Page 22 of Lovesick

7

EMILIA

I hadn’t left the apartment in seven days.

Seven whole days.

The first day, I didn’t get out of bed. I just laid there, wrapped in my sheets like they could protect me from the way my world had shifted. My phone buzzed a few times. Emails, mostly, and a text from Leann checking in, but I didn’t look at any of them. I couldn’t.

The ache in my chest had settled like fog. I kept thinking I’d wake up and find out it was a nightmare, that the memory of his voice sayingYou were a good fuckwas some twisted trick of my brain. But it wasn’t. It was real. All of it. Every last word.

And it was all my fault. I let it come this far, opening up to a man who I knew was ruthless and cold.

On the second day, I cried. Not softly. Not elegantly. I cried the kind of cry that gutted you from the inside out, until there was nothing left but the wreckage. I screamed into a pillow. I cursed his name. Cursedmyname. I paced around the apartment with my hands balled into fists, like I could punch the feelings out of me.

I didn’t eat. Barely drank anything. My mouth was dry, and my head throbbed constantly, but I didn’t care. What was the point? And I deserved to feel this way. I did this to myself. I deserved it all.

On the third day, I tried to feel normal again. I took a shower. It was my first since everything. I stared at myself in the mirror afterward, just dripping and hollow. My skin was paler than ever. My eyes were red. I didn’t recognize the woman looking back at me. She looked tired. Older. Like she’d been cracked open and left to rot.

I wrapped myself in the biggest sweater I owned and sat on the couch for hours, flipping through Netflix without actually watching anything. I tried to journal, tried to write it all out like people say you should, but the only thing I could bring myself to write wasI miss himover and over, until the words blurred on the page.

I hated myself for missing him.

I hated that after everything he said to me, my heartstillwanted him. That I still had this ridiculous hope he’d show up outside my door, say it was all a mistake, say he panicked, that hedidcare but he just didn’t know how to say it. I imagined that scene a dozen different ways, each more dramatic than the last.

But he didn’t come.

Of course he didn’t.

By the fourth day, I started getting angry. Angry at myself, mostly. For falling. For ignoring the signs. For giving him every part of me when he never once promised anything back. I replayed every moment, every kiss, every night in his office, every time he touched me like I meant something to him. And I tried to look for the lies. For the cracks.

But he was too good at pretending.

Or maybe I was just too desperate to believe.

By the fifth day, I was exhausted. My body hurt. My head was foggy. I had this constant pressure behind my eyes, like tears were always waiting, just beneath the surface. I cleaned my apartment out of restlessness more than anything else. I scrubbed the counters, reorganized the bookshelf, refolded the blankets on the couch three times. But it didn’t help.

Nothing helped.

Because no matter what I did, he wasstillthere. In my head. In my chest.

The sixth day, I woke up from a dream where he kissed my forehead and told me he loved me.

I didn’t cry this time. I just laid there, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide if that dream hurt more or less than the truth.

I made tea. Sat in silence. Let it burn my tongue just to feel something.

On the seventh day, I stood in front of my closet for fifteen minutes, trying to decide if I had the strength to go outside. Not far. Just to the corner store. Maybe even to the park across the street. I hadn’t seen the sun in a week. Hadn’t breathed in anything but recycled air and the scent of the lavender candle I’d been burning into the ground.

But I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

I cried again.

But this time, it was quieter. Less like falling apart. More like releasing something I didn’t need to hold anymore.

It wasn’t healing, not yet.

But it was a start.

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