Page 28 of Run Wild Omega

I help Mom clear a few tables, drying dishes while she recounts some gossip involving the mayor and a lost wig. She seems okay. She seems happy, humming along to the radio.

“You sure you’re all right, honey?” she asks as I grab my coat.

“I’m good. Just tired.”

I step out into the night. The air is freezing, biting at my cheeks. I pull my coat tighter, the familiar restlessness humming in my veins. I need to move. I need to run. But my legs are sore from the day, and my apartment is calling.

I decide to go home and sleep. I have to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.

Because that is what I do. I keep going.

Tess

Icheck my phone for the hundredth time in five minutes. 4:00 p.m.

I’ve been sitting on my couch for exactly thirty minutes—thirty minutes of staring at the sage green wall, counting the knots in the pine grain of the floorboards, rummaging through the refrigerator. Thirty minutes of feeling like my skin is too small, like there’s an energy buzzing under my bones that is desperate to get out.

It’s the restlessness. It always starts like this. A hum in the blood, an itch in the feet. Usually, a long day on the mountain kills it. Physical exhaustion is the only off switch I have. But today, the kids, the laundry, the pancakes—it wasn’t enough. My muscles are tired, but my mind is spinning, a centrifuge that won’t stop.

I remember this feeling. I remember it too well.

Back in Denver, when the Academy felt like a cage and the pressure to be perfect was crushing my windpipe, I used to get like this. I would pace my dorm room until my feet ached, my thoughts racing a mile a minute.

And back then, the only cure was him.

I squeeze my eyes shut, the memory of Marcus hitting me with the force of a physical blow. I would text him, desperate. Can I see you? Please, I just need to be near you. I would beg him to meet me, just to sit in his office or his car, letting his presence ground me. He always made me feel small for it, rolling his eyes, calling me needy, but he let me come. He let me sit on his couch while he graded papers, using me like a paperweight to hold down his own anxieties.

The thought of him, of how I used to crawl to him, sends a sour wash of bile to the pit of my stomach. I swallow it down, hard. I hate that I needed him. I hate that I let him make me feel like my restlessness was a character flaw instead of a symptom of a life that didn’t fit.

I stand up, pacing the small length of the room. Five steps forward, turn, five steps back.

“Stop it,” I whisper to the empty room.

I try to read. I grab a book from the shelf—a memoir about a woman hiking the PCT. I force myself to sit, to focus on the words.

The trail teaches you what you are.

I read the same paragraph five times. The letters blur together, meaningless black shapes on a white page. I slam the book shut.

Fine.

I grab my tablet and prop it up on the coffee table. I open YouTube, searching for “calming anxiety exercises.” A video with a woman in a flowing blouse on a beach pops up.

Inhale for four… hold for seven… exhale for eight.

I try. I breathe in until my lungs burn. I hold it. I exhale. I do it again. I try to visualize a calm lake, still waters.

All I see is the ice on the north face. I see Wyatt’s hand shaking around the coffee mug. I see the look in his eyes when he asked if I was happy.

I drop the tablet onto the cushions. “Bullshit.”

I try yoga. I get on the floor, stretching into a downward dog. My hamstrings scream, the tension in my shoulders pulling tight. I try to breathe through it, to find that “zen” state everyone talks about. I just feel like a tightly wound wire about to snap.

Nothing works. The hum gets louder. The walls feel like they’re closing in.

I flop onto my back on the rug, staring up at the ceiling. My pulse is racing a mile a minute. I need to come down. I need to break the circuit in my brain.

I slide my hand down, between my thighs.