Page 88 of Before You Fell

My dress is twisted high around my hips and my underwear is showing. My hair sticks to my neck. One of my earrings is missing, probably off somewhere, living a much better life.

I should have made it to my bed. Apparently, even my body knew better than to aim that high.

I sit up too fast and pain cracks behind my eyes so sharply I almost see God. Except God would have better things to do than visit this shitshow.

“Fuck.”

I drop my head into my hands and breathe through it because my stomach is already threatening violence and my skull feels as if it’s one bad thought away from splitting open.

When I finally lift my head, the apartment is waiting.

Not my apartment. Not really.

My apartment used to be orderly. Clean counters. Folded laundry. Now it looks like every bad decision I’ve made over the past two months moved in and refused to leave.

Clothes are everywhere. A black dress is twisted over the armrest of the couch. Jeans are kicked across the floor. A bra hangs off the back of a chair. One heel sits near the kitchen, from God knows which party. The other is under the coffee table, half-hidden beside an empty glass on the floor.

Dishes crowd the countertops—plates and glasses shoved wherever I left them.

I stare at it all, hungover and hollow, and the ugliest part isn’t the mess. It’s that I’ve started getting used to it.

My notebooks are still on the kitchen table. One of my notebooks sits open on the coffee table, blank and smug, its empty page staring back at me as if it already knows I’ve got nothing left to say.

I stare at it until the nausea in my stomach turns into something more intense.

Two months and I haven’t written a single fucking lyric.

Writing used to be the one thing I could always do when everything else in my life went to shit. It was the one place I knew who I was.

Now the notebooks sit there, full of blank pages, while I just breathe through days I don’t want, calling it surviving because that sounds less pathetic than admitting I have no fucking clue how to live this life without them.

I look for my phone and find it wedged between the couch cushions.

I press the side button and the screen lights up with proof that people still love me even when I am doing my best to become unreachable.

Missed call: Mom.

Missed call: Dad.

Missed call: Mom.

Mom: Willow, please call me. I just need to hear your voice.

Dad: Answer your mother, sweetheart. Or answer me. We’re worried.

My throat tightens so fast that I almost hate them for loving me the way they do.

So I do what I do best lately. I stare at the messages until they hurt too much and still I do not answer.

Cruz: Hey, songbird. Just checking in.

Jax has sent memes I haven’t even attempted to open. Probably stupid ones, since they usually are.

Jett sent a message.

Jett: How are you?

Three words and I still couldn’t answer them because the truth isn’t cute enough for a text bubble.