Page 192 of Going Viral for Christmas
I’m back in Seattle. My house is quiet. Cold. And despite what the thermostat says, I haven’t been warm since I lost Ava.
Her phone is with me. Her laptop. Her notes. Everything but the woman herself. She left her life as if it were a book she no longer needed. A complete DNF. And left me holding it outside in the cold.
The first two days, I stayed in New York, where theBookmas Bashwas held. Just in case. I retraced every step she took, or could’ve taken, scoured the hotel’s security footage, and bribed every doorman and concierge within a ten-block radius for information.
Nothing.
We texted her friends and family. Nothing. Fisher checked her credit card activity. Zero. No flights. No ride shares. No receipts.Nothing.Nothing on socials. Nothing from her agent. Not even a breadcrumb fromtheir group chat.
It’s as though she never existed. As if she flicked off her own switch and ghosted the whole fucking planet.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I rented an SUV—nothing flashy, no black Bentley, no tinted windows to draw attention—and parked outside her house. For two days.
Didn’t sleep.
Didn’t shower.
Just waited.
Every passing car made my pulse pound, thinking maybe it was her.
It never was.
Only rain. Fog. Silence. And the creeping realization that she might not come back.
All I’ve got are haunted thoughts and a heart full of unanswered questions.Where the hell are you, Bells?
I drove to Salem after that. Thought maybe she went home. I knocked on her parents’ door with a bottle of whiskey and eyes that hadn’t closed in days.
The first night, Mandy made me soup. G-Ma held my hand. And Uncle Marty made me a cocktail so aggressively festive, it came with a candy cane stir stick and a cinnamon stick crossbow.
“Rudolph’s Regret.” He slid the glass across the counter. “Twelve ounces of bourbon, three of cranberry liqueur, a whisper of nutmeg, and the tears of an emotionally devastated man.”
I took a sip. It tasted like Christmas and burned like shame.
“Yeah,” Uncle Marty nodded, already shaking up another. “That one’s a two-hanky drink.”
Later that night, after five too many Rudolph Regrets, I froze my ass off sitting in Ava’s treehouse, curled up in the world’s most dramatic sad-boy position under a plaid blanket that smelled of pine and sorrow.
Around 2 a.m., Tom came out in flannel pajama pants and said, “I’ve seen some shit, but this takes the cake,” and coaxed me back inside with the promise of leftover pot roast and central heating.
I lasted maybe twelve minutes on the couch in front of the fire before I caved and zombie-walked up to the guest room.
Worst decision of my life.
Sleeping in the same bed we shared, hugging her pillow while trying not to ugly cry into the flannel sheets?
Yeah. That was rock bottom.
I cried. But only a little. Two tears. Three, max.
Okay, I sobbed. Once. I sounded vaguely the same as a dying goat, and I will never recover. But that pillow still smelled heavy with her shampoo. And I couldn’t let it go.
So maybe I squeezed it. Maybe I buried my face in it. Maybe I humped it in a fit of heartbreak and self-deprecation.
Sue me.
Judge me.
