Before I can stop myself, my finger is running over the call button. I know I shouldn’t, but if I can just hear her voice once, maybe I’ll sleep peacefully.
“Your call cannot be completed as dialed . . .” a robotic voice intones coldly. What? I check my screen and try again. Same message. Again and again.
She couldn’t have changed her number. She wouldn’t . . .
“Your call cannot be . . .” I hear for the tenth time.
Tessa changed her number. She changed her phone number, to make sure I can’t reach her.
When I fall asleep again, hours later, I’m met with a different dream. It begins the same, with me coming home to that apartment, but this time no one is home.
Chapter eighteen
HARDIN
You still haven’t let me finish what I started on Sunday.” Janine leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. I move over on the couch a little to get away from her, but taking it as a sign that maybe we’re going to lie down together or something, she only moves closer.
“I’m good.” I turn her down for the hundredth time in the past four days. Has it really been only four days?
Fuck.
Time needs to move faster, or I don’t know if I’ll survive.
“You need to loosen up. I can help you with that.” Her fingers trail down my bare back. I haven’t showered in days, or worn a shirt. I couldn’t bring myself to put the damn thing back on after Janine wore it. It smelled like her, not like my angel.
Fucking Tessa. I’m going crazy. I can feel the hinges holding my mind in one piece being pulled farther, ready to snap completely.
This is what happens every time I sober up—she creeps into my mind. The nightmare I was tortured with last night still haunts me. I would never hurt her, not physically. I love her. Loved her. Fuck, I still love her and I always will, but there isn’t shit I can do about it.
I can’t fight every day of my life to be perfect for her. I’m not what she needs, and I never will be.
“I need a drink,” I tell Janine. She gets up from the couch languorously and goes into the kitchen. But when another unwelcomed thought of Tessa intrudes, I yell out, “Hurry up.”
She walks in holding a bottle of whiskey, but stops and gives me a look. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? If you’re going to be an asshole, you can at least make it worth my while.”
I haven’t left this apartment since I arrived, not even to walk down and get a change of clothes from my rental car.
“I still say your hand is broken,” James says as he walks into the living room, interrupting my thoughts. “Carla knows what she’s talking about. You should just go to the clinic.”
“No, I’m fine.” I ball my fist and splay my fingers to prove the point. I flinch and curse at the ache. I know it’s broken, I just don’t want to do shit about it. I have been self-medicating for four days now; a few more won’t hurt.
“It’s never going to heal if you don’t. Just go real quick, and when you get back, you can have that bottle to yourself,” James insists. I miss the asshole James. The James who would fuck a chick and show the tape to the chick’s boyfriend an hour later. This concerned-for-my-health James is annoying as fuck.
“Yeah, Hardin, he’s right,” Janine butts in, moving the whiskey behind her back.
“Fine! Fuck,” I grumble. I grab my keys and phone and leave the apartment. I grab a shirt from the backseat of the rental and throw it on before heading to the hospital.
THE WAITING ROOM is crowded with too many noisy children, and I’m stuck in the only empty seat, which is next to a whiny homeless man who got his foot run over.
“How long have you been waiting?” I ask the man.
He smells like garbage, but I can’t say shit, because I probably smell worse than he does. He reminds me of Richard, and I wonder how he is doing in rehab. Tessa’s father is in rehab, and here I am drowning myself in liquor and clouding my mind with excessive amounts of pot and the occasional pill from Mark. The world is an amazing place.
“Two hours,” the man responds.
“Fucking hell,” I mumble to myself and stare at the wall. I should have known not to come here at eight at night.
Thirty minutes later, my homeless companion’s name is called, and I’m relieved to be able to breathe from my nose again.
“My fiancée is in labor,” a man announces as he enters the lobby. He’s dressed in a neatly pressed button-down shirt and khaki pants. He looks oddly familiar.
When a petite and very pregnant brunette steps out from behind him, I sink lower in the plastic chair. Of course this would be happening. I would be on a bender, getting my broken hand looked at, at the exact moment she goes into labor and arrives at the hospital.
“Can you help us?” he says, pacing back and forth frantically. “She needs a wheelchair! Her water broke twenty minutes ago, and her contractions are only five minutes apart!”
His antics are making the other patients in the waiting room start to get a little anxious, but the pregnant woman just laughs and wraps her hand around her man’s. But then, that’s Natalie for you.
“I’m okay to walk, I’m fine. It’s okay.” Natalie explains to the nurse that her fiancé, Elijah, is more panicked than necessary. While he continues to pace, and she remains calm, almost hostesslike, I laugh from my seat, and Natalie looks over to find me staring.
A big smile fills her face. “Hardin! What a coincidence!” Is this the pregnant-woman glow people are always going on about?