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Hopped up on a feeling I didn’t want to acknowledge, I beelined it to the bar against the left side of the room. I had no need to contemplate which liquor I desired. They were all top shelf and would do what I needed, dull my raging mind. I slammed back three full tumblers of whiskey. Barely taking a breath between each one.
I grabbed my cell phone and pulled up Hazel’s number. The picture on the screen, one I’d taken while she was relaxing on the couch reading, gutted me. I’d snapped the picture and she’d looked up and smiled. The sweet, caring smile I had convinced myself was for me alone.
What if now she was giving that same smile to some other fucker. One that had no idea how to cherish her. My traitorous thoughts jumped in the other direction. What if, unlike me, he recognized the true treasure of my Hazel and wanted her for his own. What if he charmed his way into her life and convinced her to move out of the penthouse and in with him.
This sick game of ‘what if’ played in an unending loop inside my head. Only getting worse with each new scenario.
I yelled and chucked my nearly six hundred dollars, black Edo Kiriko Meteor Whisky glass into the fireplace. The sound of the crystal breaking fed the anger deep inside me.
I stopped at my desk and swept my arm along the top, sending files, books, and desk supplies crashing to the floor. Next, I turned to my neatly stacked and coordinated books on the five bookcases behind my desk. Hazel had organized them by genre and author. The colorful bindings only reminded me of her. I grabbed the nearest book and threw it to the ground.
I checked my phone. No response.
I sent another text to Hazel and then another before grabbing an armful of books and sending them flying. The satisfying thud of when they connected to the floor felt good. Irrationally, I needed to erase her presence in my home. And that started with ruining something she had created. If she didn’t care about how her going on a date might affect me, then I didn’t care about this ridiculous setup she had created. My designer had set them all together by color, which had been fine.
Unbidden, the memory of her standing in the middle of my office, laughing, telling me that a rainbow aesthetic wasn’t me scraped at my consciousness. Well, neither was this.
“Fuck!” I screamed into the void of the room.
I grabbed my phone from the nearby bookshelf and texted Jess.
JARETH
Where is she?
When Jess didn’t immediately respond I shoved my phone into my pocket. Now, my gaze fixated on the rest of the books in front of me. Their spines only pissed me off further. I tossed more to the ground and then pounded a couple glasses of whiskey down my throat before chucking that tumbler at the fireplace. This time, my aim was off, and instead of shattering inside the hollowed-out brick opening, it hit the outer edge and broke all over the rug nearby.
Who the fuck cared.
I checked my phone. This time the messages looked like they had been delivered. Yet two minutes later I still had no response. Not even the floating bubbles indicating she was responding. And maybe I didn’t care anymore if she was on a date or going on one or that Hazel and the mystery guy might get married.
Right. I had enough sense left to know I cared far too much. Then I remembered the tracker I’d activated on Hazel’s phone. I found the app needing to blink a few times as my line of sight wavered and the room shifted slightly beneath my feet. Eventually, I could make out the dot representing Hazel’s location.
She was at Jess’s penthouse. I threw my phone across the room.
I hated that she’d rather be there instead of here—with me. I grabbed a small table and threw it at the wall, reveling in the sound of splintered wood. I lurched forward when the ding of an incoming text went off. With a slightly unsteady gait, I followed the sound of my phone, which lay on the floor next to the bar.
Without any hesitation, I grabbed it and swiped to my messages.
I growled deep in my throat. They weren’t from Hazel.
JESS
Stop texting.
JESS
Me and Hazel.
JARETH
I know she’s with you.
JESS
Good. Then you can stop bothering us. You’ve already sent her fifty messages.
It hadn’t been fifty. At least, I didn’t think so.
