Chapter 16
Albuquerque, New Mexico
A,
There’s a blonde woman in my bed.
She’s still asleep like she belongs there, but she doesn’t. I don’t even know her name.
I think I got maybe three hours of sleep. I’m still woozy, but the booze has mostly worn off. My body’s heavy. Head hurts. I can already feel that familiar ache in my throat from too much vodka and too much screaming over loud music.
The guys screw someone different every night without a second thought. But for me…
For me, it’s different.
Maybe we were sheltering each other by being each other’s first and only. Maybe that’s what made it so intense. Even as I write that, I know it’s bullshit.
Because all I could think about last night was how she didn’t feel like you.
She’s all sharp angles and firm where you’re soft and curvy. Her moans didn’t sound like yours, and I never realized how much I loved the way you’d breathe my name in my ear over and over. It was intoxicating. I took that for granted.
I kept hoping she’d take you off my mind. That maybe if I drowned myself in enough liquor and someone else, I could bury you. All she did was cement you right back at the center of my thoughts.
She was on me the second we walked into the bar. Ari had already disappeared with her friend—some guy he’d been talking to all night—which meant I had the room to myself.
And now, here I am, writing another fucking letter I’ll never send and trying to fill the void.
Maybe that’s the real betrayal.
We’re done. I know that. I’ve known that for a long time, but my body hasn’t caught up to my brain…and my heart? It’s still clinging to you like a damn fool.
I’ll try again.
I’ll keep trying.
Maybe next time, it won’t hurt so much. Maybe next time, I won’t feel like I’m tearing myself apart when I let someone else touch me.
Alcohol can’t be the only vice I lean on. And there’s always a line of women at the shows.
I can’t keep living in the past.
I have to move on.
For your sake.
And for mine.
I’m sorry,
Jay