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“Stella, I?—”
A cold creeps over me as she speaks, her words firm and irritated, with no room for arguing. “Riggins, move on. I’m done.” The words ring in the silence, my mind silencing all of the background noise as they swirl in my mind.
Move on, I’m done.
Move on, I’m done.
Move on, I’m done.
We’re supposed to meet to talk about us and she’s done? I’m calling her at my darkest moment, and she’s done.
With me? With this? With us?
I don’t know.
The phone is silent at my ear and I have a feeling when I look at the screen, I’ll see it’s blank, no one on the other line.
She hung up.
Because she’s done.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I waver, the liquor in my system making me off balance, and the world comes slamming back in, the noise filling my ears and overwhelming me, the blue and red flashing of the lights nearly blinding me, the rain I don’t remember starting soaking through my shirt, and I barely maintain my grasp on the phone.
“Son, everything okay?”
Nothing is okay.
Nothing at all.
Because Stella is dating some asshole, and now she’s telling me to move on as if I’ll ever be able to move on from her, and I’m being moved into the back of a cop car, and I need another drink, and Stella isdonewith me.
“She hung up on me,” I murmur as the police officer steps back once I’m settled in the back seat, hesitating as he prepares to shut the door.
“What?”
“She hung up on me. I told her I needed her, and she hung up on me.” The older man’s face gets soft for the first time all night, and he moves to squat, bringing him face to face with me. I see the sincerity on his face despite the swirling of the world.
“Sorry, kid. That’s fucked.” He looks over his shoulder, probably at his partner or someone else, before looking back at me. “Let this be a wake-up call, though. You’re at rock bottom, already lost your girl, it seems. Don’t let this shit,” He lifts a glass bottle I didn’t realize I had been carrying up, shaking the small amount of its contents. “Take anything else.”
And when he closes the door, my mind can’t stop reeling on that.
Don’t let it take anything else.
And I don’t.
44 PASSENGER
NOW
RIGGINS
“I called,” I say to her, noting the panic on her face. “Those words haunt me. Those nightmares I mentioned? That’s what I hear in them, over and over. I see the night my heart stopped beating. The night I stood in the rain, cops looking at me like I was a loser.” She shakes her head like she's trying to refute the statement. “I called you, told you everything, how I hit rock bottom, and I loved you more than anything, and that I needed help. That I was struggling, Stella. I was lost and scared, and I told you I was sorry, and I would go to rehab, and that I needed you, and you said you were done. That I needed to move on, and you hung up on me. I got drunk after your mom showed me pictures of you and that guy?—”
“My mom?” she says, confused, then shakes her head. “What guy? When?” The confusion is amplified now, turning into panic.
“When?” I ask, confused.
“When did you call? When did you talk to her? When did you call me, Riggins? Letters? What letters?” She’s starting to hyperventilate, and suddenly, pieces that I’ve been given over the last month or so are moving together in my mind.
