CONSCIOUSNESS
—Sunlight burned hot and yellow on my eyelids. My throat burned, and my mouth was scorched. My head pounded. Sand was gritty in my hot, throbbing eyes.
Groaning, I cracked one eye open.
Anchorage.
Hotel.
The wedding.
Dancing. Talking to my friends.
Duncan.
Oh, fuck.
Duncan.
I scoured my mind for clues, but it was all hazy and vague.
I heard him beside me, grunting in pain.
I cracked open one eye again, rolled my heavy, throbbing skull to face him. He was naked, his bare ass facing the window. The blinds were open—it was still relatively early.
I was naked, too.
Shit, shit, shit.
No, no, no.
Panic. Immense, immediate, blazing panic. It occluded everything else in my brain and left me with one thought:
ESCAPE !
I slid out of bed as quietly as possible, threw on a pair of leggings and T-shirt—no bra, no panties, which says a lot about how panicked I was, because I never go commando—shoved everything into my bag, and left.
I didn't tie back my hair, I didn't relieve my screaming bladder, nothing.
I didn't pack—makeup, phone charger, dirty clothes, everything just got shoved into my suitcase and zipped up.
No note.
I stopped in the restroom in the lobby and then caught a taxi to the airport, snagged coffee and breakfast there, and flew back to Seattle, where my car was waiting for me in the long-term lot.
Finally back in the Lower Forty-eight, I sat in my idling car, radio off, windows down to let out the old, stale air, and tried not to cry.
Why was I weepy?
I slapped my cheeks. "Get it together, Rune," I told myself out loud. "You're fine."
My phone rang: Duncan .
Dammit.
I sent it to voicemail and responded with a text message: Had to catch my flight. Thank you for a great weekend, and for everything you did for my friends. Sorry it had to be this way. Goodbye, Duncan.
I watched the blue bar creep across the screen, pause a quarter inch from the right side of the screen, and then the bar jumped to the end with the “bloop" of the message being delivered. A second later, it changed from 'delivered' to 'read.'
Three jumping dots…gone. Jumping dots…gone.
Nothing for over a minute.
And then he liked the message.
I waited another minute, but it was clear that's all there would be.
I didn't blame him; how could I? I knew he had feelings. I just…I can't go there. Not with him, not with anyone. But especially not with him—there is not a single part of me that wants to move to fucking Alaska. It was nice enough to visit, but live there? No.
Was there more to my resistance to the notion of being with Duncan? Probably. It likely had something to do with Hayes and the other assholes I’ve dated. They've all been uniformly terrible.
I don't trust myself.
I don't trust men.
Sure, Duncan seems great, on paper. He's hot as fuck in the face, has a great head of hair, incredible eyes; his body is to fucking die for, powerful, lean and hard, shredded, muscular.
That dick.
His mouth.
THAT DICK .
God, the sex was next level.
My vagina ached just thinking about it.
Something niggled in the back of my brain, a worm of doubt, a seed of worry.
What if—
Nope.
My phone rang again, and I cursed it out loud. "Stop fucking calling me, Duncan, Jesus. You're not changing my mind." And then I looked at the screen, realized it was Lindsey, and answered it. "Hi."
"Where are you, bitch? Duncan said you're not in your room, your stuff is all gone, and you sent him some blow-off text?"
I sighed. "I'm in my car in long-term parking at Sea-Tac. And it was not a blow-off text."
"What did it say?" she asked.
"Linz—"
"Read it to me, if it's not a blow off."
I read it to her. "See? Not a blow off.”
She just snorted. "It's a blow off.”
"How? What was I supposed to say, Linz?"
"You were supposed to stick around and talk to him face to face like a fucking adult!
" She snapped. "You owe him that much, at minimum, for everything he did for Raquel and Hamish…
which you and I both knew he did for you .
The man agrees to be your fake date to a wedding for people he doesn't know.
He uses his own personal contacts and resources to help your friends save their wedding.
He gives you multiple orgasms, which you yourself say are the best you've ever had.
He gives you the dicking down of a lifetime.
And what do you do? You ghost him the morning after and give him a shitty, immature blow-off text.
Seriously, Rune, 'thanks and sorry' doesn’t fucking cut it. "
My eyes burned. "Whose side are you on?" I hissed.
"I thought you were my best friend. You're supposed to have my back.
You of all people should understand how I'm feeling, why I'm…
." I shook my head. "You know what? Never fucking mind.
If you think Duncan Badd is so great and wonderful, you fuck him.
You have my permission. Go for it. Move to fucking Alaska for him. "
"Rune!" she gasped, audibly hurt. "I love you. But friends call each other out when it's necessary."
"I have to go. It's a long drive back to LA. Tell Raquel I'll call her later. Bye."
"RUNE!"
I hung up on her. I almost blocked her, but opted to silence her alerts instead. It was a temporary solution to my hurt and anger at my best friend's betrayal.
Fuck this.
I plugged my phone in and turned on a playlist of loud, aggressive, breakup songs—the same ones I'd listened to on repeat after fleeing LA and Hayes's infidelity.
Was that only two and a half months ago? It felt like I'd spent a year in Alaska. Like I’d had a whole, brief life there with Duncan and his family and their bars.
I set my GPS for home and left Sea-Tac.
I drove straight through, stopping only for gas and fast food. I made it home in twenty-three hours flat.
My condo felt weird.
Empty.
Silent.
The last time I was here, I was breaking up with Hayes. Now, I have Duncan on the brain.
Hayes is absent from this place, thank god.
His trophies, his clothes, that stupid fucking stuffed beaver he insisted just had to sit on my bookshelf for reasons he never fully articulated.
His toiletries were gone from my bathroom, his clothes from my drawers and closet.
On the bright side, I have my closet space back.
Why do I feel so flat and empty?
When I left LA all those weeks ago, I had this secret fantasy that I would come home feeling renewed and whole, with a new zest for life and a zeal for singlehood.
I'd be ready to take on the world. Find my dream job.
Meet the perfect guy at a cute little coffee shop around the block from my corner office that I'd somehow already have at my brand new dream job.
The reality of my homecoming is…slightly different.
I don't feel any better about myself. About life.
I have no fucking clue what my dream job even is.
That's the reality—I have a degree in business management and no clue what to do with it.
I enjoyed the classes, mostly. I liked the theories and concepts, and I excelled in pretty much every aspect of college. I'm a 4.0 student, an achiever.
But…now what?
Business as a concept is one thing. But now I'm out here in the real world with a diploma and a hell of an expensive education and not a fucking clue what to do with it. What business am I supposed to be in? Marketing? Management? How do you get into management? That’s not even a field, that's a rank, a position. Film? Music? Tech?
Do I just scour the want ads? Go on Indeed or whatever? Send out my resume at random?
I'm already in the throes of an existential crisis, and I've been home all of twenty minutes. I haven’t even unpacked.
"Get it the fuck together, Rune," I said, talking to myself out loud for the second time in one day like a real crazy person.
I unpacked. Started laundry. Put new sheets on my bed—and threw away the old ones on which I'd had who knew how much sex with Hayes. Called my parents and spent a good hour on the phone with them, filling them in on the wedding—without mentioning Duncan, of course.
At the end of the conversation, Mom said her goodbye, ending with a strict order to come over for dinner tonight. Dad, however, lingered on the line.
"You need something else, Dad?" I asked.
He sighed, a gruff half-growl. "Hayes was never good enough for you, Sweet-Pea."
"You can say you told me so, I'm a big girl, I can take it," I said.
"I don't need to—you just said it for me. And I’m not trying to, like, rub anything in your face, honey. I just…you deserve a man . Someone who will take care of you."
"I can take care of myself, Dad."
"I know. And the man who deserves you will know that too, and he'll still take care of you.
He'll do it because you can take care of yourself.
Hayes Willoughby is a needy, whiny, sad sack of shit who couldn't find his asshole with both hands, a map, and a goddamn flashlight.
It's no secret I never knew what you saw in him.
I ain't a twenty-something girl, so maybe he really is hot or something.
I dunno. Or maybe he's got a really big you know what. "
"DAD!" I screeched. "WHAT THE FUCK?"
"Well? I don't get it. What did you see in that simpering fuckwit?"
"You really want the nitty-gritty details, Dad?
" I snapped. "Yes, it was mostly the sex.
Okay? He was good-looking. Not, like, scorching hot, but that's the point.
The hottest guys are always the biggest assholes.
Hayes was good-looking but not a player.
We were physically compatible. And yes, his you-know-what is—"
“I TAKE IT BACK, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW," Dad cut in, loudly enough I yanked the phone away from my ear.
I cackled. "I didn't think so."
"But he is a player, isn't he?"
"No, he's just a cheating fuckwit."
"I just don't get it. I don't get cheaters, especially ones who cheat with someone uglier than the person they're cheating on."