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I blink my eyes open and focus first on the pillow, the creases looking like a rolling sea and I want to heave. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but it doesn’t feel like enough. My body is as heavy as lead.
I manage to prop up on one elbow to take in my surroundings, and then remember my shitty motel room. The blinds are drawn shut, but the sun stubbornly finds a way to slip through a crack. Empty bottles and discarded clothing litter the room. I don’t know what day it is and I don’t care. I can’t remember the last time I ate, and just like my stomach, I feel empty inside.
Fully awake now, my present circumstances slam down on me like an unrelenting wave, and I am drowning in it.
I pull the journal across the bed towards me, noticing the torn pages, the ink bleeding through, and it looks battered, just like my heart.
My heart on fire
Like the demons in my soul
I can’t stay away
The basements way too close
My tears fall like rain
Your love is like venom
Ripping through my veins
But I love the pain
I flip it closed and clutch it against my chest as if it were my only lifeline.
The screen on my phone lights up. Just let me know you’re ok. The text reads. I look around the room and find no semblance of my own humanity.
No, I am not okay.
I am far from okay, and I don’t know how to pull myself out of it.
I’m twenty-five years old, but I feel as though I have already been used up and burned out when my life should be just beginning.
The one thing I had was music, but that has slipped from my grasp. In my heart, I always knew it was fleeting because even stars fade from the night sky. I never thought it would happen so soon. Not when my star had just begun to light up the dark.
Mogo was my family. I always held on to that first, not the flame in my heart for Jack or the spark that had grown for Cash. How could I be in love with two men at the same time? It felt impossible, and yet it had happened.
One burned like a comet ripping through the sky, and the other, a beacon of light, solemn, and beautiful calling me home.
I want to go home, but I can’t.
I burned it to the ground.
All that’s left are the ashes.
The screen on my phone lights up again. I need to know you are not face down in a ditch somewhere, it reads, Or God forbid, sitting alone in a motel room littered with empty vodka bottles. That gets my attention and I sit up, instantly regretting it. Holding my head, I look around suspiciously for a hidden camera.
I stumble out of the bed and head to the door to look out the peephole, but I don’t see anyone. I shake my head, fully prepared to crawl back under the blankets when I get another text. Don’t you think you need a shower instead of going back to bed? I whip my head around too quickly, causing momentary vertigo.
A tap on the window and an eye peering through the gap in the blind causes me to scream. I hold onto my chest. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yell at Wade as I open the door. He doesn’t wait for me to invite him in before brushing past me, his nose scrunched up, and his critical eyes surveying the room.
“What… what is that smell?” he asks, and then slowly backs away from me. “Oh,” he observes. “It’s you.”
I ignore his comment because I already know what kind of shape I’m in. “How did you find me?”
Wade moves to the window and pulls the curtains apart, letting in the sun.
“Do you mind?” I yank them closed again.
