Page 66 of Love Resurrected
My vision blurs. My chest tightens.
I can’t see, can’t find my way. I stumble against the sinks and fumble toward the door.
“Brad?”
Tenley calling after me hardly registers. I have to get out of here.
I trip down the short hallway and fall out the back entrance, barely making it into the alley before I’m emptying my stomach.
The same alley I’ve fucked Kat in.
The night we finally reconciled, and a few times after that.
Kat.
Oh god.
What have I done?
I slept with someone else.
The guilt hits me so hard I stagger back, falling against the side of the building. How could I be so weak? So fucking weak.
God, Kat. I’m so sorry.
The tears start before I can pull myself back up.
The disgust. Self-loathing. I can’t possibly hate myself more.
“Hey, buddy, you okay?”
I ignore the voice, burying my head in my hands. I want to disappear. I want to die. I want to hurt myself as much as I’m hurting Kat.
Somehow, I find my way to my truck and drive home in a fog. I turn off my phone when it rings, returning to some semblance of coherence after I’m seated in my living room.
Only then do I allow myself to feel the gravity of what I’ve done. Thoughts slam into my consciousness one after the other. Kat first thing in the morning when she’s still a little sleep drunk and her eyes haven’t opened all the way. How she sounds when I first sink into her.
Her laugh.
Her cry.
Her smile.
Goddamn, her fucking smile.
I will never experience any part of her again. None of the memories will ever resurface to reality. She is no longer in my life.
No longer alive.
A sound more animal than human wrenches from my gut and I slam a fist into the wall. Not caring when I feel the knuckles break, because I do it again.
I can’t bear the onslaught of agony that fills my soul, suffocating any feeling that may have been good, leaving nothing but despair and utter nothingness in its place. Tonight was a mistake. I’m not ready to move on. I’ll never be ready.
Moving on is a myth. Something sold to the grieving to help buy into the fact that life isn’t over. Except, really, it is. Death has deprived Kat and I of a lifetime together and nothing can ever make up for that. Nothing and no one.
I slide down the wall to the floor, cradling my hand to my chest. Reminders of Kat are everywhere I see, whether or not I’m looking. Images slice through me, one after the other, and I don’t have the energy to stop them.
The first time we met, when she spilled a drink down the front of me.
