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What…what have I done? How did I ruin the best thing to ever happen to me so quickly?
And maybe most important…am I ever going to be able to fix it?
Tuesday, June 6th
Brooke
The whole motor home shakes with a repeated bang on the door, startling me awake. I’ve been here since yesterday around checkout time from the hotel room, just waiting and hoping for Chase to come back and talk to me.
It’s the worst kind of feeling, being helpless to do anything proactive.
Aside from texting and calling his phone a couple of times, which either went straight to voice mail or was left unanswered, I haven’t even been able to form any other thoughts aside from a wallow.
I know how pathetic that is—and trust me, my dog has given me more than enough looks to confirm it—but my sister is already on her way back to New York, my parents are probably already in Ohio, Chase is gone and I don’t know if he’s coming back, and I don’t know how to fix this.
If there was any part of me that could come up with some kind of a solution, I’m sure I’d be doing better, but as it is, I’m just surviving. Benji is dog-tired, no pun intended, and I’ve been on the brink of unconscious more times in one night than I’ve been in years.
As it turns out, handling this level of hysteria with my condition isn’t something I have exactly worked out.
I jump up off the couch, catching my leg in a tangle in the blanket I fell asleep sobbing into last night. I have to twist like a toy top to free myself, before I can lunge for the door.
I don’t even bother to check myself or wipe the slobber from my chin before jerking it open with a painfully hopeful, “Chase?”
The unknown man’s eyebrows climb almost to his receding hairline, and he takes a step back in the shock of my aggression. “Uh, no, ma’am. I’m Mark. Your driver for the trip back to New York?”
His inflection is in a question, almost certainly because this is information he expected me to know, but I’m too much of a mess to know anything.
If the call wasn’t coming from Chase, I didn’t answer it. If the message wasn’t him answering my apologies, I wasn’t reading it.
And since he didn’t call or message me back, I haven’t talked to anyone besides Benji.
In the interest of safety, I know I should check that Mark is who he says he is before letting him aboard. But I’ll be honest; I’d rather take my chances on being brutally murdered than speak to Wilson Phillips at this juncture. I can’t imagine he’d be impressed with the mess I’ve created out here, even without the use of planes.
I step aside and hold the door open, but Mark hesitates before filling the opening. I don’t blame him. I’m a ball of unblown snot and tear-streaked skin, and the statistical chance that I’ll latch on to any living point of comfort in the next thirty seconds is incredibly high.
As he steps inside and begins the routine of readying the camper for the road, memories of Chase doing the same the first morning after we made love flood me. The smiles, the winks. The teasing looks and touches as I dared him to flex his muscles.
Oh God. It hurts.
I drop into a ball on the sofa again, and poor Mark works around me with wide eyes. I can’t even pretend not to cry, though. The pressure in my ducts is just too damn strong.
A sob escapes my throat, and Benji curls up next to me. As ridiculous as I am, my best friend can feel the very real and raw pain in the place my hysteria is coming from.
Chase isn’t coming back. Not now, and maybe not ever.
And I’ve got the next fourteen and a half hours to myself to think about it. Just hysterical Brooke Baker and her new driver Mark.
A sob breaks free again, and I bury my puffy face into the blanket in my lap as a very scary realization dawns on me.
This story…my story…may not have a happy ending.
Wednesday, June 7th
Brooke
My bag bumps along the sidewalk behind me as I walk the final block to my apartment building from the train. After fifteen hours on the bus with a man I didn’t know—and still don’t know, thanks to the off-putting nature of my complete mental breakdown, or as I like to call it, Menty B—he parked in the lot downtown and sent me on my way to take the subway home.
Several people stared at me on the ride, which is really saying something in a city like New York, so I know I must look pretty fucking terrible, but I wouldn’t dare tempt confirming it with a mirror right now.
