Now open your eyes

Jake chuckles. “She’s going to break your heart.”

“I can see it already,” Alicia waves her arm out in front of her, mimicking an invisible headline across the air, “Sociopath stomps on dreamer’s heart, death by ignorance.”

Instead of fueling their amusement, I stay quiet and smile to myself. Loving her until it kills me seems like a wondrous way to go.

A sting to my cheek snapped me out of it, and I opened my eyes to see Travis staring back at me. “I’m sorry, brother,” he whispered, and I looked to my left to see my agent had left. Travis grabbed my chin and redirected my gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

My head shook. “No,” I gritted out, and Travis dropped his head. “She can’t be … I’d know if she was … I’d feel it,” I slapped my chest, “right here. I’d know. She can’t be.”

“There were two fatalities, Oliver. Two—”

“Don’t.” I pushed him off me, looking for a way out.

Travis rushed to my side and yanked my shoulder back. “Scott owned that bloody cabin. You said so yourself. He had to have had something to do with her gone.”

My palms flew over my ears. “Stop it!” I screamed.

“Listen to me! She left you! She ran off with the wanker to a fucking cabin for crying out loud! Don’t you see?” Travis’s voice broke, “She’s dead, Oliver. I’m so sorry, but she’s gone.”

I gripped Travis’s shirt collar and slammed him over the bar. People jumped out of the way. “You don’t fucking know her!” Spit and agony flew between us. “I would know if she was gone! She’s not gone! She’s not!” My fingers released from his shirt, and I darted my gaze to the crowd surrounding us. All eyes were on me. A mother held her little girl behind her. They were scared of me. I was scared of me. It was quiet. My chest ached, unimaginable pain. A fire burned in my eyes because I’d refused to cry. Because she wasn’t gone.

Travis reluctantly placed his hand on my shoulder. “Okay, mate. Let’s get you home.”

“No,” I pushed him off me, knowing what he was implying. He didn’t know how I’d already made a home within Mia. She was my home, and I’d been trying this entire time to get back to her. I lost my footing, trying to push my way through the waves of gazes over me to find air.

My cellphone had been ringing non-stop since I’d left the bar I’d forgotten the name of. Hours had passed, I knew because it was dark outside. The reflection of the opened window stared back at me through the mirror. I’d been sitting on the bathroom floor, listening to the drainpipe leak from inside the motel walls. The occupant next door had flushed the loo numerous times over the last few hours. Poor chap must’ve not been feeling well, and I’d made a game of his misery.

With every flush, I’d grab a new beer bottle from the grocery bag beside me.

No matter how many bottles stacked to my left, the ringing from the mobile wouldn’t bloody quiet. Over and over, I banged the back of my head against the opened bathroom door I’d sat against until the pain lessened inside my chest.

It never did. The ache only worsened.

“Ollie.”

I looked up.

Travis stared down at me, terror in his features. From this angle, he could’ve passed for James Franco in the movie Spring Breakers. I only knew of this movie because it had played in the tattoo parlor one time when I’d gotten my ink done, though Travis’s hair was blonder. Perhaps Marshal Mathers, if the talented rapper had blond braids, facial hair, and angel wings tattooed on his neck.

“You can’t throw it all away,” Travis stated, taking a seat on the floor across from me against the sink cabinet. “You worked too hard.”

“I’m not throwing anything away. Momentary relapse,” I grabbed a bottle from the bag and tossed it over Travis’s lap, “Mia’s alive. I’m going to find her.”

“You’re in denial.”

I ignored his nonsense and took another sip.

He wasn’t listening. No one was listening.

Even the alcohol wasn’t fucking listening.

“You know, you never did tell me about her.” My blurry vision settled on him, and he continued, “Who was the girl who stole Oliver Masters heart?”

“Is,” I corrected, pointing at him with the bottle.

“What?”

“You’re talking as if she isn’t here. As if she’s …” I couldn’t say the word, so I just let the sentence stall like my life had. Travis turned his eyes away from me into the space between us. The person in the next room flushed the toilet, so I finished off the bottle and grabbed for another. “It’s pointless because no matter what significant words I could come up with to describe what we have, it would never sound as amazing as the way we’re co

“You and your words,” Travis sighed, “And what happens if Mia’s gone? What then?”

“I’d die.” It was as simple as that.

“From?”

“The disco

Travis smacked my leg with the back of his hand. “I think you’ve had too much to drink, wouldn’t you say?”

I pointed the mouth of the bottle at him. “Ah, you think I’m joshing, yeah? Read a book. You may learn a thing or two.” I’d read about it before. Dying from a broken heart was a scientific fact—death of the desperate and lonely.

“Alright, brother. Let’s get you into bed.” Travis jumped to his feet and pulled me up from the bathroom floor.

And that was the last thing I recalled.