Page 53 of His Hot Mess

“Come on," she said, clasping a pillow against her chest. Then, seeming to change her mind, she pulled the sheet up to cover herself as she got out of bed. But the sheet was tucked into the bottom of my bed with hospital corners, and she struggled against it, pulling hard enough that she had to grit her teeth and growl.

“Thisstupidthing!” she exclaimed.

I was moving to help her get it out when I glanced at her face. Her eyes were wet.

My own selfish hurt fell away. I leaned forward, reaching for her hand.

She jumped when I touched her.

“Hey," I said.

Sadie gave one last half-hearted tug of the sheet and then flopped back down on the bed, backing up against the headboard. I spotted my t-shirt at the foot of the bed and handed it to her. She snatched it from my hand and pulled it over her head. It was long enough on her that it reached mid-thigh.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll find your clothes,” I said, swinging my legs out of the bed.

But she said nothing. She didn’t even move. She just pulled her knees up against her chest and began to sob.

My heart lurched. I went around to her side of the bed and sat down next to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder, tucking her into my chest. She leaned in, her fist curled under her chin.

“I’m such a mess," she whispered. "I'm 31 years old and I don't have a single thing in my life in order.”

“I had everything in order once. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Not when it ends, anyway.

Sadie was still against me. “What happened?”

I shifted, suddenly hot. I didn’t want to talk. I never talked about myself for a reason.

“It’s not exactly a happy story,” I said.

“Can you give me the condensed version?”

I swallowed down the sharp tang rising up my throat. The feeling of having to actually look the truth in the eye. To confess to Sadie what a failure my life was.

The strangest thing was, something, some small part of me wanted to tell her.

Some large part, maybe. But a stronger, harder, darker thing was keeping it down.

Don’t do it. This is what you’ve been trying to avoid. Don’t fucking do it.

“I told you before I had a business, in my hometown,” I said.

“Yes.”

Panic threatened to rise in my throat. I wanted to get up, to tell her forget it. To drive her home and come back and jump in the lake and forget any of this ever happened.

But how could I? I swallowed that down too.

“I had a fiancé too. And… she left me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She said it in a way that made me know she didn’t think that should be earth shattering. Irritation flared in my chest. And mortification. It wasn’t earth shattering. People got left all the time. Maybe I’d blown this whole thing way out of proportion. Maybe my whole running away from my life was the most chickenshit thing I’d ever done when I could have sucked it up and kept going.

But it wasn’t just getting left.

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