With Tessa’s words rooted in my head, I went most of the day distracted, just going through the motions. Grocery shopping in a trance that almost saw me bowling over a toddler. Running two stop signs on the way home and nearly rear-ending someone at a red light.
Back at the cabin, I settled in on the couch and put on a series I’d watched several times already, letting its familiar dialogue drone out everything else for a few hours to eat up most of the day.
I almost hoped for a last minute drop off from hospital overflow, just to have something to do. To keep my hands and idle mind busy. But a call from Dad never came and he insisted I take at least one day off each week.
Around eight my brain felt numb enough to drag myself through a warm shower and get ready for bed.
I tipped my face back under the stream of water, lathering shampoo through my hair, sighing.
My lips parted, letting in a stream of soapy water as I stopped. The sound of the water hitting the floor drowned out everything else but I felt it.
Rinsing my face, I peeked out of the shower booth through the open door to my bedroom.
The sound of the TV series playing robotically to no audience droned in from the living room.
I shivered, sensing the familiar interruption in the atmosphere around me. The presence and persistent glare of something that could see me but I couldn’t see. It was back.
He was back.
I rinsed off quickly, rushing out of the shower, every inch of my skin alive and tingling.
Wrapped in just my towel, I hurried through the cabin, searching each window for his face until I got to the front door. I threw it open.
Crickets sang in the grass, a cool breeze swayed the trees in the woods. The temperatures dropped recently and the wind raised goosebumps on my skin, but I didn’t see him.
“Ruarc?” I called out, his name a ball in my throat. A plea.
Leaving the door open behind me, I padded across the chilled wood of the porch and down the stairs, each one creaking beneath my weight.
Air stuttered into my lungs, scrutinizing every shadow. Every potential hiding place.
All the progress I thought I made in getting over him was undone at the mere suggestion that he might be close.
I shivered in the wind, closing my eyes, trying to hone in on that feeling. The one that told me he was near, but no matter how deeply I dug for it, I couldn’t find it anymore.
Was he gone?
Was he ever really here?
Was I so obsessed with him that I was conjuring the feeling?
I walked back inside feeling bereft, my footsteps heavy. I couldn’t fucking do this again. It was barely nine but there was nothing I wanted more than oblivion. The quicker I fell asleep, the quicker it would be morning and I could go to work.
In bed, I pulled the covers up to my chin, curling into a ball against the sheets. My body tingled with unresolved energy, unspent tension. Getting that hit of adrenaline just before bed was not going to make sleep easy tonight. Opening my eyes, I stared into the dark until shapes appeared. Shapes that I could pretend might be my monster in the dark.
I didn’t know if there was a way back to who I used to be before him. Ruarc came into my life like a hurricane, destroying everything that made me who I was, forcing me to rebuild. Still, he’d been as intangible as a ghost. Maybe that’s all he would ever be.
A ghost. There one minute and gone the next.
