Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
J USTIN
I wake up to a weird smell surrounding me. It’s too sweet and suffocating. I scratch my throat because it’s literally hurting me.
After a quick look around, I note that everything is the same, but I’m undressed. Weird. When I crash, I usually don’t have time to get prepared.
I try to find the source of the weird smell, but I can’t, so I decide to just strip the sheets. But first, I check my phone. Damn , it’s dead. No wonder, I was probably out for hours. Plugging it in, I head to the shower.
Good thing I fucking made it home before crashing.
Otherwise, it’d be embarrassing. Yesterday—or was it the day before yesterday?
I’m lost with this time shit after so many hours of being out—I wanted to go to the trailer park she used to live at and talk to Mark.
Since I’ve decided to find peace for myself, I need to make amends, and fuck do I need to apologize to that guy.
And also, I wanted to test the waters and see what sort of relationship they have.
I’d be a fool not to admit that he’s been around a lot, and they grew up together.
So I hoped to find him there. Color me surprised when it turned out he doesn’t live there anymore.
Instead, his old trailer is still occupied by some drunk who sort of reminds me of Mark.
Can it be his dad? I don’t blame the dude for leaving then.
I stuck around the trailer park longer than planned, but I got some valuable information from the neighbors.
Some folks who saw Kayla growing up still remembered her mother, and they told me a few horror stories that will keep me up at night for many years to come.
Stories about Kayla running away from home whenever her mom brought her new boyfriends home, and how she would always hide at Mark’s place, waiting for the men to leave, and how she was left alone when her mother and sister checked out of town after hitting a woman and her child with their car, leaving Kayla with the shame and unrequited guilt.
That’s where the story got interesting. They told me that said woman visited her a few times before she’d moved in with Marina, right after the accident, and she brought ‘friends’ with her.
And that word ‘friends’ bugged the hell out of me.
I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly. Kayla was fifteen when her mother checked out of town so that ‘friendship’ seems even weirder.
So, I drove to Springfield to ask if anyone knew any information. My search turned out fruitless, but I had spent far too many hours awake by then, and my body was crashing. I barely made it home before my lights were out. That’s how my last two days went.
I miss Kayla, and all I want right now is to hold her in my arms, preferably not telling her where I was these last couple of days. I can’t wait any longer, so I speed up my shower.
Twenty minutes later, I make myself a coffee and pick up my phone.
It’s nine-thirty at night. Fuck, just awesome.
Now the next few days will be thoroughly fucked.
I have a bunch of phone calls and messages from Kayla, a few from my parents, and a couple from Freya and Alex.
All right. I’ve been out for maybe fourteen hours, but judging by the number of missed calls, it might as well have been a week.
I dial Kayla’s number, and it goes straight to voicemail.
Okay, odd. I try again with the same success.
I shoot a quick text asking her to call me back, but it’s undeliverable.
O-o-okay , now I begin to worry a little.
I finish my coffee in one big gulp and run downstairs.
The garage is locked up, and everything is neat and in its place.
I can always rely on Paul. He’s a loyal guy and a good worker. I pay him handsomely for that.
The whole drive to her place, I’m nervous; my knee can’t stop jumping.
And for a good reason.
There are no lights on in the trailer and no Jeep parked next to it. No folding chairs out front that she likes to sit in and draw. None of her stuff around.
I swallow the bile rising up my throat.
Pulling the door handle, I already know that it will be locked. I knock, but I already know that no one will respond. I feel dread settling in my stomach.
Where is she? And why is all her stuff gone?
I dial Alex.
“Yeah.” His gruff voice isn’t exactly welcoming on a good day, but now it’s even more menacing.
“Hey. Do you know where Kayla is?”
He’s quiet .
“Alex?”
“Not in Little Hope,” he says shortly.
A stone, the size of Mars, drops into my stomach. “What do you mean ‘not in Little Hope’? Where is she then?”
“She left.” He’s curt. Way too curt for somebody who rooted for us to get together.
“Where?” He’s quiet. “Fuck, Alex, where did she go?”
“I have no idea, you fucker. You messed this one up, just how I told you you would.” And he hangs up.
What the fuck? I look at the phone. Where did Kayla go? And why didn’t she tell me anything? I try to redial her with no success. Fuck. Fuck! I don’t know what’s happening, but my gut tells me it’s bad.
So I shoot her another message with the same results.
Then I call Freya.
“Yes?” Her voice is tepid, but I feel I might have some luck here—at least she isn’t pissed at me.
“Hey, Frey. Do you know where Kayla is?”
“I do,” she says, her tone suddenly terse. Never mind, she’s definitely mad at me for something.
“And where is she?”
“She specifically instructed me not to tell you that.”
“Why the fuck not?” I’m getting pissed at this charade.
“Calm your voice.” She’s enraged now. “You’re getting what you deserve.”
“What do I deserve? I don’t even know what happened. And if she’s okay. Is she okay?” Freya’s quiet. “Is she okay, Frey?”
“She will be,” she says after a pause. Well, that sounded ominous as fuck.
“Is it something I did?” I rack my brain, trying to figure out if anything even remotely bad had happened that would send her out of town without saying a word, but I can’t come up with anything.
The last time we talked, we had a sweet, quick chat.
She had to run somewhere in Springfield, where she’s been a few times in the past week to talk with her tattoo guy, TJ, who buys her incredible art.
That’s it. What could have happened between our last conversation and me waking up from my crash?
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Freya.” My tone turns to a growl. I know she knows more than she says.
“I don’t know, alright? I tried to torture the answers out of her, but she never said anything.”
“Why? You are her friend. Why wouldn’t she share it with you?” I pull on my hair.
“My guess is because I’m your friend too, and she didn’t want to put a strain on our relationship. Even though I’m on her side, no matter what you did,” she says harshly.
“I don’t know what I did!” I shout into the phone.
“Oh, how does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine, huh?” Freya isn’t a mean person per se, but at this moment, she sounds evil as fuck.
I still. “Is that what this is about? To punish me?” It can’t be true; that’s just not Kayla. But on the other hand, I don’t know jack shit about what’s happening.
I hear a loud sigh on the other side of the line. “No, Justin. I don’t think it is, but you clearly did something big enough to finally send her out of town, and she didn’t tell me what.”
I, indeed, taste my own medicine. She asked me what she had done so many times over the last six years, and every time I snapped at her, demanding she leave me alone without giving any explanation when she really wasn’t even the one to blame. Yeah, that shit tastes terrible .
I stoop to begging. “Can you at least tell me if she’s okay?”
“She is.” She’s quiet, and I can almost hear her thinking. “She took Archie’s offer,” she mumbles.
I feel the world around me crumbling down, like a house of cards when someone pulls a card from the bottom. The one card that was holding the whole thing together. “What?” I ask.
“It’s good for her. She needs to move on; she can’t do that by being stuck here. She’s an artistic person; she has a talent, and she’s wasting it here.”
“I know,” I growl. God, do I know. Every time she touches paper, a work of art appears.
I wanted to ask her to make a tattoo design for me because I’m finally ready, and I know I’ll be more attractive to her.
She loves tattoos so much, and she likes me, so I figured she’d like me even more if I had one or two. Or liked. So I thought.
Then Freya asks the question of the year. “What did you do, Justin?”
“I don’t know, Freya. I really don’t.” I hang up and climb back into the car.
What do I do next? What are my options?
Marina! She’ll either shoot me, or she’ll talk to me. Worth trying.
I drive to her house and knock on the door. She doesn’t answer, so I keep knocking until Marina appears in the doorway a minute later.
“Oh, you got some nerve showing up here.” She takes a defensive pose, her hands on her hips.
I ignore her battle stance. “Do you know where she is?”
She snorts at my obviously stupid question. “Of course, I do.”
“Where? ”
“Seriously?” She quirks a brow, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“Can you at least tell me why she left?” I plant a hand on the doorway.
She laughs and closes the door in my face, barely missing my fingers. At least she didn’t shoot me.
Back in my truck, I sit and think about where it all went wrong. Why am I hurting so much, and why does this heavy weight stay on my chest? And why can’t I breathe? And why do my eyes sting?
By the time I’m back home, the suffocating smell is gone, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Not in the slightest. I want Kayla’s strawberry smell back.
My apartment is clean—of course, not my doing.
But it’s missing the most vital piece that made it home for me: her .
It’s missing Kayla. I’m missing Kayla. And I’m so fucking mad at her for leaving like that.
Did our relationship mean so little to her that she could just up and go? Did I mean so little?
The days blur into one. I ask everyone the same questions over and over again, and I drink, and I crash.
I pick a fight or two with people, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
My parents tried to talk to me to figure out what’s happening, but I shut them down.
Alicia doesn’t try, but she calls. Every single day.
She’s never called so many times in her entire life, but now she suddenly wants to know how my day is going.
Only Jake avoids me. Weirdly, he hasn’t called even once, and it’s been weeks since I’ve entered this constant alcoholic rage.
Today, Alex barrels into my place as I’m slumped on the couch, nursing a bottle of my friend Jack in my hands. He stops in the middle of the room and looks around in disgust. I blink at him, my head cocking to the side in question.
“Look at you, man. What the fuck happened to you?” he asks me reproachfully. I wish I could care, but I don’t.
I spread my arms, accidentally splashing some Jack on the couch where we spent so many hot nights—and days—both of us learning so many new things.
Turns out, Kayla is adventurous; the second I found out, I knew I had hit the jackpot.
Now I’m just sad that those days are gone. “Kayla happened. That witch.”
“You leave women left and right, and they don’t mope like this.” He rolls his eyes. “Did you lose your dick somewhere along the way?”
I point an accusing finger at him. “None of them were Kayla,” I say her name with care, even when I’m pissed at her. “And might as well have.” I shrug at the second part. Even porn doesn’t do it for me these days. How pathetic I’ve become.
“Are you gonna wallow in your sorrows for the rest of your life?” He stands in front of me, arms crossed over his chest.
“Are you gonna tell me where she is?” I counter.
He sighs and sits next to me. “I know she’s in Boston, and she’s doing good. That’s all I know.”
A sliver of hope sparks in my chest. “Do you know why she left?”
“Nah.” He shakes his head, and I stare at him, trying to figure out if he’s lying.
“I swear I don’t know. I don’t think Freya knows either, or she’d cave the second she saw you like this, looking like a miserable piece of year-old shit.
My guess is Kayla doesn’t want us to beat the shit out of you, so she’s not telling us. ”
My hope dies in an instant. Marina would never tell me how I can find her, and no one else knows.
Suddenly, Alex smacks me hard on the back and says, “Take this one last day to lick your wounds, and tomorrow be a better man for when she returns.”
“Will she?”
“I’m sure she will.” He smacks me again, gets up, and leaves.
Do I want her to return? Fuck, I do. I’m still pissed at her. Fuckin’ furious, but I’ve missed her. And I want her to tell me why she left. What the fuck could I have done so wrong for her to just disappear one day without even a simple goodbye?
I decide to follow Alex’s advice and get my shit together. But today… today I’m getting piss drunk.