Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
CONNOR
Donnie lives in a brownstone. That’s all I register as I follow him up the stoop and into the house. I let him take my coat from me and hang it on the rack by the door. He leads me past a few rooms to the back of the house where he deposits me on a stool next to the kitchen island.
I’m a zombie. Dead and alive at the same time, my body is nothing more than a shell of flesh. My feet move me to where I’m supposed to go. My legs sit me down where I’m supposed to sit. I don’t control them, I don’t even feel them. I don’t feel anything, not even the rage that consumed me at Mars.
Back there, my body had been too small to contain all the shit rioting around inside me.
Anger, sadness, disbelief, more anger, at Miles and Wyatt.
At myself. They multiplied and multiplied until they burst out of me in those fucking awful sobs.
It felt like I was trying to heave my guts out. It kinda feels like I’d succeeded.
“Here, drink all of that.” Donnie sets a new bottle of Gatorade in front of me, the cap already missing. The blue liquid looks like toilet bowl cleaner. “You need to hydrate or you’ll wake up with a massive headache tomorrow.”
I already have a headache, a steady throbbing of my brain against the inside of my skull. I don’t think toilet bowl cleaner is going to make it go away, but what the hell do I know? I drink the Gatorade.
“I’m guessing you haven’t had dinner yet, have you?” Donnie asks. He’s moving around the kitchen, opening cabinets and shutting drawers. Every clang and every bang is reverberating through the sludge in my head, making the throbbing across my forehead worse.
Dinner. My tacos are on the floor of the apartment. Shame floods through me and I bury my face in my hands. God, what the fuck. I have to be dreaming. This has to be a nightmare.
I’m sitting in Donnie, The Spin Instructor’s kitchen. He’s trying to make me dinner. I was supposed to be having dinner with my boyfriend, but I’m not because he’s fucking my best friend. I’m missing my tacos and wishing I hadn’t dropped them before running out of the building.
How is this real? Fucking tacos. Who the fuck cares about tacos or dinner or fucking eating?
Instead of fixating on tacos, maybe I should’ve been more focused on what my boyfriend and best friend were doing right under my fucking nose.
Maybe then, I wouldn’t be sitting in Donnie, The Spin Instructor’s kitchen like a sad, pathetic loser.
“Hey.”
I jerk up as Donnie’s hand closes over my wrist.
“I’m going to make some salmon and roasted vegetables, okay? Are you allergic to anything?”
I shake my head. “I’m not very hungry.”
His brows draw together. “You need to eat something, even if it’s only a couple of bites. You’ve burned a lot of calories tonight and you need to keep your blood sugar up.” He pushes the half-empty bottle of Gatorade into my hand again. “And you have to finish this.”
My wrist is cold when he lets go of it. Just like my whole body had felt cold when he left me in that room to go do whatever it was he needed to do before we left Mars.
I want his hand on my wrist again. I want his arms around me again.
I didn’t feel cold then. I didn’t tremble so much when he held me.
I’d been floating aimlessly, set adrift, and then Donnie pulled me in and anchored me. I want to feel anchored again.
Donnie slides a tray into the oven and sets a timer. Then he turns to me, arm outstretched. I go to him and nestle into his side. His calm settles over me and I can breathe again.
“Come on. Let me show you to your room. You can wash your face and change into something more comfortable. Dinner will be ready when you come back down.”
Donnie grabs my bag from where I dropped it by the front door and we go up to the second floor. He ushers me into the guest room and I do nothing but stand there by the corner of the bed, not sure what comes next. Donnie sets my bag on a padded bench at the foot of the bed.
“Do you have anything to change into?”
I stare at my bag. The only things in there are my laptop and the sweaty clothes I took off after his class. Everything else I own is at the apartment. I have literally nothing but the clothes on my back. My throat closes up and I sit heavily on the edge of the bed. How is this fucking real?
“No? Okay. Not a problem.”
Donnie disappears and I stare at the floor. There’s an area rug on top of the hardwood. It’s beige-y and shaggy and I wiggle my toes in it. I’ve always wanted a rug like this in my bedroom so I can feel the soft squishiness under my feet when I get up in the morning. Guess I have my chance now.
My head spins and I suck in a breath. I’d forgotten to breathe.
Donnie comes back with a stack of fluffy white towels, neatly-folded flannel PJs, socks, and a toothbrush and toothpaste. He tilts his head for me to follow him. “Bathroom’s over here.”
It’s one of the other doors that open off the landing of the second floor. Donnie sets his stack of linens on the counter and turns to me.
“You all right?”
They keep asking me that and I keep not knowing what to say. No, I’m not all right, not really. But I’m all right enough, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
Donnie flinches and shakes his head in a jerking motion. “Never mind. Pretend I didn’t ask that. Wash your face—or you can take a shower if you’d like. These pajamas are clean and I think should fit you. Come back downstairs when you’re ready.”
He squeezes past me and I get a whiff of something woodsy and citrusy. I follow it to Donnie at the bathroom door. He’s got the doorknob in his hand and he’s pulling it shut. I almost stop him so I can take in a little more of that comforting scent.
He closes the door, and I lean my forehead against it.
God, I’m tired. I want to curl up in a ball, bury my nose in the crook of Donnie’s neck, and fall asleep breathing him in.
It’s the only thing that makes any sense—Donnie, his hugs, his scent—everything else feels like one fucked up nightmare that I desperately want to wake up from.
I push away from the door and turn on the faucet to splash water on my face. It’s cold and the shock of it jolts me back into my body. I can feel how swollen my eyes are, how raw my throat is. The headache throbs even stronger and the room looks like it spinning.
I splash my face a few more times before turning the water off. I’m more awake now, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Maybe being a zombie is better than being able to catalog every single thing that’s wrong.
The PJs are soft, though they smell a little like mothballs. Donnie must’ve pulled them out of a bottom drawer somewhere. They fit me, almost like they were bought for me, and I’m immediately warmer after I put them on. The socks are thick and fluffy and feel like heaven on my feet.
Donnie’s pulling the tray out of the oven when I get back down to the kitchen. Whatever he’s made smells amazing and my stomach growls in anticipation. I still don’t really feel like eating, but my body apparently has ideas of its own.
“Go ahead and sit down.” Donnie nods toward a table by the window.
It’s dark outside and the light from the kitchen reflects off the glass. The table already has two place settings laid out and I drop into the chair in front of one. God, I’m so tired.
“You’re crashing.” Donnie sets a plate down in front of me.
There’s a pale pink slice of salmon, stalks of asparagus, and chunks of zucchini and tomatoes. It looks like something off an Instagram reel.
“Huh?” I blink at Donnie.
“You’ve been running on adrenaline for the past couple hours, and now you’re crashing.”
“Oh.” That makes a lot of sense actually. I kinda want to sleep for a week.
“Eat as much as you can, and then we’ll get you to bed.”
I pick up the fork and it clatters against the plate.
If Donnie notices, he doesn’t say anything.
I grip the fork harder, but that only makes the shaking worse.
I manage to stab a piece of zucchini and shove it into my mouth.
My tastebuds register that it tastes good.
My stomach rumbles in appreciation. I force myself to take another bite.
What are Miles and Wyatt eating? Are they helping themselves to my tacos? Are they watching Drag Race without me? I choke on a flake of salmon that wants to go down the wrong way.
Donnie hands me the glass of water I didn’t notice was sitting right there. “Take it easy. Just a little at a time.”
“It’s Miles and Wyatt.” The words slip out of my mouth and I hear them like I’m listening to the conversation from the other side of the room.
“Who?”
“Boyfriend and best friend.” I frown. “Ex-boyfriend. Ex-best friend.”
“What did they do?”
“They’re fucking. Each other.” My chest hurts. It feels like there’s a boulder sitting on it.
Donnie winces. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” My voice is tight. I’m not breathing. “Me too.”
“You just found out?”
I nod. “When I got ho—back to the apartment.”
Donnie’s hand closes over mine and I grip it hard. It’s my lifeline, my tether. I’m drifting and it’s the only thing keeping me here, keeping me sane.
“You’re here now. You’re at my house, with me. You can stay here for as long as you want. You don’t have to go back there.”
I’m here. With Donnie. He’s going to let me stay. I’m safe here. Nothing bad can happen to me while I’m here.
I manage to eat a bit more and finish off the salmon and half the vegetables. Donnie watches me the entire time and his expression brightens with every bite I swallow. He’s proud of me. I want that gold star. I take another bite.
“Good job,” he says when I set the fork down, and a little bit of that giddy happy feeling I get at the end of spin class trickles through the muck in my brain. I think I even eke out a smile.
“Go on up to bed,” Donnie says.
I look at him. Donnie, The Sexy Spin Instructor. Salt and pepper hair, faint lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. He’s got stubble all along his jaw.
“Thank you,” I whisper. For dinner, for giving me a place to crash, for holding me while I melted down, for not getting upset when I ruined his shirt. I don’t know what I would’ve done if he hadn’t been at Mars. I suck in a gasping breath and hold it in my lungs.
“You’re welcome. Now go to bed.”
I nod, stand, and climb the stairs. Because Donnie, The Spin Instructor, told me to. And Donnie, The Spin Instructor knows what to do.