Page 127 of Abyss

Hesitating momentarily, I give her a grateful smile. Some days are better than others, but that’s not the case today.Today, I feel like I’m cracking from the inside, and it seems even my new boss can see that. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she reassures me, waving me off. “Now, shoo. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Letting the kids know I’ll be back in a few, I swing my purse strap over my shoulder and step out of the hospital’s large entrance, welcoming the sun’s warmth on my skin. The hospital art room always tends to be chillier than I prefer.

My trusty orange shoes tap over the wet pavement as I navigate around puddles, making my way to the cafe I frequent. I’ve become a regular there over the past month, even striking up a friendship with the barista. We even went to the art fair together last weekend when she asked me to join her and a few friends.

Being alone isn’t anything new to me, but it was a nice change from the several lonelier weekends I’ve spent at home, talking to Mom and Neil when the silence feels all too deafening. Though, those lonely weekends have helped me get back into painting again. I’m almost done with the one I started a couple of weeks ago.

One I know I’ll have to discard or give away once I’m done because I won’t be able to look at it much longer. Not when, every time I do, it salts the wounds I’ve tried to close for weeks.

But I painted it to deal with my heartbreak head on. To close that short chapter of my life once I finished the piece. To remind myself with every brushstroke that waiting for someone who never really wanted me in the first place is futile.

Pining is a silent poison that seeps into the soul.

His terms were clear, and now so are mine. My terms to put myself and my heart first. God knows, it had already been battered and put through the wringer before Hudson cameinto my life, and now, in the aftermath of his presence, it’s barely functioning.

Doing the bare minimum of pumping blood into my veins without a hint of purpose or pride. With mechanical indifference and apathetic duty, a mere shell of what it once was.

“I couldn’t erase you if I tried.”

“I can’t shake you, Kav.”

My bitter laugh catches me off-guard when more of his sweet whispered words trek through my mind as they have so many times before. Words that were a salve for my wounded soul. Words I basked in like a parched desert flower under a gentle rain.

But words that now ring false and hollow, having ripped away the flower from its roots, only to fling it across the desert to lay exposed and defeated.

Taking a deep breath, I approach the coffee shop, stowing away my emotions behind a forced smile, before walking through the entrance.

Lena, my barista friend, waves to me after attending to the customer ahead of me. “Hey, chica! Want me to make you your usual?”

I step up to the counter, giving her a smile with a nod. “I think I’ll switch it up a little today and do an iced one this time.”

She reels back with mock surprise, her brows in the air. “Living on the edge, are we, Kav? I’ll have an iced crème brûlée latte coming to you in a flash.”

I try to brush off the pang that jabs my heart at the use of my nickname—a reminder of the only two people I’ve allowed to call me that, and the two who are now absent from my life.

Not that I couldn’t, but I haven’t discussed anything in terms of my previous relationships with Lena yet. Andthough I see her as someone I could confide in, the situation with Hudson is too raw for me to relive just yet.

I’ve exchanged a few texts with Madison and Belinda, mainly about my new life and job. We’ve all conveniently avoided Hudson’s name. And that’s probably for the best, considering the strange position I likely put them in when I left him. Perhaps one day we can all laugh about it, but that day isn’t today, nor will it be anytime in the near future.

Lena turns over her shoulder to address me while tamping the espresso. “So that hot daddy I was telling you about the other day swung by again just a few minutes ago.”

“Oh yeah?” I waggle my brows at her. It’s becoming clear that Lena takes stock of the eye candy entering the café, given the number of ‘hot daddies’ and ‘tight butts’ she’s mentioned to me in the short time I’ve known her, but I play along, joining her excitement. “What did he order this time?”

“The same thing,” she reports, pouring the freshly brewed espresso into a plastic cup. “A cherry turnover and coffee. But,” she pouts, puckering her lips, “turns out he’s taken. Well, actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know if he’s taken. I think he’s in mourning.”

Her hands freeze while her mouth drops open as if she’s just put something together. “Oh my God! I think he’s mourning his dead girlfriend!” Her eyes mist. “Poor thing. He must be heartbroken. Perhaps I could move my schedule around to give him company in case he wants a shoulder,or aboob, to cry on.”

I watch a multitude of emotions cross her face—shock, sadness, acceptance, excitement—while I try to keep up. A part of me wants to laugh at how she’s made this entire scenario up in her head and has already started making plans to turn it around in her favor, but what if she’s right? I wouldn’t want to laugh about someone’s dead girlfriend.

“What do you mean, he’s mourning his dead girlfriend?” I ask, confused. “You asked him?”

“Well, not exactly,” she admits, affixing a lid on my iced coffee. “I just asked him what the deal was with him ordering the same cherry turnover each time he’s come in, and he said they remind him of the time he went cherry picking with his girlfriend. It totally had a dead girlfriend ring to it.”

My heart stutters and another pang punches me in the gut as memories of Hudson and me picking cherries flood my mind.

Stolen kisses underneath cherry trees . . .

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