp Tour business her family ran.

Like this dirt path into the swamp could not possibly be the entrance? But according to the map app it was?

I threw the car into park and got out. We must have gone a different way when I visited before, but I pushed aside the hanging vines and walked firmly down the path.

At some point I would come to something I recognized?

Right?

Big mistake.

I was buzzed as hell from all the energy drinks I’d downed to drive through the night, and now I was going in fucking circles in the backwoods.

This damn dirt path just. . . ended. In a mud puddle. Where the hell was I supposed to go now?

I forged on, stinging nettles and branches flicking across my face, twining around my arm like they were trying to drag me into the moss.

I was dripping with sweat. And I didn’t have any water.

“Help!” I called out. This wasn’t exactly going to make me look any better to Bitsy’s family, who I was pretty sure thought of me as an idiot city boy. But I didn’t know what else to do, and now I couldn’t find my car.

There were strange chitterings and hisses in the forest. What the fuck was that?

“Hello! Help! Is anyone out there?”