Jules’s chin wobbled. She pressed a fist to her mouth, her eyes glistening in the dim light.
“If you’d asked for the painting, I would’ve given it to you.” My voice cracked. “I would’ve given you anything you wanted.”
A sharp sob bled through her fist, followed by another, and another, until her gasping breaths soaked every molecule of air.
I watched, unmoving, as she hyperventilated, but my muscles strained with the effort to hold still.
I loathed the part of me that still wanted to comfort her. It was the part with no self-preservation, that needed her so much it would willingly hand her the knife to stab me in the chest just so she could be the last thing I saw before I died.
She was right. I was a masochist.
“Get out.”
Jules flinched at my quiet command. “Josh, please. I swear I didn’t—”
“Get. Out.”
“I lo—”
“Don’t you dare say it.” My pulse spiked with another burst of adrenaline. Breathe. Just fucking breathe. “I said, get out, Jules. Get the fuck out!”
She finally moved, her soft sobs growing fainter as she stumbled toward the door. It closed behind her, and then…silence.
The tension holding me upright collapsed.
I doubled over, hands on my knees, silent shudders wracking my body. The pressure inside me strangled every vital organ, but no matter how much it built and built, it refused to explode. It just sat there, suffocating me from the inside out.
Jules was gone, but I still felt her. She was everywhere—in every inch of the room, every fragment of my thoughts, every beat of my heart.
The visceral urge to destroy everything that reminded me of her propelled me off the couch and into my room. I rifled through my desk drawer for the Legally Blonde musical tickets and tore them into shreds, taking perverse satisfaction in the confetti of destroyed paper fluttering into my trash can.
Next went the shirt I let her borrow the first night she slept over; the receipt from Giorgio’s, which I’d kept as a stupid secret memento of our first date, and the pillow with her scent lingering on it. Every little thing that contained even the sparsest memory of us, destroyed and tossed.
By the time I finished, my room looked like how I felt: empty and hollow.
Unable to stand the sight of the stripped room, I walked to the kitchen and grabbed the nearest bottle of whiskey.
I would’ve been concerned about how much I’d been drinking lately if I gave a shit about anything except drowning out Jules’s lingering presence. It wasn’t like I was fucking blacking out every night.
I didn’t bother pouring the whiskey in a glass; I tipped my head back and chugged straight from the bottle.
I don’t know how much I drank, nor did I care.
I just drank and drank until I sank into the darkness of oblivion and thoughts of Jules finally faded from my mind.