Page 62 of Midnight Between Us
I live like that every day of my life.Not even when I make descent money do I treat myself to ...well, anything.I still live the same way I’ve done since I moved out of Birchwood Springs.Small.Unassuming.No frills.
Because deep down, I still see myself as that kid—doomed to become him.Bitter.Alone.Swallowed by silence, cheap liquor, and everything I never said out loud.
I won’t raise my hand to a wife or a child.
Not because I’m better than him—but because I promised myself I’d never love anyone enough to get the chance.
Okay, I might love someone enough for that but I always kept her away from me.That’s the same right?
Fuck.A therapist would probably laugh if they heard me say that out loud—then hand me a worksheet about self-worth and the lies we tell ourselves.
What’s the point of working this hard if I never let myself enjoy any of it?
To prove something to a man who never saw me?To show my old man that I could be more than the failure he predicted?
But am I?
Most days, I still see the same nobody in the mirror.A man who’s just one bad night away from becoming him.Drunk and mean.
Drunk and hollow.
Drunk and forgetting how to be anything else.
Maybe that’s why Atlas dropped me in here.Just to find a damn self-help book and figure it out on my own since I refuse to go to therapy.
Yeah, why did he bring me here?The better question is why has no one brought me to this room?I like books and peaceful places where I can lose myself and not thing how fucked up my life is.
Light pours through tall windows and spills across worn floors.The shelves stretch impossibly high, crowded with books organized in a way only she would understand—by mood, by memory, by some inner compass she never had to explain.
The air smells of linen and dust, with a faint trace of lavender.There’s a blanket tossed over the arm of a reading chair, a pen resting inside an open book, and on the sill, a half-drunk mug.
Simone isn’t here, but the room still holds her.It’s almost as if she locks her essence in here so nobody in the world can see who she really is.
It might be a stupid theory, but this is where I feel her the most.In this quiet, curated world where she probably lets herself be soft.
It’s like stepping into the part of Simone that disappears while wearing scrubs.The version I knew really well.The one who cried at novels and wrote in the margins.The version that once let me hold her after midnight without saying a word.
I walk around, letting my fingers brush the cover of her favorite book.I close my eyes.
And for a breath?—
I don’t feel lost.
I feel her.
My leg still throbs if I stand too long.I drag my fingers along the shelves, eyes scanning for something familiar.That’s when I finally understand how she’s arranged her books.Fiction grouped by region and decade.Medical texts stacked low enough to reach easily.A few graphic novels tucked near a reading nook.
Then my fingers catch on a familiar spine.The Evernight Series which she loved so much.Sometimes she would tell me about it.Others, she’d read it out loud.Somehow now that I think about the plot, Luca’s self-hatred and fear of becoming a monster can be mirrored by my feelings about my father and the way I believe I infect everything I touch.Maybe that’s why I was so absorbed in it when she first introduced me to it?Who knows, I left too early and never figured out what happened.I should read the entire series and see how it ends.
I open the book and pull it out, wondering if it’s the exact same physical copy as back then.She used to read it in the summers.It sat next to the thermos she always carried when we escaped to the lake—the one with her grandma’s name scrawled in cursive along the bottom.Simone would underline things with a pencil, whispering them out loud when she thought I wasn’t listening.
Once it’s in my hands it feels a lot lighter than I remember and that’s when I hear it.
Not a sound—more like the absence of one.A shift in balance.The hollow thud of something loosening behind these books.
I lean in.Tilt another book forward.The back panel of the shelf clicks slightly out of place.It’s barely noticeable—so precise I wouldn’t have caught it if I hadn’t leaned just right.I press against the seam.It gives.
There, behind the false panel, lies a shallow nook.A small box rests inside—cream-colored, wooden, the finish worn at the edges, like it’s been held more often than it’s been stored.I hesitate.Not out of fear.A pull in my chest I don’t have the language for.
