Page 93 of How To Not Need You

Sadly, my body had other ideas. I feel like I can’t breathe. As though I was trying to focus through the panic and ringing that had taken up residence in my skull. So I did the only thing I could in that moment.

I ran to my car and left. I think I was halfway out of town when I realised and pulled over. My hands feel separate from my body. My chest feels like it might explode.

I think about yesterday in Jake’s arms and how safe and happy I felt.

How we made Tilly laugh together before she got ready for bed.

How stupid could I be? Did I not already learn my lesson?

Apparently not. My heart certainly didn't get the memo.

My vision starts to blur. I move my hand to my cheek in shock at the wetness I feel on my cheeks. I can hardly remember the last time I cried. I don’t know what to do.

Should I turn around? Should I go and confront him?

I don’t want him to see what this is doing to me.

I don't want to walk into that station crying and give him the chance to explain me out of what I saw.

Worse, I don't want to discover there is no explanation.

Did she come around after I left last night?

With much more effort than usual, I pry my remaining hand from the wheel. Digging out my phone I decide that I need the people who love me. So I open the group chat and send one word.

Help.

The phone battery dies somewhere between “Help” and the little bouncing dots that mean someone’s typing. It just goes blank, the screen a mirror for my own stunned, stupid face. I want to throw it, but that would be dramatic and I am not dramatic, I am rational, I am calm, I am sitting in my car on the side of the Princes Highway like I’m living out the saddest cliché in the world.

I stare at the dead screen. Then at my charger-less phone, then at the empty road ahead of me. The only sound in the car is my own breathing, which has that weird, brittle quality, the one it gets before you cry or after you’ve been punched in the stomach. I grip the steering wheel again so tightly that my fingers leave little white prints on the leather.

This is fine. Everything is fine.

My brain begins production on a full-length anxiety feature film, premiering now: Every Stupid Thing I Thought Was Real, starring Olivia Carter as The Idiot Who Forgot How This Feels.

Stop it Liv. Stop it, Liv.

You know how to do this.

You leave.

You don't beg. You don't ask someone to choose you. You don't stand around waiting for a man to explain why what you saw isn't what you saw.

You fucking leave.

I pull myself together enough to go to the nearest fuel station and pay an exorbitant amount for a new charger. I must look worse than I think as the attendant looks like he's debating whether he needs to call an ambulance.

Fuck him and his judgment. I stomp out of there with probably more anger than necessary and slam the door to my car.

After several breaths that achieve absolutely nothing I take the time to plug the new charger into my car and just wait.

When it finally wakes up I am immediately inundated with notifications and Harper calls pretty much immediately.

I answer on the first ring and she doesn’t waste time on hellos.

“What do you need?”

The steadiness in her voice is my undoing. I open my mouth to say something biting, something sarcastic and self-protective probably, but what comes out is barely a whisper. “I think I just made the biggest idiot out of myself in history.”