CHAPTER 5
The image of a well-clad male specimen with a blond bombshell in his arms was the sight my eyes remained fixed on for the past five minutes.
A sight that put a sour taste to my morning routine. It was my favorite thing to do. As I sipped my first coffee every morning, scrolling through the media for even the briefest glimpse of him. It didn’t matter that I saw him in real life now. I was a glutton for punishment.
Even Strawberry’s little coos couldn’t drag my eyes away from that.
The sting in my throat told me I was hurt, but the boiling flame in my veins told me I was jealous and angry.
Jay was wearing the same immaculate suit. He must have had a wild night.
His expression was cool and uncaring as he stared at the camera.
The article told me it was an exclusive private party held at the Roofline to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of some big-ass music producer.
The whole gang was there—red neon lights dancing across their faces, drinks in hand, grinning at the camera.
But my eyes never strayed from those arms wrapped around a slender waist wearing almost nothing looking up at him like he was the creator of her universe.
The sight that brought nausea to rise up my chest.
I had always hated seeing him with other women. But this dug in a little deeper, and I wasn’t sure why.
Maybe because I was back in his life.
Maybe it confirmed that we were never going to the Evy and Jay we once were. The gap had been bridged, but too much pain and sadness lingered. Our hearts could never heal. Even time couldn’t mend those broken shards we kept vaulted in our chests.
I would silently love him like I always had because the Jay who stood in front of me today was a stranger. And I was unwilling to be vulnerable with him again or bare my soul because it looked like he would gladly walk all over it.
Maybe this was the cold wake-up call for me to move on from Jay. It never occurred to me until this moment that he was my ex. Somehow, I foolishly held on to the hope that Jay would always come back to me. But it looked like that wasn’t the case now.
Calling him my ex was a painful thought, sending zaps of hurt straight to my heart. But it seemed we had made our bed.
My soul and heart would always be his, but I needed to find happiness elsewhere for my mental sanity.
I didn’t even think as I pressed the call. “Gabe, tell Marcus I will be joining in this Friday.”
“Whoa, straight to the point, huh, chica? Looks like someone saw those photographs from last night.”
“Yeah, you were right. I do need to get over him. There are too many buried bones between us. He despises me, Gabe, and understandably so, but at the end of the day, it’s him, you know. I still love him.”
I could hear Gabe sigh through the phone. “Well, I mean, I know it won’t change a lot, but why don’t you try to tell him everything that happened.”
“I want to, so badly. Trust me, I have tried. But he barely even acknowledges my existence. But I have to do it. At least then I would finally be free from carrying all that burden. I must put my big girl pants on and tell him everything.”
“Yeah, I think that would be for the best. You’ve bottled it all up, and soon, it’s all going to blow up. Trust me, you don’t want to relive those dark days again,” Gabe added softly.
I suppressed the painful memories that started to creep into my mind. I knew exactly what he was talking about—the desolate days where I almost gave everything up.
My mind took me right back to that time.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
It was the constant nagging sound I kept hearing over and over again.
I didn’t like it.
I wanted to turn it off, but I can’t. I couldn’t. It felt like a heavy blanket was wrapped around me over and over again.
I couldn’t move an inch.
It felt like my entire world was shrouded in darkness and nothingness.
Like my eyelashes were glued, my throat raw and dry, and my body weighed by an anchor.
What was wrong with me?
“Ms. May,” a soft voice whispered, followed by a small shake on my shoulders. “Ms. May, can you hear me?”
Yes. I wanted to say it, but I couldn’t.
Try, Evy , I said to myself.
I slowly pried my heavy lids open but was only met with black dots.
“Oh, Thank God, Ms. May,” whispered the soft voice again.
I reeled back the confusion and centered myself to blink away the dots.
Slithers of bright light blinded my eyes as my vision came into focus.
I was met with the face of a woman whom I didn’t recognize.
A kind smile spread across her lips. “Ms. May, you’re okay. You’re in the hospital. Don’t worry, you’ve been in an unfortunate incident, but you’re alright now. I’ll call the doctor in to check on you.”
Frowning, I watched her dash out the door.
What was she talking about? What unfortunate incident?
The four plain walls and the beeping monitor confirmed that I was indeed in a hospital.
But how did I end up here?
I willed myself to breathe through the panic surging in my blood.
I searched my memory for the last thing I remembered.
Auntie M.
The hurt in my heart clawed deep. I remember burying her yesterday, sitting in the church when I received her letter and the pain from reading it.
Jay.
I wanted to see him. I stilled as they all came back to me in a rush.
LA Bluebird Club. The dark alley.
My thoughts get interrupted as the door to my room slides open.
An older-looking tall man in a white doctor’s coat walked in, followed by the woman I saw earlier.
“Ms. May, I’m Dr. Richards. I’m glad to see you have woken up,” he said, giving me a small smile. “Do you know how you ended up here?”
I swallowed the dryness down my throat. “Yes,” I croaked out. “I think so.”
“Here, have this,” the woman whom I assumed to be the nurse based on her scrubs placed a few ice chips in my mouth.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, gratefully.
“You can call me Gia, honey.”
I nodded, sliding my attention back to the doctor, who was prodding the heavy cast surrounding my right leg.
“Is there anyone we can call for you, Ms. May?” Dr. Richards asked.
I shook my head.
“I understand. You’re perfectly fine, Ms. May. You came to us unconscious last night with a heavily swollen right leg highly indicative that you’ve sustained a heavy impact. Tests confirmed that you had a closed comminuted patellar fracture with a quadriceps tendon rupture, Ms. May,” he explained. “To say simply, you completely shattered your right knee and tore your tendon. We performed an ORIF, which is an open reduction to internally fix and preserve your patellar bone as much as possible. I’ve repaired and reattached your tendon. Thankfully, the soft tissue damage was minimal, and all your ligaments were remarkable, so you’ll be able to heal, but given the site of the fracture and the severity, it sometimes cannot be possible to heal properly.”
All this medical jargon slipped right through my mind. “I don’t understand,” I voiced out.
A sad look crept over the doctor’s eye. “It’ll take a while to confirm anything, Ms. May. You might experience a lot of pain and discomfort and will be required to wear a brace in the near future. It’ll take a while for you to get back on your feet again. I won’t lie and say it’s going to be easy. It’s going to take months, if not years, for you to walk properly again. But you’re young and healthy, Ms. May, so I’m sure you’ll be able to get back on track. Don’t worry, we’ll get you something for the pain and get started on physio after you have healed completely. Gia, here, will be your nurse. I’ll get going then. Please let me know if you have any questions.” He nodded, walking out.
“We can’t find anyone on your emergency contact, honey. Is there anyone we can call for you? Perhaps your parents or friends?” Gia gave me an endearing smile.
A sting shot through my heart. “I don’t have parents. I don’t have anyone anymore.” Gia turned to glass as something warm started to glide down my cheeks.
A sad smile drew over her lips as sympathy overtook her features. “Oh, honey. Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you.”
She held me as I sobbed, breaking down to tethers.
I’d been staring at the IV line in my hand when I heard the door open.
“Honey, these officers are here to see you,” Gia announced.
“Morning, Ms. May, I’m Detective Rogers,” said a man with salt-and-pepper hair and heavy sideburns. “And this is my partner, Detective Sanchez.” He gestured to a younger-looking man, probably in his early twenties.
I nodded.
Detective Rogers cleared his throat. “Ms. May, you very well know how you ended up here. Unfortunately, no cameras were pointed toward the alley, and no evidence could be collected from the scene. Can you tell us why you ended up in the alley?” he asked in a grim voice.
Nothing about his statement suggesting he was questioning a victim of a crime.
“I was waiting to get inside the concert when two men pulled me inside. It all happened very fast. One minute, I was on the street, and the next, I was being dragged away from behind. They didn’t say anything when I asked them, just told me to shut up and pushed me hard on the ground.”
Detective Roger nodded while he slid a glance to his partner, who was looking anywhere but at me. “Can you explain what they looked like, Ms. May?”
I shook my head. “No, they were wearing black and had masks over their faces, and like I said, I was pulled from behind, and it was very dark down there, so I couldn’t see properly.”
“But you saw they were wearing black?”
I froze, swallowing, not sure where he was going with this. “Yes,” I whispered.
Gia peered at me with concerned eyes.
“We’ll try our best to catch the perpetrators, Ms. May, but we can’t promise anything. Robberies like this are quite common in our city.”
Lines creased my forehead. “Nothing was stolen from me, Detective Rogers.”
I knew because when I came out of the shock from all this, I realized I was only wearing the hospital scrubs.
And the chain around my neck was not there.
I grew hysterical trying to find them and not being able to move an inch. But thankfully, Gia calmed me down and handed me the zipper bag with my belongings. I only breathed in relief when I found my necklace, the ‘J’ pendant, and the ring intact. A quick inventory check told me I had everything, even my broken cell phone. Just looking at it made me sad because I had no one to call. And he never came.
Detective Rogers cocked a brow. “I find that hard to believe.”
I clenched my jaw as I tried to suppress the anger coursing through me. “How can you just assume that it’s a robbery without even asking me if something was missing, Detective Rogers?”
He smiled, running his thumb along his chin. “Are you telling me how to do my job, Ms. May?”
“Yes since you don’t seem to be doing a good job at it,” I bit out.
His eyes narrowed as he strode toward me. “If it isn’t a robbery, then we have reason to assume that you were doing something else in that alley, Ms. May.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s safe to assume you went there looking for drugs. It’s pretty common for teenagers to try something new when they go to concerts. We found out you recently lost your aunt, and you might’ve wanted something to ease the pain a bit. So if it wasn’t a robbery, I could write it down as a drug deal gone wrong, Ms. May, but that might get you in trouble.”
“No,” I shouted. “How can you say that? I wasn’t looking for drugs. I was looking for a way inside the concert.”
“Then explain why you were in LA, Ms. May. Your home is in Seattle?”
“I told you I wanted to get inside the concert. I was there to meet my boyfriend. You can’t possibly think I jumped on a plane to LA to buy drugs!” I heaved as my breathing became ragged.
“You were in LA for a few months this past year, so you may have already had an old contact to get you some stuff and a boyfriend uh?” He laughed. “Where is he now? Do you mind giving us his contact so we can confirm this story?” He waved a hand.
I flushed as my hands started to shake. “We don’t talk anymore.”
Detective Rogers laughed harder, which only made the monitor beep louder.
“Please, stop this nonsense.” Gia ran a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You’re supposed to help find who did this to her. She is the victim here. If you’re going to cause any more distress to my patient, you should leave.”
“Very well.” Detective Rogers nodded, handing me a piece of paper. “Sign here if you know what’s good for you, Ms. May, and we can call this a robbery. Trust me, you don’t want this to turn into a drug case.”
Gia slid them a nasty look while she rubbed my shoulders. It dawned on me then, that no matter what I said, they’d already decided how to end this case. This was just a mandatory part of the process for them.
It was pretty evident that they had their minds made up. What would a teenager with a broken leg and no family do, right?
“I’m sorry, honey. I swear some men have no heart,” Gia said after they left.
I sighed; I didn’t even have it in me to reply to her. I didn’t know how many more hits my body could take before it broke down, this time with no power to get back up.
“I’m so excited to have the Four Foxes here on our show,” commented the host on the TV running in the background. I sank my exhausted body onto the bed.
I had been stuck in this hospital for the past three months.
And with each passing day, the muddled weight swirling inside my body heightened.
I was so close to giving it all up.
I had nothing to look forward to when I woke up every morning, which only made me want not to wake up at all.
I sighed, turning my attention back to the TV that was somehow turned on when I came back from physio.
I was finally able to walk—just baby steps for now—but all I wanted to do was storm out of here.
My dead eyes stared at him.
Even on the TV, he followed me like a ghost.
There he was in his glory, looking completely unabashed and unbothered in black.
Did he even miss me? I had no idea. His face gave nothing away.
“So your single has been blowing off the charts. ‘Brown-eyed girl’ is now rumored to be in the prospect of getting a Grammy nomination. How exciting is that?”
“Very exciting, man. We fucking love that song,” Mikey exclaimed, sliding in one of his signature smiles.
The host nodded. “But I want to hear more from the man who wrote it. J.J., can you tell me what inspired you to write that song? We couldn’t guess the music video, which was incredible, by the way. Congratulations on that. But I want to ask the question the whole world wants to know: who is the brown-eyed girl?”
Every atom of my being froze as my heart hammered a loud beat.
I watched him cast a cool glance at the show host before he replied, “No one special.”
Everything after that was soundless to my deaf ears.
No one special.
I was no one special, wasn’t I? No one in my life considered me special.
A blanket of darkness corrupted me. I didn’t know how, but I ended up staring at the stairs leading to the rooftop.
They looked like torture devices for my broken knee, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the one radiating from my heart.
Dry air rustled my face as I stared at the LA city beneath me.
My legs were shaking, but I didn’t even care.
What was my purpose? Why was I stuck in the city that I hated? Should I just give it all up?
“You need to go a bit closer if you’re going to jump?” someone called out from behind me.
The voice startled me so badly that I jumped, losing my balance and falling on my ass.
“Whoa, you alright? Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Yes,” I mumbled as I watched a boy with curly brown hair drop to the floor opposite me, leaning back against the parapet.
“Well, were you?” he asked, a curious glint covering his eyes.
“What?” I muttered, confused.
“Were you going to jump? I’ve never seen anyone jump off a rooftop before.”
My eyes widened.
“Sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly. “Sometimes I talk too much, and I’m sometimes insensitive, but not on purpose, though, I swear. I just say things without thinking and immediately regret them. My mother always used to say that one day it’ll get me in trouble.”
My eyes widened further. Who was this boy?
“See, I’m doing it right now.” He rolled his eyes, waving a hand around. “I’m talking too much.”
“Yes, you are,” I agreed.
His lips curved into a smile. “How did you end up here, by the way? I broke my hand and dislocated my shoulders. Totally not my fault, though. I was just crossing the street and minding my own business when the skater thought it was time to ruin my life. Thankfully, I get discharged tomorrow. I swear I can’t stay in this hospital another extra second.”
It was apparent that he had broken his hand from the cream-colored sling stark against his tan skin. And he did talk a lot.
“I broke my knee,” I replied, answering his question.
“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious. I don’t know why I asked.” He gestured to my brace.
I nodded.
And a few long minutes of silence passed between; the only sound was a slight rattle of the door from the hot, breezy wind.
“So were actually going to do it?” His voice was quieter.
I sighed; I knew what he was asking about. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Why?”
Tears brimmed my eyes, spilling over in fast drops on the back of my hand. “I have no one anymore. Everybody’s gone.”
“You have you.” He gave me a warm smile.
Something about his statement sprang some life back into me. I could feel some of the heaviness drifting away. He was kinda right. I did have me, and I was all I needed, right?
“One day, everything will be alright. You just need to bite through till then and make yourself proud. It will all be worth it.”
I nodded, a smile starting to creep up my lips. “You’re right. Thank you,” I mumbled.
He shrugged. “When are you getting out of here?”
“I’ll be discharged next week.”
“Fuck. That’s a good thing, right? Trust me, you’ll feel much better once you leave this sanitized cage.”
A laugh spilled out of my lips. “Sanitized cage?”
“Yeah, I think it’s apt to call it that, duh.”
“I don’t know if it’ll be a good thing,” I whispered.
The lines in the corner of his eyes wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Leaving here. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I want to badly, but I’ve nowhere to go.”
“Why?”
“I used to live with my auntie at her boyfriend’s house, but she died.” My voice grew thick with sadness. “I’ve spent three months at the hospital, and I don’t even know if I can stay at his place anymore.”
“I’m going to New York,” he stated, grinning.
“What?” I muttered.
“I’m actually going to be driving up there. That is, after I fix this.” He waved his sling. “You should come.”
“What?” I muttered again, this time in utter disbelief.
“You have nowhere to go, and I need a roommate, so that’s a win-win, right?”
“I think so.”
“Yay, I have a roommate.” He clapped excitedly. “I can’t wait to tell Rory. That ass told me I can never find one.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand, my brain still trying to process. “What do you mean? Why New York, and who's Rory?”
“Why not New York? The city of dreams, right? Don’t worry, I already have everything planned. I even landed a cheap apartment. It’s going to be so much fun! I still have to find a job, though, which is not very fun. And Rory is my boyfriend. He goes to college down South. We’re doing the long-distance thing till he moves to New York after college. I already miss that pig.”
“I thought LA was the city of dreams.”
“Oh, come on. Who the fuck cares? The city of dreams is wherever I want it to be.”
“But all my things are in Seattle,” I said meekly.
“We can add a stop on our trip. So…” He lifted a brow in question. “What do you say, New York City, chica?”
Something about this made my heart leap. Moving to another city with someone I barely knew felt scary and stupid.
But it awoke something that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
Maybe if everything in life was going to happen for a reason, perhaps I was supposed to end up in New York.
I might not know the “why” now or ever, but somehow, I knew it would make sense one day. That was why I said, “Yes.”
He grinned, shooting off to his feet, and helped me up. “To the adventure of our lifetime… Fuck. I don’t even know your name.”
“Evy,” I replied softly.
The grin never left his face. “I’m Gabe.” He held out his hand. “New York City, here we come.”
Strawberry’s bark pulled me back to the present.
The time told me it was high time to get ready for work.
A nervous hand took hold of my gut when I thought about what I had to do today.
Because Gabe was right, I had to tell Jay everything. But the question was, would he even listen?