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The memories of that day and ensuing night are haunting me, I realize.
“Hey, you okay?” Mattie’s voice startles me from the dark thoughts muddling my brain. I don’t know what I would’ve done had she not been here with me in these last weeks. It’s been hell. I cried myself to sleep every night, and she held me until she thought it was safe to go back to her own room.
“I’m fine. Just thinking,” I shrug and give her a weak smile. I know she can see through my lies, but she never calls me out on it. She really is a great friend.
“Did you get your scores yet?”
I worked my butt off on one of the assigned classes so that I could finish it sooner. I don’t have anything better to do, so I’ve just been studying day and night.
“Yeah, they got posted this morning. I got a hundred.” The smile I give her is genuine, I am happy with that part.
I have three more months of school, but my goal is to finish the other three classes I have to take within a month, then graduate early and be done with it all. After I start my new job, I plan on applying for a loan so that I can pay my parents back for my schooling. Unfortunately, I know that I will not qualify for enough to also pay them back for the rent they paid for me and everything else. But it is a start.
My cell phone starts ringing from where it sits on the coffee table. I know it’s my mother, so I don’t bother to pick up. She calls me every single morning at nine o’clock without fail. I’m sure that I will be ready to talk to her again one day. But it’s still too soon, and I don’t want to hear her voice just yet.
The phone finally stops ringing, and it is followed by the notification of a voicemail. I pick it up only to delete it without listening to it.
“You know you’ll have to talk to your parents at some point, Slayer,” Mattie’s picked up my childhood nickname from my dad. She doesn’t call me that often, only when she wants to tease me about something.
“Not today, Matts,” I whisper as I continue to stare out the window.
“You say that every day,” she calls me out on my shit. She’s right though, I do say it every day.
“I know. I just need some time. I… I miss him still.” My throat and jaw hurt from the effort I’m making not to cry.
“Of course you do, honey,” Mattie drops on the couch next to me and pulls me into a side hug. “It’s only been a few weeks.”
“Do you think,” I start but then choke on my words. “Do you think he misses me, too?”
“If his reaction when you broke up with him is anything to go by, I’d say he is going crazy without you.” Mattie sighs in my hair. She’s got this romantic picture in her head of how everything happened between me and Zach.
“How am I going to survive this, Mattie?” I bring my knees up to my chest and rest my forehead on them while Mattie starts rubbing circles on my back, trying to soothe my pain. I wish it was only physical pain I was feeling.
“You’ll be fine, babe,” she assures me in a quiet voice, so unlike her. She is usually loud and proud. “People have been going through breakups since the beginning of time. Ninety-nine percent of them survived.”
“Matti,” the laughter bubbling in my chest takes me by surprise, and I snort. “That is not helpful at all. What if I am in the one percent that doesn’t survive a breakup?”
“The fact that you just laughed at what I said is a clear indication that youwillsurvive it,” she nudges me with her elbow, and I laugh again. It feels so strange to do it.
I glance at my watch and am surprised to see the time. “I need to grab my laptop, class is starting in ten minutes.”
“Why don’t you try to attend in person, Huns?” Mattie suggests, and I can tell that she’s been mulling this over for a while. “You’ll feel better being around people, socializing…”
“Have you been talking with my mom?” Because that sounded too close to something my mother would say.
The guilty look Mattie gives me is confirmation of it. “I’m sorry, she called me, and I…”
“No need to apologize, Matts,” I pat her hand and stand up from the couch. “You’re not banned from speaking with my mother,” I tease her and smile when I see the relief on her face.
It is four hours later that I come back up for air. The class was an hour and a half, but I worked on two assignments as soon as the professor logged out. I stretch my back and push the laptop away from me. My eyeballs may just fall out of my head, I think to myself when I start seeing dark spots. Maybe Mattie is right and I am pushing myself a little too hard.
I stand up from my chair at the small desk I have in my room and wince when I feel a light cramp in my stomach. It’s weird, and I can’t really tell if it is a period cramp or one that signals that I need to use the bathroom.
Deciding to eat something, I grab my phone and walk out of my room. The apartment is quiet. Mattie is taking her classes in person, and she has a part time job at the coffee shop around the corner, so she normally doesn’t get back home until seven in the evening. It is barely one now, so I got the place to myself for a while longer.
I pull out a cup of ramen noodle soup, fill it with water and pop it into the microwave. It is not the healthiest of meals, but I’m not very hungry, and this will do the job.
As I listen to the microwave humming in the background, I feel another cramp in my stomach, this one more aggressive than the first one. I grab my phone and pull up my calendar. I always keep track of my period, and I know I haven’t been late, so it can’t be that, but I just want to make sure.
