Page 114 of No Saint
I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe all of this between Jade and me had been some petty form of payback. Like her being in this house had become an opportunity to get back at me for trying to move on before her. Maybe all she’d wanted was to remind me of how much I needed her, just to screw me over, and take it all away again.
He sipped his coffee. “Jade wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Set your truck on fire, sure. But turn you into the cops?” The kitchen chair creaked when he leaned back in it. “No way.”
I wanted to believe him, but the image of Dog ripping the head off that penguin, the pills exploding everywhere, wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. It meant she didn’t trust me. That no matter what we’d said to each other, how we’d touched each other, the way we’d looked at each other like nothing else in this shitty world mattered.
No matter how much I loved her, some part of her still saw me as the enemy. And maybe she was right. Maybe there was too much resentment and hurt between us for any of this to work. Maybe I was mistaking it for something worth saving when there wasn’t anything left to save.
Thirty-One
Jade
I resented the cheerful morning sun that spilled through my bedroom window. It made the world seem somewhat happy when I was anything but because not only had I lost Wolf for a second time, but I had a horrible hangover, compliments of the bottle of Rumple Minze I’d downed yesterday—on a Sunday night, no less. I shifted on my bed and tugged the gap in the curtain closed before glancing at Mav and Goose in their cage. The cage Wolf had dropped off with Monroe yesterday, along with a note that read:I’m not your rat sitter, a nearly empty can of deodorant, and my toothpaste. I guessed that was his petty response to my drunken Lonely Fans message—the one where I’d taken a racy picture of myself and sent it to him, along with a message that read: I’m not your charity case, so here’s something for your money. Then I’d deleted my account. Which may have been stupid since I needed every penny I could get.
Sighing, I collapsed back onto my bed. In my room. In my apartment. The place I had been desperate to be only a few weeks ago now felt hollow. An empty space to go with the empty void in my chest.
I kept staring at Mav and Goose running around in their cage, trying to think of some upbeat affirmation. I had nothing. All I could do was wallow in my misery.
The last time Wolf and I had broken up, the descent had been a slow, bitter glide over weeks and months—we’d barely seen each other. There had been distance and doubts.
This time, it was a free fall, while the ground beneath my feet crumbled. There was no distance. For the last few weeks, we’d been with each other every spare second, like we had back in high school. Even a short taste of his love had felt like the most perfect lifetime. The only thing left in its absence was the crippling knowledge that no one else could ever match up.
Sure, I’d survive, but I was intimately acquainted with every sharp, stabbing step of the climb out of this pit of despair. For now. Though, I wanted to lie there, on the cold, dark floor of my fuck up. Would it have been such a fuck up if he really cared about me, though? He didn’t even let me explain. After all those words about needing me and loving me, he had tossed me out like unwanted trash. But, if he didn’t care, then why had he helped me get money, sent me money on Lonely Fans… Maybe he just wanted a reason to be the one to break up with me, give himself some kind of closure.
There was a knock on my bedroom door before it opened. Monroe stood in my doorway, fully dressed and radiant, as though she wanted to mock the mess I knew I was.
“Okay. Up. Shower. You’re going to class today.”
“I’m not.” I had called in sick for my shift last night. “I’m sick.” Hungover, same thing.
Monroe eyed the culprit empty bottle with judgment. “Look, Jade. You and Wolf?—”
“Don’t say his name!” I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, as though it would make her, my heartache, and the light stabbing in my eyeballs disappear. “We had abrief intermission in our year and a half of not speaking to or acknowledging each other, and now it can resume.”
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s done.”Get out of my house. Out of my life…Pain lanced through my chest at the memory of his words.
“You and Wolf—” she paused briefly when I glared at her— “are never done. He’s just butthurt you might have done the same thing to him as he was doing to you.”
I’d assumed Monroe would be on Wolf’s side, seeing as she had been all about me giving him another chance because I’d “made a mistake.”
“I wouldn’t have done it.”
“I know. Same way he wouldn’t have done it.” Wouldn’t he, though? “Have you tried to talk to him?”
“No. He made it pretty clear that he’s done. And so am I.”
“Did the last time not teach either of you anything? God, you’re both so stubborn.” She glanced at the rat cage and shook her head. “And petty. Now get in the shower. You aren’t failing out, too.” Then she walked away, leaving my door ajar.
She was right. I needed to get up, go to class, and carry on with my life. Because, despite how I felt, it would continue without Wolf.
When I stepped into the living area, showered and dressed and almost human, Cassie was waiting.
“Monroe left for work. Come on.” She nodded toward the door. “I’ll give you a ride.”
I was pretty sure I was still over the limit to drive, so I followed her outside, dread settling in my stomach at the thought of possibly seeing Wolf on campus.
Cassie glanced back at me as we rounded the smelly bottom landing where all the hobos pissed. “Do you actually want to go to class?”
