Addicted | ✔

C h a p t e r F o r t y

                                                                              PART FORTY

                                   ❝All my better days are the ones spent with you.❞

I did not go back to the hospital. Jack had called me, four times in the past hour. And sent me photos. They'd let him hold Evie. I shut my phone off. I had spent the night at Alex's half naked on the couch. Waking up, my head was pounding and it felt as though at any moment it was going to split right open. I didn't want to see Jack, holding my daughter. The daughter I had abandoned when she'd needed me most. Sitting on Alex's couch I glanced around at the mess. i wondered if it looked like this everytime he through a party, or if he never bothered to clean up. I sighed. 

"It's almost noon." He said, flatly. Jack, and Alex were very different I knew I could not stay here like I had stayed with Jack, I nodded in response to his statement. Getting the sense he did want me to be here any longer. I got up from the couch, re adjusting my clothes and running a hand through my hair.

"Thank you, for the party." I said, yanking on my shoes. He nodded.

"Thanks for the sex." He gave me kind of a goofy grin and I smiled back at him. I did not particularly feel bad, even though me and Alex counted as me cheating. I'd cheated on him before. Never once had I felt any sort of guilt. Slamming the door behind me I began to walk around aimlessly. It was days like this I wished I had a car. I caught a glimpse of the date. My birthday was in three days. There would be no party, no unwrapping of gifts. Just me, sitting on someone's porch or the grass of a park. Realizing I was an adult. 

That, in my opinion was a weird concept. The fact that I'd already been an adult, long before I had been kicked out. For as long as I can remember I was an adult. In the sense that I had taken care of myself, I had held myself when I cried, I had been there for myself every time I fell down. I had kept myself alive, when others couldn't have. That had given me the mentality that nobody was going to be there at the end of the day. Except for me.

An old therapist of mine, had told me I had abandonment issues. This was partially true, I did not care to admit it often but I was adopted. My mother, had abandoned me on the steps to an orphanage in Russia. In a box, with a small teddy bear. I still have that teddy bear. I gave it to Evie. It was than I realized why I was doing what I was doing. Did I think my own child would leave me too? So I was trying to leave her first. I started running. Then I stopped. I walked home, where I showered and changed clothes. I made Jack a sandwich and took clean clothes for him in a bag. 

When I showed back up at the hospital, I saw Jack sitting there asleep with our daughter right next to him. I came to sit by him.

"I brought you a sandwich." I say, handing it to him he smiles. I give him a soft smile back. He looks tired and his clothes are rumpled.

"If you wanna go home I can stay here with her." I say, gesturing to our sleeping daughter. He shakes his head.

"I'm not going to just leave her here, that shit sticks with her even if she doesn't remember it." I sigh, curling my body up in the chair. I press my head against his shoulder. I'm waiting for him to ask where I was last night and two minutes later he does.

"So, where the fuck did you go last night?" 

I sigh looking at him. Now, the right thing to do would be to tell him the truth, that I went to his best friend's house and ended up underneath him. But, our daughter is in the hospital, on oxygen. I shrug.

"I went home, I needed rest." I lie, because I'm trying to protect him. I know I'm going to need to tell him at some point now is not that point though. 

"You doin okay?" He asks, turning to me. That question can have multiple meanings. Mentally, no, physically, yes, emotionally fuck no. I shrug.

"As well as can be expected." Then, I see a question lurking in the back of my mind. I sit up in my chair and face him.

"Have you ever watched your entire life fall apart Jack? Feeling like you were just a bystander?" The reason I ask this, is even because it's a full year from when I got kicked out of two places, went to residential, started living with him, and got pregnant, I still do not have my shit together.  He nods.

"Yeah, every day." He says. I am taken back to a time where I was actually something other than a shit show. When I was a cheerleader, when I had friends and a family who loved me. Then, there was the fight I got into end of sophomore year and got sent to live with my sister. It's funny when i think about I still blame her for everything. A year is the longest I have gone without talking to her. 

"I used to be like you, I was going to be a doctor. But then I discovered coke." He says with a small laugh. I smile at him.

"You think you'll ever get it together?" I asked. He shook his head.

"I can try, for her." He says gesturing to Evie. That's the thing, as much as I loved the kid, I doubted I could ever change. Even for her. I left her at the hospital to be fair.