Hard Habit to Break

Chapter 10

 "Damn Nance, I love you and I know you mean well but you didn't need to be such a cockblock back there," Robin huffed as Jonathan navigated down the narrow dirt road that would lead them out of the trees and back into town.

"Excuse me?" Nancy spun in her seat, eyes as frosty as the ice that coats the windowpane in the dead of January, aimed directly at Robin in a way that would leave anyone quaking in their boots. But not Robin.

Robin's eyes rolled up into her head. "Oh, come on. Did you interrupt on purpose or did you completely miss the fact that Tori and Eddie were having a moment back there? I mean, it was pretty obvious to anyone with a set of eyeballs and a brain. What did you have to go and interrupt it for?"

The brunette's mouth dropped open, her eyebrows damn near mating with her hairline. "I did not interrupt. I...it wasn't even a moment. They were just talking. I didn't interrupt a damn thing."

Jonathan released a throaty laugh from the driver's seat. "You kind of did, Nance. That's what You call talking? I guess if you mean talking with your hands. She was totally feeling up all the new muscles our boy's rocking."

Tori slunk down in her seat, wishing she could go back in time and jump in the car with Mike, El, Lucas, and Max instead. It was beyond humiliating, having to sit here, listening to them talk about her as if she were some teenage girl who had no self-control. But then, if she was being fair, hadn't that been exactly how she'd acted? Like some lust filled fifteen year old who had no control of her body?

She hadn't meant to. Tori had no intentions of falling off that particular cliff again but god, he'd felt so good. It had been so long since she'd felt his skin under her fingertips, had him within reach, and her hands had just moved as if they had a mind of their own. She certainly hadn't told them to start feeling up every toned inch of his chest. They'd done that without her approval. So, really, it should be her hands that were being chastised. Not her.

It was just the grief. It had to be. Losing her mom was the hardest thing she'd ever experienced and her brain was short circuiting and it wasn't sending the proper messages to the rest of her. It was seeking any kind of solace it could find and losing herself in Eddie, that had always worked in the past. Her body was recognizing him as a source of comfort. It was seeking what it used to because her brain wasn't remembering that it could no longer have what it used to have.

That was long gone, never to be seen again. Her and Eddie didn't fit anymore. She'd said so herself. It had been one of the reasons she'd ended things and none of that had changed. He was still the big rockstar playing to arenas full of thousands of people and she was the small town girl working at a bar to make ends meet. After tomorrow, he would be back on a plane across the country and their lives would go back to the way they'd been before.

Except she couldn't go back to the way her life had been before. What was her purpose anymore if it wasn't to take care of her mom? Linda had filled so much of her time, taken so much of her energy. Tori didn't know what her life looked like without all that chaos. Five years of appointments, administering medication, making sure she ate, helping her to the bathroom, sitting in a hospital waiting room...what the hell was her life now?

She was going to have all the time in the world now. It was something she used to fantasize about and feel guilty over, dreaming of what she would do if her mom wasn't sick, if she had the freedom other people in their twenties had. Thinking how nice it would be to just be able to head out to the movies with her friends or grab a book and head to the coffee shop for a couple hours. Now that she was facing the prospect of having the time she didn't want it anymore. She used to dream up a million things she would do with a spare moment and now she couldn't even think of one. She just wanted her mom.