Heal the Heart

36.

Three Months Later

I was in the last place I wanted to be, but my somewhat healthier coping mechanisms weren't quite doing what they were supposed to, so a man's got to do what a man's got to do.

I signalled for the bartender to get me a repeat of my drink. I didn't usually go for the hard stuff when I was out in public, but then that would defeat the whole purpose of coming out this far where no one seemed to mind or care that I was steadily losing all sense of coherence and inhibition. Which was perfect, really.

The man in the beaten-down wife beater filled the lowball, and I wasted no time in emptying it once more. He filled it again, and this time I felt the bile rise in my throat. I swallowed it down and thunked my head on the dirty, crusty bartop. Returning to that pig sty I called home was turning out to be a no-go. Not in my current state, at least. I checked my phone. Still no all-clear.

Then one more drink it is.

I forced myself to take a sip and swallow down the burn. When I slammed the tumbler, pieces of torn paper fluttered, some falling to the floor and getting lost underneath the soles of uncaring men. I didn't bother to scramble after them. There wasn't any reason to.

Nothing I did had a reason anymore.

Not since Beck had left me crying, begging and hurting on the floor, pleading for him to not break me. Pleading for mercy.

I'd left voicemails that went unheard, sent texts that went unanswered, and at my lowest of lows, I even showed up at the rink to ask for him. He never came. His teammates said he had stopped attending practice.

I had stayed in the apartment we had once called our own for weeks. Weeks of crying my heart out in front of windows in his room, watching the raindrops race down the glass. I prayed that he would walk through the front door, take me in his arms, apologise for ever leaving, and all would be alright again. Prayed that wherever he was, he was okay and that he wasn't in pain even though my chest collapsed in on itself at the very thought of him. When I looked in the mirror, I saw nineteen-year-old Neil again. Broken, aimless, pathetic.

Sleeping on our bed again was out of the question, it smelled too much of him. His love, his kindness, his sincerity. The spare room had become my new sanctuary, but every time I found myself breathless and cold at night, I trudged to that sanctity and curled up into a ball on the floor with his T-shirt in my arms, soaking my tears.

He hadn't even come to collect his things. All his stuff was still there. His clothes, his hockey gear, his textbooks, even that framed picture of his mom and him. It felt like he was just gone for a few weeks, and he'd return soon. Return to the life we had carved for ourselves.

To distract myself, I took up another job. The cafe opposite H&P finally had new personnel who did not remember my very public humiliation and didn't have any problems hiring me as one of the waitstaff. I had finished my penultimate semester by barely passing, and the University probably took pity on me and let me hold on to my scholarship. What were they going to do? Kick me out in my final semester and ruin their graduation rate?

Seeing my condition, it seemed likely that their graduation rate was going to take a hit anyway. Whatever. Their loss that they didn't jump on the sinking ship that was my life.

Sometimes, when the ache overtook every facet of my being, I turned to booze to numb some of the ever-present gnawing in my chest. It helped in replacing his warmth that was slowly leaving me. Christmas and New Year I spent utterly wasted out of my mind and in a pool of my own vomit. Same for the week leading up to it. And the week after it.