heart over brain

Part 9

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The sight hits me like a fist in the face.

My brain knows the police is not after me, they are after Max, but my body doesn't. I go rigid still, eyes pinned on the officers that step out of their car to inspect ours. My breath catches, when one bends down to brush snow off the license plate at the back.

"Well, this has been fun," Max says, the husky voice a notch deeper than normal. "But I gotta go now."

My eyes snap to him. He stands, I grab his arm before I can think better of it. He looks at me, at my fingers closing over his wrist, back at me, almost comically. His brows furrow.

"W-What about me?" I stutter. My voice trembles. Fear creeps over my skin in hot shivers.

"What about you?" he says. "That's your perfect chance." He points out the window. "They will pick you up, take you home. You'll be back long before Monday morning. It's the solution to all your problems."

It is, isn't it?

Then why do I feel like a dark abyss just opened beneath my feet? 

"But it is kinda the opposite for me, because, you know." He peels his arm out of my grip. "I have to go."

"Where?" I breathe.

"Uhm. I am not going to tell you. No offense, but police interrogations can be quite scary. Especially when it's your first time. It is your first time, right?"

I nod.

"Well. Then. Take care." Max stares at his feet as he speaks. His voice sounds odd.

"Take care," I mumble back.

He is already gone, though. I hear the waitress squeal as he rushes by her, then a door open and close.

The girl comes over, puts two plates with food on the table and looks at me with an open mouth. "What's gotten into him?"

"I –" I don't know how to answer, but she doesn't wait for one anyway. She is gone again before I can blink. I grab for my phone on the table only to realize it is not there anymore. In my daze, I check my pockets for it, my seat and even below the table, before it dawns on me that Max stole it.

That bastard.

For a while I sit there in silence and stare at the Bieber Burger. It smells delicious, it rumbles my stomach. I can't imagine anything worse than eating it right now.

Take care? Take care?!

I deserve more than a damn take care after he dragged me halfway across the country and stole my phone. I pick a cheese fry from my plate for good measure, swallow it without proper chewing, then stand up from the table and run. I am already out of the diner when the waitress notices me, but she comes after me quite a bit before she gives up.

I keep running, where to I don't know. Why I know even less. It's an urge deep inside me as necessary as breathing. Hot anger burns any reason from my mind. An unbearable pain rips through my chest.

As I run my slippers fill with snow, my hair tangles all over my face with the freezing wind, my lungs protest against the exercise – I am usually not a person who leaves her couch – but I keep running.

When I reach the last house of the village before a field of dark and snow I stop and bang on its door like a crazy person. And elderly man opens with a face well beyond confusion.

"May I use your phone?" I pant.

"Are you alright, Missy?" the man asks and looks out behind me, like he expects a monster chasing after me.

"Yes. I – may I use your phone?"

The man nods and all but hurls me inside. He produces a mobile phone, smeared and cracked display, but working. I dial my own number. It rings – rings – rings – voicemail. I dial again. And again.

How much battery had I left? Not much. Hopefully enough. I dial again. Every time the call doesn't connect, I dial again, like the lunatic that I am.

"H-Hello?" Max finally picks up.

"You fucking bastard!" I yell without hello. "Do you have any idea what I have been through the last few hours? Can you imagine, at all? And then you go and even steal my phone? It is about the only valuable thing I possess!"

The elderly man stares at me with big eyes. His bosky brows wander up way too high, wrinkling his forehead like old leather. 

The line remains silent, while I let out my emotions.

"I have been on an emotional rollercoaster since yesterday, and all I get for it is take care? What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"Hannah." Max tries to intervene. His deep voice sounds a bit mechanical over the phone.

"God! I don't even know anymore. You are such an idiot. And a liar. And you do not work in accounting – you don't, period, every person with two healthy eyes can see that –"

"Hannah, the battery is running out, so if you have something actually meaningful to say, say it now."

"Give me back my phone!" I snap.

"I was going to send it your address after – afterwards."

"No, give it back now!"

"I can't. The police –"

"NOW!"

I don't even care about the phone that much, I really don't. But it is a physical, real thing I can attach my anger and disappointment to, unlike – Max and whatever I thought I was doing with him.

Apparently, ignoring all the red flags screaming in my face, lulling myself into the idea that he is not that bad and deluding myself into thinking there was a reason why he never dropped me off at a bus stop.

"I can't come back to the diner," he says quietly.

"I am not at the diner!"

"What? Where are you?"

"I don't know!"

I pant, still pant, maybe even more than after running. My breath is quick and fast and irregular and when I gulp I almost can't.

"Are you hyperventilating again?" Max says carefully.

My heart clenches in my chest. He is not concerned about me. He isn't. If he was, he wouldn't have left me in the diner. "What do you care?!"

"Hannah, where are you?" His voice changes, it becomes a strange mixture of scolding and comfort.

"I don't know!" I repeat. I brush a hand over my face, brush sweat away that is suddenly there. My eyes can't focus.

"Can you text me the address?"

"I don't know the address!"

"Can you describe the place?"

My eyes jump at the elderly man, at his hallway, a thick fur carpet to my feet, yellowish walls.  "It's a house, for God's sake."

"What house?"

One of many, I hadn't paid attention to any details in my rage. "How many more times do you want me to repeat that I don't know?"

"How the hell did you get there then?"

"I ran."

"Are you nuts?"

Yes.

Obviously.

"Listen, sit down somewhere before you hurt yourself. I'll find you, okay? I'll bring you your phone. You can calm down."

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