I wouldn’t.
So I did the only thing I could think to do instead—I opened my phone and texted one of the women who was good at making me not think so deeply. A woman who I didn’t have to feel intense feelings toward.
April.
She was a sweet nurse at one of the local hospitals. She was off that night, so I invited her out to dinner. She talked a lot about meaningless shit, and that was what I needed for a few hours. I needed meaningless shit. We laughed and got drunk and talked about nothing that mattered. I loved it. It was the perfect distraction.
But then dinner was over. When the bill came, Karla slowly slipped back into my mind. I wondered how she’d been over the past nine years. I wondered what I’d missed. I wondered if she was in love with someone.
I wondered if she missed me.
I missed her.
I pretended that I didn’t, but how could I not? She was the last person who made me feel alive. Sometimes, I missed feeling alive.
Shit, Ash. Stop fucking thinking about her.
April tried to come home with me, but I declined the offer. That was odd.
I never declined that offer.
Instead, I kissed her cheek, got her a taxi, and then grabbed one for myself and headed home.
I sat in my childhood home with a bottle of whiskey in my hands, feeling annoyed that the second I was alone, my thoughts went back to Karla.
I drank for an hour, and still on my mind she stayed.
Then I went to bed and tried to force myself to sleep. I tried to erase the memory of her and those blue eyes from my brain. But when I closed my eyes, I could still see her, and when I fell asleep, I dreamed of her, too.
I’d fucked up by running into Karla. I’d fucked up by stopping by her shop afterward. My brain knew it was a dumb idea, but for the first time in years, my heart took the lead. And my heart missed her.
I missed her.
So now, I couldn’t shut her out of my thoughts. I couldn’t erase the fact that she’d appeared back in my life and flipped my whole world upside down with the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
Karla East was back in my life. I couldn’t close up Pandora’s box after it was opened. A part of me didn’t want to break my connection with her. A part of me wanted to lean more into Karla, because she’d always felt safe to me. It had been a long time since I felt safe. But leaning into her meant feeling deep shit that I’d tried to bury a long time ago.
No, stop being dramatic, Ash. You don’t have to feel shit.
I could be friendly with her. I was friendly with a lot of people.
Maybe the new connection I had with Karla didn’t have to feel heavy. I’d become a master at pretending that I was all right to the world. I could do the same with Karla. We’d keep our connection at a surface level. Just light conversations. Nothing heavy. Nothing personal. We’d be strictly public.
I’d keep Karla the same way I kept my connections with the rest of the world—at a distance.
***
Was I still alive? Yes. Barely breathing, though? Also yes.
It had been a few days since Karla and I exchanged messages. My heart felt as if it was going to fly straight from my chest based on how fast it was beating against my rib cage, not only from the idea of dinner with Karla, but from an exhausting game of basketball. I tried my best to catch my breath as I lay on the hot concrete, soaking wet, sweat in places that sweat didn’t belong.
It was the first full-blown perfect-weather day in Chicago that season. A solid seventy-five degrees, not a cloud in the sky. And somehow, the guys and I managed to have the day off to play basketball.
We played for a solid amount of time, hardly taking breaks. I’d never been so exhausted in my life. Chase collapsed to thecourt beside me with a water bottle in his hand. He took a long swig from it before splashing my face with the bottle.
I was so tired, I didn’t even react to getting drenched. It felt very much needed.
“I may never walk again,” I muttered.
