54. Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Four
Jordan
Tension lines my shoulders as I push, push, push until the bar finally clinks against the rack and settles in the hooks.
I’m covered in sweat and in desperate need of a drink. Something to help me forget the last twenty-four hours.
Hell, something strong enough to wipe out the last five years .
The last two fucking decades.
I take my time showering in my new studio apartment two floors up, doing my best to wash away the heaviness of the day. But when I stand in the middle of it in nothing but a towel, trails of water still clinging to my skin, my feet root to the spot.
There’s not much here, not much I own.
A single couch.
Bare walls.
I can’t see the glasses in the cabinet, but I know that there’s four sitting on a shelf by themselves.
If I could have bought only one, I would have.
There’s something absolutely crushing in the fact that you can’t. That not even the glassware in my kitchen is as alone as I am.
The bowls. The plates. All in fours.
But me?
It’s just me.
Yet all I can think about … is what Mac would think of the place. Would he like the swirl of orange in the tumblers I found? Would he crash onto the couch and complain that one side is too lumpy to sleep on?
Would he fall into my bed instead and use me as a pillow even though I’m less comforting than the shitty cushions?
My jaw grits as I move to the dresser and jerkily shove my limbs through fabric.
Even the drawer is half empty, devoid of the fullness that I’m used to when I’ve borrowed Mac’s clothes or grabbed something for him.
No color or stupid prints, just my plain black briefs.
The tick in my jaw jumps into overdrive, my sights swinging around the room and pinging off of all the memories I’ll never have here.
All the things Mac will never see. Never be a part of or be able to comment on.
The things we’ll never do together …
I fucked us up.
With burning eyes and a tremble to my fingers, I swipe my phone from the armrest and pull up the clock app, its list of different time zones flashing back at me by the second. I scroll past all the previous entries, their time already into the morning light of tomorrow and when I get to the bottom, I pause.
One p.m.
He’d be awake.
The tight knuckled grip I have on the phone makes it creak.
It’s the time I’ve been waiting for, a moment where I know he’s available and I’m in the sanctuary of my own place instead of driving away from his sister’s shop or sitting inside his apartment where I’ve been staying until now.
None of it felt right—feels right—and yet I’m dialing. Waiting for the inevitable voicemail greeting when he ignores the call.
Just let him go.
I fall back onto the couch, my hat staring at me from its perch on the little coffee table with its ghost of an emblem missing as it has been for years. The song that it triggers twists up my stomach.
Is this me running from him?
The greeting picks up.
I’m still locked on the faded black when the beep knocks me out of my head, my tongue too tied to speak at first.
“Mac,” I rasp finally and clear my throat when it cracks. “I’m …”
All of my muscles go taut when I attempt to force out the words I’ve been preparing myself to say, the same ones I told Ian two nights ago.
The same two words that would set us both free, finally, to move on.
I quit.
Yet I can’t say them to his inbox.
My eyes wander around the room, desperate to find the answer hiding somewhere among the solitude, only to land on the cabinet that houses those damn glasses and their colored swirl.
To the barely used dresser and the lumpy cushion beside me.
Then they drop to the designs inked into the skin of my arm, the geometric style bleeding from bold at my shoulder to nearly faded and hiding the line of a gradient soundwave around my wrist.
Foundation and balance.
Stability through music.
My fingers curl into a fist when the voicemail prompts me to end the call.
Instead, I delete the message and hang up.