Me? I’d made the rookie mistake of slinking off from the club and not staying up long enough to run from the hangover.
I was sitting at the computer, coffee in hand, hangover in head and now, regret coursing through every part of my body. That was also accompanying the pain that was ever present but near unbearable on this particular day.
“Fuck,” I hissed at the computer.
Lauren, the features editor, glanced at me over the rim over her thick glasses. “Let me guess. Tequila?” she asked, taking in the bloodshot eyes that even coffee and concealer couldn’t hide.
The rest of me was more or less put together. The thing with all black was it made you look like you had your shit together even when you didn’t. That and eyeliner.
I glanced at her. Perfectly buttoned, not a hair out of place, her white shirt crisply ironed, her pencil skirt a demure length. Her heels elegant yet sensible.
She was my complete opposite. She didn’t drink.
Coffee or wine.
Didn’t believe in hems above the knee and thought the best way to blow off steam was a good book and a cup of non-caffeinated tea.
AKA my worst nightmare.
In theory.
Somehow, we’d become some version of friends, despite not understanding each other. Maybe that was why.
I resisted the urge to slam my head at the keyboard. “I wish,” I groaned. “Tequila I can handle.” I glanced at her. “Have you ever sent a drunken text and then wanted to curl up and die reading it in the morning?”
She smiled, her clear-painted nails around her mug of chai. “No, I can’t say I have,” she replied, not unkindly. “Though, by your expression, I’m guessing you did?”
I glanced to the screen. “No, I’m thinking this is worse.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not all that bad. And anyway, the man who gets a message from you in the middle of the night is not likely complaining.”
She walked away in her sensible shoes to her perfectly ordered desk and left me in my stiletto heels, amongst my cluttered papers and fucking train wreck of a life.
I put my head down on the papers.
A drunken text was one thing.
Maybe some regret at putting that eggplant emoji, or seeing the “sent and opened” Snapchats and the horror of not remembering what the photos were.
All of those weren’t a deep enough medium to cause enough trouble. Maybe send a naked picture that you didn’t mean to send.
Naked flesh at the end of the day wasn’t overly important. Everyone had it, and if I did say so myself, mine wasn’t exactly anything to be ashamed of.
That e-mail, on the other hand…. That was a whole different kind of naked.
A naked I hadn’t even been in front of my best friend, and she’d given me an emergency bikini wax in Mexico on spring break.
I barely even knew him.
And I spewed all of that. All of those feelings I kept carefully shoved in that junk cupboard everyone had in their mind. You know the one, where you threw every thought you didn’t know what to deal with or that was just too darn dangerous to leave floating around?
Yeah, it had all come tumbling out and went onto a screen, across thousands of miles, and landed itself in the inbox of a certain soldier with whom I shared exactly one kiss.
I didn’t even know his last name.
A quick google gave it to me.
Keltan Brooke.
He was famous. Or could have been, according to the article from nearly fifteen years ago in a New Zealand paper. He’d been a star rugby player and had been set to get into the national team, the All Blacks—ah, I get the e-mail name now—but decided to join the army.
The bing from my inbox stopped me from further Internet stalking and reverberated through my pained head, then brought with it the sound of mortification.
For once, I actually hoped it was a work e-mail.
I snapped my head up and almost knocked my coffee over in my eagerness to click out of the article and into my inbox.
Marty, our sports editor, stared at me. I wasn’t clumsy.
Or frantic.
I was collected. Calm. Not sensible, everyone knew that, but even when I was crazy, I threw people off because I did crazy things with sanity.
Now I was acting very… human.
Lucky wouldn’t know what to do with me, considering cyborg Lucy stopped existing when Keltan was involved.
A series of clicks showed me it wasn’t work.
I groaned.
Another sideways look from Marty.
I glared at him. “Don’t you have a feature to do on a jock who threw a ball to another jock?” I snapped.
His eyes went back down to his computer.
Marty was a little scared of me.
I took a deep breath.
And looked at the keyboard.
“Man up,” I whispered to myself.
So, I looked at the screen.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re – Bad Decisions
Snow,
You know how I said they didn’t shoot deserters? How I said that I almost wished they did because I’d rather a bullet than a cage?
Fuck the cage.
And the bullets.
I was pretty darn close to risking both of those after reading that.
You seem like you’re fighting a battle much worse than the dirt box I’m in.
And I hate that, babe.
That the world was dark and cruel enough to take your friend from you.
Want to know a secret?
I’m running too.
I think we all are.
Want to know another one?
You’re wrong. I know that’s not a very sane thing to say to a woman, but I’ll be brave and risk it. I’m not stronger than you, babe. I’ve seen it, what you’ve got behind your eyes. Might not know your birthday, or your last name or your favorite color—though I’m guessing it’s black—but I know the important thing. Saw it the minute I laid eyes on you. You’re stronger than me. And most of those fellas in that club.
You’re more equipped to deal with what you’re runnin’ from than any of the other fuckers. We shoot things, lift iron and fight to trick ourselves into thinking we’re able to fight them off, whatever ghosts we’ve got.
We’re not.
I’ve lost someone too. And I run every single fucking day from the reminder of that. But I don’t run away from the fight. I run into the battle that got him lost in the first place, thinking I might find the sense of it.
But you know what? The most sense, most stillness I found?
Tasting your lips.
Kissing you.
Talkin’ ’bout Cinderella while you scared me with your zombie impression.
I’m comin’ back, babe. Be warned. You’ll be the first place I run to.
So I can stand still again.
PS: I’m also coming back to find out whoever “he” is. And I warn you, I don’t order hitmen either. I do my own dirty work. Especially when it comes to you.
Yours,
K
I read it.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
A single tear ran down my cheek.
Then I deleted the e-mail.
Then I got up from my desk, snatched my Chanel and my coffee and stomped—on my uncomfortable yet fabulous heels—my put-together but disastrous body out of the office.