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Mason
Then…
Why did I run?
In no way did it make sense to. I had been gone from Vegas for over a week. Saving thirty or so seconds certainly wouldn’t make a difference. Running was ridiculous. Duffel bag bouncing on my back. Sweat from the brutal Vegas sun dripping from under my arms. Lungs struggling in the arid desert air like I’d been fucking for hours as I took the stairs two, three at a time. And why? Why? Why did I run?
I knew why. Of course I fucking knew why. Because I didn’t believe that she would stay. Because I knew I’d given her a chance to get out and she’d taken it. Because I didn’t trust one bit that she would be sitting there inside her apartment, worried and concerned and confused and, sure, a little pissed off, but there.
Because I didn’t believe that she believed in me. In us.
So I ran like some idiot who thought he could catch her. Catch her as she locked the door for the last time. Catch her as she got into the cab without a glance back at the flashing lights we’d fallen in love under. Catch her as she drove away. I’d be the eejit standing in the middle of the street. Screaming her name. Believing, stupidly, that I could catch her if I just ran. If I just ran a little faster.
I yanked on her apartment door handle so hard I’d nearly torn it from the door. All to find it locked.
There was no answer when I rang the bell. No answer when I knocked. No answer when I pounded. I’d run so far, so fast all just to stand outside a locked door with no answer. There was no answer when I shouted her name. No answer when I shouted for so long, so loud that I was again breathless. Again bending over at the knees. Again dripping with sweat that smelled this time like panic.
Eventually the super either heard me or heard someone’s complaint about me. He arrived at the door after walking at a snail’s pace down the hall. I’d watched him. I remember being curious how he could move so slowly. How he could care so little. How it wasn’t a big deal at all for him that the world was falling apart around me.
In the end I think he let me inside out of pity. And because the unit was empty. Maybe because he saw me as a potential rental. Or he just didn’t give a fuck and it was the easiest way to get me to shut the fuck up, to go away, to restore the goddamn peace.
I called her name as I ran inside the apartment even though I’d been told she was “gone”. But I ran like an eejit. I ran.
I called Rachel’s name and ran like a dog through the few small rooms. Anyone could see they were empty. Abandoned. Nothing more left but an old mattress on the floor in the bedroom and a half-used bar of soap in the bathroom.
“When?” I asked the super, who was leaning against the door frame.
He gave a bored shrug that made me want to grab his throat and shake him.
“Couple days ago,” he said.
I shook my head. That’s all she’d given me? A couple days? Less than a week? Less than we’d even known each other? I grabbed at my hair. Yanked at it till it hurt.
“A number,” I said, a stupid ray of hope flaring in my chest. “A note. She left me something. Anything. Surely she left me something. A way to find her.”
The super stared at me, looked me up and down like he was trying to recognise me.
“And you are?” he finally asked.
The question hit me harder than it should have. Because what was the answer? I was the man the previous tenant had been fucking. I was the one-night stand who turned into a week night’s stand. I was one she was going to spend forever with. No, really. I was. I was. She told me. She promised. We promised. It was more. More. I swear.
Fucking hell, I would sound insane.
I sank down against the kitchen island. My head fell into my hands.
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I’m the guy she was seeing for a while.”
The super scuffed his toes at the yellowed linoleum.
“You know, son,” he said gruffly, “sometimes it’s best to know when to let someone go.”
I laughed bitterly as I raised my head.
“‘Let someone go?’ ‘Let someone go?’ What about this looks like I can let her go?”
I waved my hands wildly around the place. The empty, abandoned, forsaken place.
“No,” I said angrily. “No, sometimes it’s best to know when you’ve been left. That’s the answer here. Because she took that from me. Took the ‘letting go’ from me. I’m left. I’m always the fucking left.”
