Not Looking for Love: Episode 3

  Contents:

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Note From The Author

  Not Looking For Love: Episode 3

  By

  Lena Bourne

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2014 Lena Bourne

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

  or given away to other people in any form or by any means. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I cross the state line and all of a sudden, it's like I'm watching the road through a shaking, water filled rubber tube. My heart is racing, cramps shooting up into my left shoulder. It's like my mind's stuck in a nightmare and masked murderers are chasing me, only I'm awake.

  I pull off the freeway and into the parking lot of a gas station, trying to take deep breaths, but they all stick in my throat and I can't get any oxygen. The world spins violently, until all I see is thick, velvety blackness closing in from the sides, pressure rising in my head.

  Relax, Gail. It's just a panic attack. I'm trying to convince myself, but the voice sounds like Scott's and that shouldn't be so. The realization works to calm me like someone emptied a bucket of ice water over my head.

  I'm shaking all over, and my knuckles are white from clutching the steering wheel so hard. I release it, my numb fingers tossing stuff out of my purse, looking for the phone. My hand is shaking as I scroll through the unanswered calls list. My thumb hovers over Scott's number. I can't press call and I can't let go of the phone. The scary blackness comes back, swallows the eerie, two-dimensional twilit world outside.

  I can't do this. I won't call him. I ended it for good this time.

  I repeat those words in my head until they start to make sense, until I believe them. The world is dark for real when I finally drop the phone onto the passenger seat, and start the engine. I'm going back to school, and crazy, messed-up, unstable Gail is staying behind in New York. Hopefully, she'll be dead and gone by the next time I return home.

  It's only a quarter past nine when I get to my house in Connecticut, but all the windows are dark, except for the yellowish candlelight flickering in the living room. There's a strange car in the driveway, and I park next to it. I start unloading my bags, making a lot of noise and hoping my roommate Phillipa and whoever she has over will hear me.

  For a few minutes I stand there in the dark, debating whether I should carry everything around the back and enter through the kitchen, but I have my entire wardrobe with me, and most of my books, and I'm already nauseous from lifting it all from the trunk.

  "I'm home!" I yell into the dark house as soon as I open the door.

  Instrumental music is playing in the living room, which has no doors, so I will have to walk right past it. I pile all my stuff just inside the door, and walk closer to the living room.

  "Phillipa, are you here?"

  No reply, but I hear her laugh over the music. I really should have called first. I bend over to collect my purse, thinking maybe I could still call, but the movement sends nausea into my throat. Hand clutched tightly over my mouth, I sprint past the living room and to the bathroom, where I throw up in the sink because I can't even make it to the toilet. I haven't eaten much today, so only a watery, burning mess comes up.

  When I exit the bathroom, Phillipa is standing in the hall, buttoning up her shirt. Behind her on the sofa, a voluptuous girl is combing her thick dark hair out with her fingers.

  "Gail? I didn't expect you today," Phillipa says.

  I smile, and look at the floor, so she won't feel too embarrassed. "It's my fault. I'm sorry, I should have called and let you know."

  I didn't because then this whole going back to school thing would be too permanent, and Mom would really be gone.

  Phillipa closes the distance between us and puts her hand on my shoulder. "And your mother, Gail?"

  I look up into her eyes, which are glistening with tears, but I have none of my own.

  "We buried her last week," I say, because somehow that's not the same as saying she's dead.

  Phillipa wraps her arms around me so tight I can't get a good breath in. "I'm so sorry, Gail."

  Her hair smells of a fruity shampoo, and her breasts are soft against my own. She feels entirely different than hugging Scott, and that's about all I can think of.

  "I'll be OK," I mutter, and I'm not sure if I'm telling her, or convincing myself.

  Her date is standing in the entrance to the living room now, biting her nails and looking at me with narrowed eyes.

  I pull away from Phillipa and pull down my sweater to have something to do with my hands. "I'm sorry I interrupted your date."

  "That's alright," Phillipa says. "Come, have a drink with us. This is Holly, by the way."

  I walk over to her and extend my hand. "Gail."

  She takes my hand limply, and lets go immediately.

  I turn back to Phillipa. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll just go to sleep. It's been a long day."

  Phillipa is still looking at me like I might break at any moment, but I don't feel a thing beyond embarrassment, and a slight annoyance at the way Holly is still eyeing me like she wants to pull my hair and slap me.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," I say and walk up the stairs, leaving all my suitcases by the door. I'll probably just throw up again, if I try to carry them upstairs.

  My room is over the kitchen and not the living room, so I shouldn't be able to hear a thing. It smells like paint and dust, and I open the window wide as soon as I enter it. Crickets are chirping in the bushes and stars are twinkling in the sky. I yearn to get in my car and drive to the beach, any beach, but there's none near where I am now.

  I change into a pair of winter pajamas I left here, and climb under the covers, keeping the windows open. I wish I could imagine my mom as one of the bright stars in the sky, the way she tried to get me to imagine Grandpa when he died. But that was just a silly childish thing, and it didn't even work then.

  After a few hours of tossing and turning, I finally give up and dig through my purse for the sleeping pills Dad gave me. A nearly empty packet of birth control pills falls out with it. Only seven days worth are left, and I can't remember the last time I took one, though I'm pretty good at taking them regularly. I also can't remember when I had my last period. I squeeze a pill out to take now, then decide to just wait for my period and then start afresh then.

  I do take the sleeping pill though, and it works almost instantly, transporting me straight through that soft, cloudy state right before dreams come, into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I wake up at dawn, shivering from the cold because I slept with the window open. Holly's car is gone from the driveway, and the house is silent.

  I ti
ptoe down to the kitchen, and bring up my bags. My stomach is twisting painfully by the time I'm done, like I should throw up, but there's nothing to do that with. The nausea is probably just the effect of taking a sleeping pill on an empty stomach.

  When I enter the kitchen again, Phillipa has coffee going.

  "Good morning," she mumbles and yawns widely. "How did you sleep?"

  "Fine. You?"

  She holds out a cup of coffee to me, and the smell makes me retch, but I swallow the bile.

  I take the coffee but don't drink it, scanning the kitchen for something to eat that doesn't make me sick on sight. There's a box of corn flakes on the counter and I pour some into a bowl, but don't add any milk.

  "I'll go shopping after class today," I say, since I'm eating Phillipa's food and drinking her coffee.

  Luckily, the cereal stays put, and my stomach is no longer cramping.

  "If you ever want to just talk I'm here, Gail, you know that," she says, sipping her coffee and studying me over the rim.

  I take a swallow of my own coffee. "I do, Phillipa. But I just don't know what to say, really."

  My mom is gone forever, but here, in this house where she never lived, it's easier to keep that terrible thought at a distance. Talking about it would just bring it all here.

  "Do you think they'll just let me pick up the classes?" I ask to change the subject. "I missed enrollment, and I did tell them I won't be back this semester."

  Phillipa shrugs. "You only missed a few weeks, so I see no reason why they shouldn't let you enroll now."

  I hope she's right, but the paperwork is always so tedious and illogical. I'm getting nauseous just thinking about spending the rest of the day running from office to office and getting everything sorted. But it's better than sitting alone in an empty house, thinking of things I never wanted to even imagine in the first place.

  I drink the last of my coffee and rise. "I should get started, or this day will never be over."

  Up in my room, I check my phone for calls or messages, but apart from Dad's text that he landed safely there's nothing. I fight the disappointment, but it's there, settled in my stomach like a snowball. But why would Scott call at seven in the morning? He's not the mental one, I am.

  The rest of the morning passes in a blur of stuffy offices and whiny ladies telling me it's highly irregular for me to enroll so late in the semester. By noon, I'm dangerously close to screaming at the next one who tells me it might not even be possible.

  They finally relent, saying they'll run the paperwork through if I get permission from all my professors. At five, I'm clutching the folder with my enrollment papers and schedule. I'm exhausted and nauseas. I still haven't gotten a single call or text from anyone, except Phillipa. But why would Scott call? He told me to call. And I can't do that. I won't, because I let him go, and I'm sticking to it.

  My phone blasts to life just as I'm pulling into the supermarket parking lot.

  "Hi, sweetie, did you manage to get everything sorted?" Dad asks, sounding very tired and far away.

  "I did, but it took the whole day," I answer.

  I'm picturing him loosening his tie, then pouring a glass of whiskey and settling down to work at the dining room table, Mom's raspy breaths echoing through the house. But those afternoons and nights are gone forever. Dad's in some hotel room in Switzerland, and Mom's in the ground. My face feels like it's being peeled off by a giant, invisible hand and the ground is rubber under my feet.

  "Did you have any classes today?" Dad asks.

  "I'll start tomorrow," I say. Technically, I should be in my current affairs class right now, but I needed air after all that running around and arguing.

  "I'll be back this Friday. I could drive down on Saturday and we'll have some dinner, if you don't have any other plans," he says.

  I want him to come and I don't. But it's not something I'll say out loud.

  "That would be great," I say instead. "I don't have any plans." Nor will I for a long time yet.

  We say goodbye, and then I'm under the fluorescent lights inside the supermarket, where everything I consider getting is making me nauseous. I ignore it, fill up my cart with stuff I normally eat, and am back by my car in fifteen minutes.

  Phillipa comes home at seven, but by then, I'm already in bed, wondering if taking a sleeping pill this early will make me wake up in the middle of the night. I decide to risk it. Most of the professors I saw today gave me huge reading lists to catch up on, and I prefer studying early in the morning, before dawn anyway. Because that's what my life will be now. School and sleep. Sleep and school. So it's good Scott hasn't called me yet, because there will be no time for feelings now, even if there was a place to feel them.

  I go through the rest of the week like a robot. Classes in the morning, asleep by seven, then studying from three AM until it's time to go back to class.

  On Friday afternoon, Phillipa comes home all red in the face, her hair plastered to her head with sweat. I've just made plans to meet Dad for dinner tomorrow night, and I'm already considering calling back and canceling. The terrible emptiness of home with Mom gone pressed in though the phone while I spoke to him. It transported me back to my own bedroom, anxiously waiting for her next raspy breath, her next coughing fit. Only she will never cough again, or smile, or laugh, or talk. Because she is gone, and I still don't feel her anywhere.

  "You been to the Gym?" I ask and follow Phillipa into the kitchen where she chugs down a whole eight-ounce glass of water without pausing for breath.

  "Better," she says and wipes some water off her chin. "Boot Camp."

  "That sounds very military," I say, picturing beefy men doing pushups, only they're all Scott. He sent me a text last night, but I haven't read it yet. I'm too afraid he'll suck me back into the insanity that was my life for the last few weeks. I can't have that. Not now when the ground is finally firm under me again, and I'm taking control of my life.

  "It's also amazing," Phillipa continues and flexes her bicep at me. "I feel so strong. I've been doing it since the beginning of term, and I think you should try it to."

  "Why?" I ask, but I already know. Her tone changed pitch while she was saying it, and she sounded just like she does when she's talking about my mom dying.

  "I think it will make you stronger too, and make it easier for you to deal with everything," she elaborates.

  I pour a glass of water for myself, so I don't have to look at the pity spilling from her eyes.

  "Are you speaking as a psychologist now?" I ask, a little too sharply maybe. "Because I'm doing OK."

  "Yes, I am speaking as a future psychologist," she answers. "So trust me. There's a class on Sunday, and you're coming."

  I shrug and drink the water. "Fine, but I probably won't like it. I'm more of a jogger."

  Not that I've been doing any of that for a while, which maybe I should. Or not. A flitting thought still sends my heart racing like I've just run for ten miles, so I'm not sure heavy exercise is the best idea. That could be too much, and then my heart will just stop, and I'll die, join my mom in the grave, and all this dark emptiness will be gone forever for me too. My heartbeat is racing in my throat again, until I'm sure I was right and I'll just die here in this kitchen. And what would Dad do then?

  "Are you alright, Gail?" Phillipa asks.

  I force some water down my throat. "Yeah."

  "We can have some dinner and talk," she says, undoing her ponytail. "I'll just shower first."

  "OK," I hear myself say, though I'm not sure I really spoke.

  After she leaves, I stare out the window, my mind so blank I hardly know where I am, or who.

  I take a sleeping pill while she's still in the shower and am asleep before she comes out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  On Saturday, I arrive early to the restaurant where I'm meeting Dad. It's stuffy inside, and I wish they had a garden, but they don't, so I sip my water slowly, and try to ignore the growing nausea in my stomach.

  When he
arrives, Dad's hair is disheveled like he hasn't combed it since this morning, and the collar of his shirt is turned inward. I reach behind him and fix it when we hug, the smell of whisky on him sending bile into my throat.

  "How are you holding up, Gail?" he asks after we order our food and drinks.

  I fiddle with my napkin, not wanting to look into his bloodshot eyes and share the grief. "I'm OK, I guess. How are you?"

  I want to chide him for driving here after he'd been drinking, and the words are on the tip of my tongue, but he looks so broken, so downtrodden that I absolutely can't burden him further.

  "The house is so empty now," he says, and sloshes the whiskey around in his glass.

  My eyes would be tearing up right now, if I wasn't so dead inside. I shrug, and roll my napkin up into a tube, tucking in the edges.

  "I could move back home and drive to school everyday," I say, even though that's the absolute last thing I want to do.

  He lays his hand over mine and squeezes. "No, sweetie, there is no need. I'll be fine."

  I finally meet his eyes and nod. "Thanks."

  Maybe it's not the right thing to say, but I'm so grateful to him for not taking me up on my offer. I can hardly get to sleep here, and when I finally do, my dreams are always of Mom and me, playing when I was little, shopping, strolling along the beach. But they always end the same, with her sightless, glistening eyes staring at the ceiling of a cold morgue. And when I wake, it's like she just died. Each and every morning it's the same. I wish I didn't have to sleep.

  "Are you having any trouble getting caught up with your classes?" Dad asks.

  I shake my head. "I've been studying a lot. I'm even a little ahead in some of my classes. I just can't think of anything else, but school work."

  "Me neither," he says and drapes his napkin across his lap because our food has arrived. He's on his second whiskey, and I order my first.