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The problem being, of course, as I curled into my own bed, that what was broken away wasn’t just him, wasn’t just Gadget and Captain and even Red.
It was me.
A big part of me.
And I felt like half a person back in this world, overwhelmed and uncomfortable even if, admittedly, my mattress was much more comfortable than Ranger’s couch – or even Ranger’s bed – had been. Even if the room was warmer. Even if there was no dog snoring or whining.
I slept then, dreaming of crickets and owls, of crackling fires, and hands in my hair.
I stayed there a whole day and night, letting myself wallow, letting the pain wrap its arms around me like an old friend.
It was only on the second day that my mother’s voice whispered in my head, an old memory. Back from high school when I rolled the dice on a guy who promised a future, took my virginity, and then moved onto the next girl within a week. She’d found me sobbing in my bed for the third night in a row, coming in, sitting down, and placing her hand on my hip.
“Some men will be worth two nights of your tears, Meads,” she informed me with a knowledgeable nod. “But not a single one in this whole wide world is worth three nights of them. So you are going to get up. We are going to order pizza. And watch a movie. And move on, okay?”
She’d been right. That boy had not been worth three nights of tears. Neither had a single one after that.
And while a little voice in my head – okay, a shrieking, megaphone-wielding one – told me that if there was a man who was worth three nights of my tears, it was Ranger, I somehow felt like my mother would be disappointed if she could see me wallowing.
So I got up.
I showered.
I got dressed.
I made myself a box of macaroni and cheese. Then ate the entire thing on my couch in front of the TV, watching that very same movie my mother and I had watched. It had been a favorite of hers, one about a couple who could never make it work until after a tragic accident crippled the heroine. She always found it romantic. I thought it was sad, though I had never told her that.
But sad wasn’t a bad thing, not right then. Somehow, it felt validating. I maybe understood why she liked it. After my father, after the pain and disappointment and abandonment she had felt because of him. Then watching a movie about a man who had found his woman, who had wanted her, wheelchair and all.
I got it now.
And I watched the movie three times in a row before I remembered that this life, well, it came with complications, obligations.
Like the things I had never handled before someone… well, just before.
My missing credit cards, my IDs.
I found my laptop, the click of the keys overly loud to my ears so unaccustomed to them, signing into my bank, checking my balances.
Amazingly, everything was untouched save for what seemed to be the withdrawals of a few auto-pay bills. Wherever the cards ended up, no one had used them to drain my accounts. Which was lucky, since I clearly did not have my old job anymore. Not after up and disappearing like I had.
Work.
“Ugh,” I grumbled, slamming closed my laptop, tossing it to the far end of the couch.
It was funny how things – like mindsets – could so effortlessly change. Had you spoken to me a mere month ago, I would have told you that I much preferred the monotony of office work, of desk work to the physically arduous work of manual labor. And yet now, I would have chosen the labor over the mind-numbing rote tasks done to the tune of clicking keyboards, mindless chatter, and the unassuming top forty adult alternative radio station that played on repeat eight hours a day, every day of the week.
But there wasn’t exactly a lot of manual labor jobs in New Jersey. Not ones that would want a woman anyway, let alone one as clueless as I was. I’d learned some things, certainly, but I was no expert. Even if I could find such a job, I would be the least hirable candidate – this woman whose resume only included banking work.
What could I do, though, without being able to use my old work as a job reference?
On a sigh, I pulled myself off the couch, going into the kitchen, slipping a pod into my Keurig, smelling the coffee filling the air, something that now only brought memories of Ranger in his kitchen, pouring boiling water over grounds in the press.
The pain was as raw as it had been days before, aching enough to make my hand press to my heart again, but I took my coffee, pushed the thoughts away, down. I pushed them down. I decided there was no away. But down was a coping mechanism I could work with.
