Closest I Get

Chapter Six

Early January

The dark circles under her eyes are getting harder and harder to conceal. She's exhausted. Her body is struggling to function with the constant sleepless nights and skipped meals. Earlier in the week one of her students asked her if she was sick.

She doesn't want to think she's made a mistake. She doesn't want to regret her decisions because she's done that far too many times already. It's getting old. But she thinks she doesn't know if she can do much of anything else.

.

She wakes up with a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wants to say it's the unhealthiness of her recent routines, but she can't even fool herself.

She presses the phone to her ear and waits for a voice to pick up from the other line.

"Hey, Jade!"

"How are you always this happy whenever you talk to someone on the phone?"

"I don't know!" Cat says just before giggling. "Anyway, what's up?"

"I think I made a mistake." The phone line goes silent and she wonders if she has to repeat herself.

"About Tori." It's not a question.

"Yeah. Tell me I'm not."

"Oh I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know if you are or if you're not."

She sighs into the phone and slumps in her office chair, swiveling it to hear the slight squeak with each turn.

"I'm miserable. I can't eat, I can't sleep. All I think about is her."

"Isn't that because you're in love with her?"

"Cat-"

"Sorry, sorry. I forgot I wasn't supposed to say the L word around you."

She shakes her head even though she knows that her best friend can't see it. She keeps on spinning in her chair. "It's fine."

"Maybe you should talk to her and tell her you made a mistake. Tori is a very kind and forgiving person, you know," Cat suggests.

"It's a lot more complicated than that. Plus, I was the one who pushed her away. I've hurt her the entire time she's been here. She doesn't deserve any of this."

"Yeah, but you deserve to sleep, too!"

"Not for how much I've hurt her, I don't."

Her slow spinning on her chair comes to a halt when Cat finishes asking her a question.

"So why is it different now?"

She finds that she doesn't know the answer to that question.

/

Tori sips her coffee as she waits for Heather. When she flips through the random pages she printed out of possible apartments, she tries her best not to think about why she's moving in the first place. She considers it a good change, a fresh start. She hopes.

Immersed in reading the different features of each place, she doesn't hear Heather pull up a chair. When Tori tries to grasp for her cup of coffee, she's surprised to feel that it isn't there. When she looks up, Heather's smirking across from her, her cup of coffee in her hands.

"Sneaky."

"You were staring intensely at those papers, I just didn't bother."

Tori takes back her drink before sliding the stack of papers across the table. "I like the second apartment. It's close enough to work and they have a proper gym. It's gated, too."