Christ.
This isn’t only because of the drugs, is it?
“Preston? Are you there?”
“Hm.”
“If I’m coming back to you, it needs to be different this time.”
“Different how?”
“You can’t keep hiding from me and expecting me to be satisfied with scraps of you.”
“It’s just sex, Marcus. Why do you have to make it complicated?”
“Complicated?”
“Yes,complicated. Feelings are fucking complicated. Can’t we…” I breathe harshly. “Can’t we just have what we have?”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because I’m not your booty call. You don’t get to discard me the moment you’re done with my body.”
“But that’s what we are! You also think of me as your booty call.”
“No, I don’t.”
“N-no?”
“Correct. No. I want more of you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“You don’t even know me. You don’t know that I…”don’t exist.
I stopped existing a long time ago. I’m just Preston without a soul. Preston failed reboot. Preston made of nothing
“Don’t know what?”
The words choke me, never finding their way out.
The air thickens. It’s not air anymore—it’s water. Dense and slow, it slides down my throat when I inhale. My body moves through it, sluggish and wrong, the world muffled like it’s happening under the surface.
The phone falls from my hand and clatters to the floor. I try to reach out to it, but I don’t move.
Ican’t.
I’m being flooded by thick, muddy water as the static ignites in my brain.
“Preston?”
I can’t breathe.
“Fuck… Preston, can you hear me?”
