The Hustler Wedding [Alex Gaskarth]

Chapter Eight: The Gamble

     It's surprisingly easy to run away when you're an adult - a lot easier than it is when you're eighteen.  

     I went straight to the airport and bought a ticket on the first domestic flight leaving the airport - a red-eye to Atlantic City, apparently.

     The flight was fairly quiet, and thankfully, no one except the stewardess tried to talk to me. When I got off the flight, I checked my phone as a natural reflex.

     Eighteen unread text messages, twenty-three missed calls, and six FaceTime call requests.

     For a moment, I thought about answering them. They all had to be there for a reason, didn't they?

     But I didn't. Couldn't, actually. I couldn't deal with people. In a way, Atlantic City seemed like the best place that flight could've gone. I didn't know anyone there, nobody actually knew me, and if you don't want to talk to people, then you don't frigging have to. 

     I mean, I did. I spoke to the woman at the front desk, and whoever ran room service, but other than that, not really. And nobody I talked to cared why I was there, or whether I was engaged, or planning on having children. It was sort of paradise.

     The only problem with Atlantic City was money, though not in the sense you'd expect. It wasn't that I didn't have enough... the graphic design industry had been pretty good in that sense. It was more that I couldn't access it all that easily. Alex and I had a joint account, so he could easily find out where I'd last withdrawn cash or used my debit card. My Visa card was no different.

     My first day there, I wired three grand from Alex's and my joint account to a private account I set up with the Bank of America that same day. But with the cost of buying new clothes, staying in the hotel for two weeks, and the general fact that Atlantic City is not a cheap city, my resources were dwindling.

     Every day, I switched on my phone in the morning, only to switch it off well before lunch. It seemed as though every single person I knew was trying to get ahold of me, whether by call, text, email, or carrier pigeon.

     Surprisingly enough, though, it wasn't my fiancé that finally tracked me down

     It was my best friend.

     At seven PM on December twenty-third, there came a knock at the door of my hotel suite. Thinking it was room service with my dinner, I called for them to let themselves in. But the knocking persisted.  

     Sighing dramatically, I finally got out of bed and swung open the door without bothering to check the peephole.

     Standing there, bundled in a grey hoodie and black leather jacket, was none other than Connor Pierpont.

     "Goddamn it, Air!" He snapped, rushing forward to gather me into a bone-crushing hug. "Do you know how worried everyone is about you?" 

     His tone was full of menace, and yet, when I tried to pull out of the hug, he only squeezed me tighter.  

     "C-C-Con!" I choked. "Let go! I can't breathe!" 

     "Maybe that's the point!" he said fiercely. 

     I finally squirmed out of his grasp, gasping for breath. When I looked back up into the bright green eyes of my best friend, I immediately felt guilty. He really did look worried, even though he somehow knew where I was. I wondered how Alex looked. As much as I wanted to believe he looked great, I was sure that he was somewhere close to the pathetic shell of himself that he was when I first met him. That was Alex. He was co-dependent as hell, but he'd never admit it to anyone else. Jack and I had literally become his emotional stabilizers over the years, and Jack couldn't support him forever.