nevertheless~

part 70

HARDIN’S POV

“Tesss”, I mumble in the room, my throat dried from the night. I stretch my arms above my head as I wake to the near morning. My body feels a bit sensitive after last night too. I didn’t realize I’d be so tired after sex, but I guess it’s not the game, it's the player to blame. She did tire me out in the best way possible.

“Tess”, I called once again and sit up in the bed, grabbing my cell phone from the bedside with all the other brick-a-brack, to see the time.

Nearly 7 o’clock.

I look around and find her side of the bed empty, and I finally open my full eyes to the empty room. I hear the shower running and put two and two, that she is getting already started upon the day, like the OCD induced, perfectionist she is. It worries me sometimes that this habit of hers, of being 15 minutes early to occasions, needing all the similar coloured clothes arranged in the closet together, and the same sized boxes put together, will someday drive her a maniac, and me trying to follow in her footsteps to keep her happy.

I get up and find my shirt from last and fail after I trace my way back to where I could’ve dropped it last night and finally resort to my fate of having to be naked. I was going to get her breakfast first, but maybe my fate says that I should join her in the shower and maybe bless both of our early in the morning.

“Knock Knock”, I knock twice, saying the words for her, knowing that, that, the idiotic act of mine, get a laugh out of her.

“Do you mind if a 6 feet tall, handsome, sculpted like a greek gods statue, boyfriend who you love, joins the shower with you?”, I ask.

“You did deny me it yesterday, when I went down on you, think you can do it now?”, I say, leaning against the door, waiting for my call. I can’t yet fully believe that she loves me. I finally have a girlfriend who I love and who loves me back. She might not yet know the intensity of my feelings, but I know that this is the woman who I see my future with. I have no idea what that future will be, but I know that she has had to be a part of it, or all of this is for nothing. She fights for me, like no one I know will. Other’s will chew me and throw me out, but she fights for me like Athena.

“Hey!!!!!”, I sing outside the door when I don’t get a reply.

“Tessa”, I call, getting worried about the lack of a single response. My brain starts connecting the dots, that there hasn’t been a single day of me and Tessa being together when she has woken up before me, she never can, she loves her rest and sleep. I am the one who gets up first and then she. My hand reaches for the doorknob, as I contemplate if I should invade her privacy like this.

“Tessa”, I throw everything to caution as I don’t get yet another response and open the door to find an empty shower with the water running, the steam leaving the bathroom and into our room. What the fuck? Why is the shower running, and where the fuck is she?”

I turn everything off, and that’s when I catch a thing that becomes the cause of my ruin, the sink cabinet is missing it’s handle. When we’d checked into the hotel room, we decided we’d not become one of those weirdos who keeps their toothbrushes in the pouches for the whole trip or those who keep it on the sink, we’d made a pact to keep it in the sink cabinet overhead so that hygiene can be maintained, and today as I walk towards the sink cabinet, for the first time in my whole existence, I feel hatred towards an block of wood.

Hatred fucking burned, like inhaling mace, getting punched in the throat, and being stabbed simultaneously, as I opened the small white block of wood, to find it, empty.
Add in a dose of poison that eats you from the inside out, and that’s hatred.

Fuck.

My chest tightened, each breath a burn in my lungs. I stood, and before I even knew it, I hammered the mirror in the damn cabinet with my bare hands.. The porcelain around the caring of the beautifully made thing, and the glass shattered with a crash that would wake the entire fucking neighborhood. I took a deep breath and shook my head at my idiocy. It’s not like breaking that would bring her back, but it felt like it gave me a cathartic relief to do it.

I took myself back to my bedroom and what I saw made my blood boil, and I could feel it, I could feel the crimson off of my veins, and I knew, I knew that if I didn’t do something about this, I would fucking die of a heart attack right now.

My gaze paused on her clothes still lying on the floor. They sat there, hers, probably smelling like her and shit. I picked them up and dropped them in my suitcase, hoping I would wake from this nightmare. As I do so, I feel the satin underneath my hand of her dress from last night, she looked so good in this, the feeling of her skin underneath this from yesterday as I undressed her, it all returns back to me, it all comes back into my head as tears brim my eyes, breathing gets tough, my heart stops, it feels stuck inside my throat, my head pounds as I drop the useless dress, I need to do something, I need to get away.

I get my phone from the side table, and between what I usually call a mess, I see the twinkle of a ring, I pull the piece and find the thing to be hear earring, missing it’s backing and the owner.

I pull her number on it, and dial it. I have no fucking idea what is going on, I have no clue where this is going, what is happening, what it’s all leading up to, all I know is that, a woman is missing and there are a few things of her in my room, and nothing else.
A woman is missing, and a whole fucking organ of my body too.

“Hardin!”, I hear a knock from outside, and for a second, just for a second, a part of me feels like it got what it wanted until I realize it’s not in the voice of the woman I am looking for.

“Hardin!”, Landon knocks again.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS IT, LANDON!”, I yell back at him.

“It’s about Tessa”, he says, and I go to open the door.

“What the fuck is it?”, I ask, trying to sound a thread of rationale even though my brain is working 2 million miles a second.

“Her phone’s been out of reach, Claudia has tried to call her and she called me to tell ,her about the launch party.”, he says like any of this even matters.

“Well, fuck the launch party and fuck Claudia.”, I yell, maniacally into the hallway.

“What the hell are you on about?”.

“She’s not here Jackass! She’s not fucking here, Landon!”, I say as I get back inside my room, my strides not knowing what to fucking do.

“What do you mean, she’s not here? Did she go somewhere?”, he says, as I get dressed and I got dressed. I grab a coat off the hook as I slide things I was told to carry at all times, because they are important even though the most important thing in this moment is gone. I put on the black coat, a coat as black as my mood

“I don’t know Landon. I don’t fucking know! I don’t know France. She doesn’t know shit, man. She doesn’t know basic French! I don’t know where she is. Did she go somewhere, someone took her, or fucking kidnapped her and left me to live, I don’t know!”, I grab my keycard and the Instead of taking one cigarette from my nightstand, I grabbed the whole pack. I was going to smoke every last one of them, she didn’t like it, right? Well she isn’t fucking here to tell me no.

“Where are  you going?”, he asks as he comes out with me, the look of panic on his not helping much to me.

“To fucking find her! I need to find her Landon! My heart is fucking ripping at it’s seems and I don’t know what the fuck is all this, but she better fucking be in the motherfucking gym or something of this hotel.”, I say as I run to the nearest staircase and run down the thing, dialing her number again as I run them and get to the ground floor.

She really better be somewhere in this hotel or god help me so.