Page 10 of 2204 Hunter Lane
I pressed my back against the tiles, absorbing the heat and steam of the warm water kissing my skin. After the night I had, this was everything and more.
It was in this one moment of serenity that the intrusive thoughts crept in, disturbing my peace and forcing me to deal with the severity of my decisions.
After tonight, where will I go? What will I do? I have nothing to come back to. My parents hate me, my friends think I abandoned them, what was left? I was always going to be a fuck-up in everyone’s eyes, so why not prove them right?
Tears dripped down my cheeks, and I didn’t have the energy to stop them from falling. A sob escaped my throat as I sat down in the shower, drawing my knees to my chest.
This was my life now. A runaway. A disaster. Too scared to face my family. No one to turn to, to talk to, to be around. I was in the middle of fucking Nebraska with nothing. Absolutely. Fucking. Nothing.
I remained frozen in a ball until the hot water began to prune my skin. I knew that my life was in shambles, but the last thing I wanted was to look like a dried-out grape.
After turning off the shower knob, I wrapped myself in a towel, wiping the fog off the mirror to really look at myself for the first time in hours.
My long dark hair cascaded down one side of my neck, exposing the small music note tattoo on my right collarbone.
I grazed my fingers over it and smiled, returning to the happy memory of me at eighteen getting it with my brother after our piano recital. We beat out the entire competition and won first place for our duet at the Oxville Center of Arts.
Almost immediately after, we decided to celebrate by getting matching tattoos, cracking open a bottle of red and splitting a large pizza.
I chuckled but it was sad. I was sad. Tears found my eyes again, blurring my vision. Back when I was close with Adam, we would do everything together. He knew how hard our parents were on us, but he was a pro at staying in their good graces.
Me, I was a pro at pissing them off. I think he felt sorry for me. Maybe he still does. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him since I left New York, and he never tried reaching out.I guess that says a lot about our relationship now, doesn’t it?
I shook away the sadness and glanced at the set of brown eyes staring back at me, almost unrecognizable.
There was a time where I thought my features were endearing, beautiful, kind. I thought my brown eyes delivered warmth and safeness, only now they were hollow and empty, filled with dread and pain. God, I envied those who felt nothing.Only I could never feel nothing. This world loved to punish me.
I crawled into bed and found the courage to finally check my phone, scrolling through dozens of missed calls and unopened texts from the devil himself.
9.02pm – Todd : Marley, where are you?
10:06pm – Todd: You can’t fucking do this to us! Get home right now and we can talk about this.
11:13pm – Todd: You’re such a lunatic. Fuck you.
11:14pm – Todd: I’m throwing out your bathrobe. You left it in here. Peace whore.
12:12am – Todd: I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t mean that. Come back. We’ll talk about this.
I wish I was fazed, but honestly, I wasn’t. Todd never spoke down to me in our relationship, but there were a lot of things he had done that I was clearly unaware of. His immaturity just kept shining through and I was sick of it.
I’m sure the pain of losing who I thought was my other half would hit me soon, but I was soaking in the numbness that accompanied this situation.I’ll deal with it eventually.
After skipping all the other messages and deleting our conversation, I danced over a contact name that I hadn’t pressed in a year: Adam Matthews.
My fingers hovered over the text I wanted to send him, contemplating if it was even worth it.
2:41am – Marley: Hey, Adam. It’s Marley. I miss you.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
2:43am – Marley: Adam, can we talk?
Delete.
2:46am – Marley: What happened to us?
Delete. Exit. Fuck this. I can’t do this. I can’t.
