Out of the Ordinary

Chapter 45

My stomach gave a nervous jolt, and it took me a moment to understand why. But each step that brought me closer to the door of my apartment also brought clarity to my thoughts, to why Emily might've texted earlier to say that she was at Mark's, and ask me to come here to pick up her Organic Chemistry textbook—which, if I were thinking rationally, I would've known she'd never leave behind by accident.

But I wasn't thinking rationally.

I hadn't had a rational thought in two days. Since I'd seen those photos, since I'd hung up the phone the other night and curled up under my covers, crying until I slipped into sleep, exhausted from the strength it took to really and truly let myself fall apart.

I hadn't come back together yet. And I was still at a point where I didn't know if I ever would.

The hallway was quiet, but somehow, it sizzled with an energy, as if someone had just passed through it, and the air hadn't quite recovered to it's slow, steady movement. It felt like it was still whizzing by me.

And I knew.

The nerves in my stomach started firing off like crazy, and my whole body felt wired for something, like it was bracing itself. And as much as I wanted to run away, to pretend I'd never come here at all and leave the strange movement of the air behind—was as much as I wanted to stay. Two days might not seem like a long time, but when you felt like everything that made you you had slipped away, when you felt like no part of who you were was left, being nervous could be the difference between feeling numb and feeling alive.

I stood in front of my apartment door for a moment longer than necessary, just breathing and hoping and dreading all at once. It was like the air had pushed me here, where it swirled and changed directions on me to tell me that "Yes, he's in there, go in after him."

God, I wanted to. But I didn't want to either. It was the most confusing mix of emotions I'd ever felt—nerves and happiness and anger and hope and fear and excitement all rolled into a big mess inside me. Still, it was better than feeling nothing at all.

A memory slid into the focus in my mind then—the first time we'd stood with a door between us. This door. After I'd slammed it closed in his face.

I almost smiled remembering the way his voice had sounded, deep and muffled and confused through the metal, and the way my heart had leaped up into my throat when he spoke. The way I'd flushed when he'd told me "not to go to any trouble on his account" when I blurted that I wasn't even wearing a bra.

It was so long ago, and not long ago at all. A little less than a year. But so much had changed. I'd changed. And I wished I hadn't.

With a shaky hand, I fit the key inside the lock, surely alerting him to my presence, so I took a deep breath and pushed the door open, letting the need to see him despite all he'd done win out. And there was no going back now.

He was on his feet when I walked into the living room, staring at me like I held his whole world in the palm of my hand, and he was afraid I'd closed my fist, afraid that I'd squeezed until there was nothing left. What he didn't realize was that I'd never held his world, I'd never touched more than a piece of it, and the only thing I'd done when I ended that phone call was reach inside myself and wrap my fist around the splintered pieces of my own heart.

He looked as he always had upon first glance. His hair was in a bun. He was wearing his usual black jeans, tan boots, finished off with a white t-shirt, and I could see the shadows of his tattoos through the material, his nipples poking at the soft fabric. He still wore the same thick silver bands on his fingers. But when I looked more closely, I noticed the wrinkles in that shirt, the puffiness surrounding his eyes, like he hadn't gotten enough sleep, the deep, worried lines surrounding his mouth, like they'd had time to set in, and the tremble in his fingers just before the rings disappeared into his pockets, like he wasn't sure what to do with his hands.