Abby Ryan has her whole life planned out, up until graduation that is. As a journalism student at the University of Southern Washington, she has one goal in mind for her last semester of senior year: secure a scholarship for graduate school. But whe...
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She never came back.
I don't know what I was expecting when I watched her walk out of my bedroom, but falling asleep drunk as fuck, staring at my black phone screen wasn't it. I was practically seeing double, and even though my blood was drowning in enough whiskey to make my world spin, there was one thing that was clear as fucking day—she was gone.
She's been gone for a while. Or, at least it feels like it, but that might just be because I've been distracting myself enough not to have to think about specifics anymore. I don't want to think about how long it's been since she looked up at me like she didn't even want me to touch her. I don't want to think about how many times I've picked up my phone and almost called her. I don't want to think about the number of times I damn near spiraled and drove to her apartment. I don't want to think about the fact that even though it's been five days since she walked away, the echo of her is still here, feeding me that dangerous bit of hope that maybe she's not really gone, that maybe she'll come back.
I held onto that hope on the first day when Micah and Luke took me out to a bar in Creekview, a run-down town twenty minutes south of Pullman. It was a shit hole, but they had cheap beer and whiskey strong enough to make me forget why I was even sitting there in the first place. Luke bought me enough liquor to drown myself in, and by the time we walked out of the pub, I was stumbling so hard that he and Micah had to practically carry me back to the Uber. Which, thinking back now, was pretty fucking impressive since they both went drink for drink with me. We were all sloshed, damn near numb to the world when Luke called shotgun and Micah dropped down into the backseat beside me. Micah's not one to talk about feelings, which is why, even drunk off my ass, I was surprised when he gave a slurred speech in the back of the Uber about how much he looks up to me. He rambled on about how someday he wants to be as good of a man as me, about how I'm more family to him than I'll ever know, about how he knows things will work out for me, even if they're pretty fucked up right now.
He shook his head with a short laugh as if he couldn't believe he was actually giving me a pep talk. When he ran a rough hand through his hair, I knew that for him, it was his way of trying to help me, to be there for me in his own way, in the only way he really could. It didn't last long, though, because even drunk as fuck, Micah doesn't keep his walls down for long, no matter who you are. I'm pretty sure I blacked out after that because the last thing I remember from that night was Luke laughing his ass off about how soft Micah was getting and Micah knocking him in the back of the head.
I held onto the hope that maybe she was struggling as much as I was on the second day. We had an away game, and as I sat in the airport terminal, hungover and numb, I scrolled through her Instagram for two hours. I'd scrolled so many times I'd practically memorized the captions to each picture, and when I got back down to the very first one—the one of her and her dad—I scrolled back up, desperately hoping that she'd finally post something to her story. To give me some idea of how she's doing.
She never did.
I managed to push it all down by tip-off, to focus some of that built-up anger and frustration into my game, but a few hours later, I was four beers deep, trying to drink enough to forget my own fucking name while the rest of them were celebrating. I was pretty fucking successful, and by the time I stumbled back into the room, I was pulling out my phone as I kicked off my shoes.
