Awake (Reflections Book 3) by A.L. Woods

Author:A.L. Woods [Woods, A.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-22T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

No one questioned my premature return. I took a redeye back to Boston, grabbed a cab home, and kept it together until my keys were the in lock of my front door. The person I became once the headlights of the cab disappeared from my driveway wasn’t a side of me I wanted anyone to know.

I woke up in my bed nursing a feeling that was worse than a hangover. I couldn’t make Raquel love me, and worst of all, maybe she never did. The whole thing forced me to consider that maybe I had been around her so much early in our relationship that I never gave her the opportunity to formulate an opinion without crowding her.

I was always there, wanting and waiting for someone who would never feel the same about me. The reality was devastating.

I would never have been able to do what she did. If she had come here, prostrating herself, giving me everything she had on a silver platter, there would have been no question that the result would have been different.

But Raquel was different, wasn’t she? Wasn’t that why falling in love with her had been so easy to begin with? She was transcendental. There was nothing ordinary about her.

And maybe that’s what made the devastation of her loss that much worse, an agonizing hole inside of me that grew day by day. Somehow, I didn’t think popping a couple of Tylenol tablets was going to change that, either.

Upon learning of my return, Dougie refrained from telling me I told you so, and Maria had given me the courtesy of dissembling what she really thought about the whole thing. No one made a point of invading my space to fix me—thank God—and I took the rest of the week to myself.

To mourn, to gain perspective, to finish what I’d started.

It took me three weeks and four days to renovate the bathroom. Record time for me. Then again, working on this bathroom went beyond the call of a labor of love. It became something to bury my thoughts in. Another tile in place, another memory stowed away somewhere. A new faucet to wash away the pain. A new glass shower pane in place of the old curtain, a new tub, sparkly and white, to remove the taint of the one it replaced. A fresh coat of storm gray paint on the walls that mirrored my mood to pull the whole thing together. It was a bold color choice, but then again, maybe I’d been spending too much time with Penelope.

When I wasn’t here, I was with Dougie and Penelope. No one really said much. I didn’t want to talk, and neither did they. Most of the time, we just sat in silence. They’d watch television while I stared at the darkened office from my place on their couch, replaying things in my mind until my brain wanted to explode.

That desk was where it all started.

Penelope would rub a hand over her growing middle with a vacant expression painting her face.

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