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“Sorry about that, Al. She’s new and not the best bartender. I was just talking to Murph about letting her go. Let me reup you.” Steve throws me a furious glance and snatches Phlegm’s stein from his hand.
I snap out of my dazed stupor in an immediate rush of anger.
Outside, the thunder and lightning rage on. They’ve grown louder and brighter, more menacing and consuming.
But I’m too pissed to let either paralyze me. At least in this moment.
I tear off my waist apron and toss it at Steve. The ball of fabric hits him in the chest, surprising him enough to drop the glass stein.
“You don’t have to fire me, Steve. I QUIT!” I scream. Then I round on Phlegm, my heart racing, and I reach for the half-full pint the last patron left behind on the counter. I toss the beer into his face and dare him to call me a bitch again.
Both men are in momentary shock as I storm for the exit. It’s only as I shove the doors open and escape into the thunderstorm that I hear Phlegm yell the ‘B’ word again.
But I don’t give a fuck.
I run down the block and cross the empty street. This time of night, few cars pass through. The motel emerges like a safe haven despite the fact that I’ve hated every minute of my stay here.
My breaths puff out of my lungs at an erratic pace, heaving my chest. I can’t get them to level off. I can’t even get a full breath in without feeling like I’m immediately expelling it.
My nerves are shot. My brain hazy. I’m soaking wet and surrounded by the storm that won’t leave me alone. It chases me every step of the way like it has my entire life—with jarring claps of thunder that vibrate in my soul and flashes of lightning that light up the plum sky and then leave me cloaked in lonely darkness the next second.
I slam shut the door to my motel room and bend halfway over, gasping for more air in my lungs.
Calm the fuck down, Syd. Calm down right now. It’s just a thunderstorm.
I close my eyes and urge myself to chill. It’s a harmless thunderstorm that shouldn’t rattle me like it does. That night was so many years ago, I barely remember any details beyond the thunderstorm itself…
The icy cold droplets on my skin. The pitch dark surroundings that only the bolts of lightning reprieved. The scream that stuck itself in my throat as the greater, thunderous boom eclipsed me. Even thesplish-splashof my birth mom’s footsteps as she wadded across the puddles to save my dad—only to be shot herself.
Mason’s words speak in my ear, like he’s a ghost present for this panicked moment of mine.
We are our experiences. You are who you are ’cuz of that night. You survived that thunderstorm, and you’ll survive this one too.
“I’m going to survive,” I whisper to myself. “I’ve survived before.”
My heart begins aching for a whole new reason.
Mace.
I’ve never been one to catch feelings easily—most of my exes were short relationships that started off fun and then snowballed into something slightly less fun and slightly more serious than I expected. They’d fizzle out eventually and I’d shrug my shoulders and move on.
It should be the same with Mason.
We had mind-blowingly good sex. We had some laughs and wound up enjoying each other’s company.
But it was only a few weeks. It meant nothing the whole time.
I was plotting against him. He was suspicious of me. We were a recipe for disaster.
It shouldn’t hurt this much to let him go, yet as my heart aches, and my thoughts linger on him, it feels like torture. I’m trapped in a maze of heartbreak that I don’t know how to process and escape.
I end up where I began.
What if… what if we could’ve…
I shake my head and step to the window. My heart’s still racing as my fingers curl into the fabric of the curtains and pry them open.
Just a little. Just enough to part them so I can see the slick parking lot in front of the motel. Semi-trucks fill it up, along with the occasional car loaded with suitcases. Travelers that stopped by this roadside motel for the night.
