ELLIOT
“You can’t fire me,” Amanda says, popping her gum loudly. Her painted blue lips smirk at me, and I sigh heavily. Monday has rolled around, and I’ve been feeling awful. My head throbs, my chest aches, and I’ve repeatedly broken out in a cold sweat. I think I’m coming down with something, probably the flu. I shouldn’t have come into work today. I could be contagious. It could be some kind of infection that spreads far and wide, killing off millions.
“I can. And I did.”
She rolls her eyes and continues clacking on her computer.
“Whatever you say,” she says to the screen but makes no move to pack up her stuff. Instead, she seems to just squish herself further into the seat, planting herself there. She’s growing roots. Pretty soon, she’ll be an Ent fromLord of the Ringsand birds will be flying in here just to nest in her hair.
Well, fine, she can just stay if she wants. She never listens to me anyway.
I huff my annoyance once more, which is ignored, and move toward my office. It’s cluttered and messy like my head. I should tidy up a bit, but I lack the motivation.
The only motivation I have is to check my phone obsessively. It burns a hole in my pocket; my pants are practically on fire. Because hestillhasn’t texted me, and it’s been almost twenty-four hours.
My battery is hanging on for dear life because I just stare at it incessantly, and it’s only early afternoon. The phone charger in my office is broken. I think Amanda cut the cord, so I’ll have to suffer another four hours of patients before I can get home, plug my phone in to charge, and check my messages again. I think she did it because I hurt Luke.
She’s been giving me the evil eye all day, even muttered something incoherent under her breath. She’s probably hexing me.
No need, Amanda. I’m already cursed.
A small part of me wants to just cancel my appointments and go home to putter around the empty space, but then the adult part of my brain tells me that I can’t call out sick to mope.
Even if I’m coming down with something awful.
I’ve never felt so sick in my entire life.
Not even after Andrew and I ended things.
By the end of the day, my dead phone hangs heavily in my pocket, and my inability to check my messages has caused my anxiety to peak. I’m completely worn out. After my last patient, I slump over my desk and just breathe.
I doze off for a minute and wake up with a start. When I plod toward the exit, I see that Amanda is already gone. She’s left behind a passive-aggressive post-it note on the door.
Grow a spine.
Is it passive, or is it just plain aggressive? I don’t really know.
I tear it off and stuff it into my pocket.
What spine am I supposed to grow, huh? He’s the one who decided to ghost me. But then again, I never gave us a chance to begin with. I made my choice, and he made his.
It’s the end of something that barely even started.
I hobble to my car and slip inside, resting my head on the steering wheel. When I can’t stand the throb behind my eyes a moment longer, I reach into the glove box and grab a few Advil. I pop them into my dry mouth and swallow them. They claw and scratch as they move down my throat. They obviously don’t want to help relieve the pain I’m in. Even they’re pissed at me.
I finally put my car in drive and make my way home slowly. I have no desire to be in that empty house all by myself. How quickly things have changed in a matter of weeks.
There is a slight desire to call my sisters and ask them to come over, just to have them fill the space. But then I think of how they’ll ask me endless questions I don’t want to answer, and I throw that thought in my mental trashcan.
No, it’s better to sulk alone.
That way, no one can see how pathetic I’ve become.
When I finally arrive, I shuffle into the house and flop down on my couch, but that just reminds me of him, so I move to the guest bedroom to plug in my phone. The one room in the house he hasn’t really touched.
I blink at my bright phone screen in the darkness as I lie sprawled out on the bed. I pull up the video that he’d taken of us cresting the Manitou Incline and my chest heaves. God, he’d looked so happy. So in contrast to when I’d told him this was just sex. What a lying asshole I am. It was never just sex.
That smile on his face, the way he kissed my knuckles. I can’t. It hurts too much to watch it, so I click the phone off. And then I click it back on and before I can tell myself not to, I’m typing.