Page 1 of Stop and Seek
Theo liked his job, just not his life. The library was quiet and predictable. Normal. The fluorescent lights hummed with the steady insistence of a migraine waiting to happen. The faint smell of dust covers and fake flowers were home.
It didn’t ask too much of him. He could spend hours scanning ISBNs. Helping with a printer jam, again. Answering stupid questions—“Can I have more internet time?” “Do you have that one book with the bird cover?”—over, and over, and over.
The same couldn’t be said about everything else—about the gnawing emptiness that followed him home. The sweat and regret he couldn’t scrub away in the shower. Or the splitting headache the morning after another round of drinks he didn’t remember ordering. The pills he didn’t remember taking. The people he couldn’t have given less of a shit about, whose names he sometimes couldn’t even place.
It wasn’t like anyone ever stayed long enough to matter.
That was the thing: people came and went, and the more he trusted them, the faster they fucked up his entire life. Like he handed them a matchbook to light a blunt and they burned his whole house apartment down for fun.
Reality sucked. Plain andsimple. He’d learned that lesson too late, and by the time it had fully settled in, it wasn’t like he could do anything about it. He was already too far gone.
Butgodhe’d gotten very,verygood at pretending.
His phone buzzed again—sharp and annoying against the wood of the desk. Third text in two hours. He glanced down.
Rachie
Rat’s Nest. Tonight. Best have your ass ready.
Did he want to go? No. Not really. He’d finally shaken off the worst of his hangover, and if Rachel dragged Alyssa along too… he’d kill them both.
He loved them. He swore he did.
But most of the time, it would’ve been easier if he didn’t exist. If he could just… turn off his insides—one organ at a time—life would be better.
No one would even have to deal with the mess.
If the day had gone by any slower, Theo would have aged backward.
First, he forgot the keys to lock up—twice. Once on the circulation desk, buried under a stack of returns, and then again in the back room. Apparently, his brain had the retention of a goldfish with a traumatic head injury. By the time he finally yanked the glass door shut, it rattled so violentlyhe thought it might shatter in his hands. The universe was as fed up with him as he was.
And that meant he had to stop and apologize to Mr. Adams, who took the opportunity to launch into his usual“In my day, kids were more aware of their surroundings”speech.
Yeah. Sure. Whatever.
Fucking geezer.
Then there was the car.
God, thecar.
The inside reeked like something had died under the goddamn passenger seat—probably a rogue french fry sprouting new eyes. And the hood got too hot to touch if he ran it longer than an hour, which meant praying it didn’t overheat every time he stopped at a red light. He’d have to find time to take it to Ethan, but the thought of spending an entire paycheck just to keep the clunker limping along made his stomach churn.
If one more thing went wrong, he was going to lose the last shred of his already failing sanity.
When he finally made it home, he tossed his keys onto the counter; they slid straight off and hit the floor with a clatter that echoed too loud. He stared at them for a full five seconds, debating whether he cared enough to pick them up.
Nope.
Just another thing to add to the growing collection ofshit that didn’t matter.
Maybe he should try to care more.
Maybe normal people did.
But he’d stopped trying months ago, and nothing catastrophic had happened yet. The world hadn’t ended just becausehewas phoning it in.
His therapist—if he actually bothered showing up—would have called itapathetic behaviororavoidant tendenciesor some other clinical bullshit that ultimately meant nothing since he’d alreadyhitrock bottom.
