The cold metal penetrates my shirt and absorbs into my heated skin that still radiates from the orgasm I just had. Wiping beads of sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, I slack against the bathroom stall door, staring blindly down at the wad of toilet paper that’s floating in the water.
My fucking disgrace.
I started falling apart the moment Adaline began distancing herself from me, and now that she’s gone, I’m spiraling downward in a free fall. Stress and heartache do nothing but feed the craving that’s become so overpowering, I don’t bother trying to fight it. It wins every time.
Every drop of misery triggers me. It screams through my veins, torments my body, and takes me as its hostage until I give in. And then it spits me out, leaving me buried beneath a mountain of shame. The more I hate myself, the more I give up on the idea that I could be anything other than the sexual deviant Adaline never wanted to believe me to be.
God, I miss her.
Shoving my dick back into my pants, I flush the toilet and compose myself before returning to my desk. My skin crawls in disgust for myself, hating that I continue to be so weak, still jerking off anywhere and everywhere, even in the bathroom stalls here at work.
I busy myself, entering notes into the case logs, doing my best to distract myself, but she’s always there. She always has been. Ever since I opened my soul to her, she’s lived inside me and there’s no getting her to leave. She’s the breath I breathe, my life source, my everything. I’m constantly wrapped in thoughts of her with no hope of untangling myself.
A part of me wishes I could just forget about her because the memories are too painful to carry around. But I do, because I have no other choice. She left me here to rot in the visions of how fucking perfect she was. Left my heart to beat in shades of purple and blue, bruised by the loss, leaving my ribs forever sore. My chest hurts constantly.
Heartache is a motherfucker.
“You’re still here?”
I look up from the file I’ve been working on to realize that everyone around me has left and it’s dark outside.
“Everything okay?” Cheryl asks, her voice gentle.
What a stupid question. I’m so far from okay I doubt I’ll ever come in contact with that feeling again.
“Just trying to finish this before I head out.”
She takes a seat in a chair from across my desk. “The files can wait until after the break. You should spend this time getting ready for your finals, not here, pulling late nights.”
She’s right. Thanksgiving is in a couple of days, and then after that, it’s crunch time for finals before the semester ends. It isn’t as if I’m worried about not doing well on my exams. All I seem to do these days is bury myself in school and work—anything to distract myself from thinking about her.
“Kason,” she says worriedly as she leans forward and lays her hand over mine.
Without a single thought, I ask, “How is she?”
Her face falls.
I ask her this every day, and every day, she serves me the same bullshit answer.
“She’s better.”
I know it’s a lie. If she felt half of what I feel for her, she would be writhing in the agony over the breakup, but that isn’t what has me most concerned. It’s what happened to her that caused the breakup that has me steeped in constant torment. Knowing how broken she was makes me hate myself for not pushing her more, for not saying it aloud and forcing her to deal with it. I think of all the ways I could’ve helped her, if only one of us had the guts to speak the truth. That some guy put his hands on her.
I look at Cheryl, jealous that Adaline gave her the secret she kept from me.
“When is she coming back? How much longer is she going to hide from me?”
Her thumb brushes over the top of my knuckles as I fist my hand in frustration. From the moment I found out she was gone, I’ve been doing all I can to track her down. I called the three people who know her the best, asking them if they know where she is.
Molly said she hadn’t spoken to Adaline since the summer. Trent has never answered my calls or texts. But Micah, I only spoke to him once. The asshole told me to fuck off and leave her alone, but I couldn’t. I called and called, until eventually giving up last week.
Everything inside me says that he knows exactly where she is.
“You can’t look at it like that, Kason. She isn’t hiding, she’s just doing what she has to in order to heal.”
“It should be me. I should be the one to heal her.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she says. “She has to do it for herself.”
My hand clenches tighter as emotions fire off inside me until frustration takes over. I slam my fist against the desk, causing Cheryl to startle. I push my chair back and start packing the files so I can work on them at home.
“Kason . . .”
“I’m done talking about it,” I mumble before grabbing my keys and standing.
She follows as I make my way out to the parking lot, and when I open my car door and toss the files in, she reaches for my arm, and I lose my composure.
“What the fuck did I do? Can someone please tell me why I’m the only one who doesn’t have a clue where she is?” I kick the door shut. “I’m the only one that should know! But I don’t. Instead, I have everyone either lying to me or dodging me. It’s fucked up!”
“We have to just trust her, Kason. Trust and support her and the choices she’s making.”
“How can I support her if I can’t even fucking hold her? Do you have any idea how hard this is? To know—” I rake my fingers through my hair. “To know what happened and to be powerless to help?”
“But you are helping. I know it isn’t how you want it to be, but giving her this space is helping.”
“Just tell me,” I exhaust, my voice severing as agony slices through me. “Tell me where she is.”
Like a weak boy, I fall into her arms the second she holds them wide for me. She rubs my back, consoling me as if she were my own mother. Selfishly, I take the comfort she’s offering because it’s the only relief I’ve been given.
It was only two weeks ago, after my mom kept asking where Adaline was, that I finally told her we had broken up. Sure, she hugged me and told me she was sorry, but my mom has never taken a deep investment in my life. Not like Adaline’s mother, who consistently checks in on me. I told her she could stop, that I could find another place to work, but she shut me down, saying, “Our relationship is not one of obligation. I care about you and what happens to you, whether or not Adaline is involved.”
Stepping back from her, I press my palms over my eyes in a lame attempt to mask my sadness. There’s no hiding it, though. It’s so thick and so raw I can taste it on the back of my tongue.
“What can I do?”
I drop my hands and look at her. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“I’m leaving town tomorrow, but if there’s anything you need, you know you can call me.”
“She isn’t even coming home for Thanksgiving?”
“Ady thought it would be easier this way.”
My muscles tighten around bones when I think back to last Thanksgiving. It was the three of us together and everything was so perfect. I remember holding Adaline in my arms while we lay in the hammock under the moon. She was always so warm against me.
Cords in my throat constrict, and before I allow myself to sink into a place of feeling too much, I say, “Tell her I love her,” before getting into my car and speeding away.
My vision blurs momentarily, and I hate that I allowed myself to go to that place where the deep-seated pain is rooted within the core of me. I know better than to let my guard down the way I just did. I’m far from strong enough to manage these feelings, which is why I bury them down and then medicate myself the only way I know how. It’s the one thing that can take me from the lowest low and catapult me to the highest high, making my head trip out to a place where nothing else exists except me and euphoria.
Pulling up to a red light, I take out my cell, fiending for an escape.
Me: You home?
The light turns green, and as I’m driving, my cell vibrates with her response.
Lauren: I’ll leave the door unlocked.
I can already feel the rush spreading through my body and down my limbs. I met Lauren through a hookup app. I started using it when my cravings grew beyond the capacity of what I was willing to let Krista know. I can still recall the look on Adaline’s face when I confessed to her how many times a day I get off. It’s a look I never want to see again, especially from Krista. Although, that number is no longer relevant because it’s so much higher, which is why I now have two other girls other than Krista I can turn to.
The nice thing about this app is that everyone has the same common denominator—no strings attached, casual hookups. There’s nothing I need to explain, and no guilt I need to feel about using them the way I am. I have enough guilt of my own to manage, I don’t need theirs thrown at me, too.
When I arrive at her townhome, the front porch light is on and the door is unlocked just as she said it would be. I walk in, and this chick is already naked and waiting for me on her couch. There’s no talking involved as I drop my pants and fuck her. I stare down at her body, and that’s it—I’m completely lost in a wave of sexual mania that’s out of my grasp of control. All I can see, taste, touch, feel, and hear is this—this right here. I’m gone, no longer a being, trapped within the confines of my skin. There’s no more weight, no more boundaries. This girl lets me go places with her that no one else I’m with allows me to go, only feeding my hunger to want more, giving me higher highs than what I knew before.
But with those exquisite highs come the excruciating lows that follow. It hits me violently when I get back into my car. The numbness dissolves and the self-loathing fills the vacuum left behind. I hate myself for being so impulsive, for being so lewd, for being so dirty. There was a time when sex felt holier than divinity, but that was because of Adaline. With her, it was something else completely. She wasn’t this inanimate object like the others are. She was warmth and softness, love and trust, heart and my goddamn soul. She made me feel worthwhile and important. She made me feel whole.
And now?
Now I’m nothing.
I’m worthless and self-serving, and I know it. She was it, the only thing worthy of my trying to be better.
She’s gone, and I’m all alone, discarded and weak. So, what’s the point?
How could she do this?
How could she throw me away like a piece of garbage?
No explanation. No goodbye. No nothing.
How do you do that to someone you love?
I wish I could understand, but she wouldn’t give me that chance, either. Now, here I am, a foul excuse for a human, who’s hopelessly in love with the ghost of my past.