CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - WHY'D YOU ONLY CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE HIGH?
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Lola sat in her living room, the dim glow of the television the only light in the apartment. She held a glass of red wine, lazily swirling it between her fingers before taking a slow, measured sip. The liquid was rich and dark, its taste slightly bitter on her tongue. She didn't mind. It matched her mood.
On the screen, Friends was playing—some late-night rerun of an episode she'd seen a hundred times. Chandler was delivering one of his dry one-liners, "could I be anymore..." (Lola didn't care to hear the rest), but the joke barely registered. Lola stared blankly at the screen, her expression flat, her lips unmoving. The laughter track roared in the background, but it felt distant, like she was underwater, detached from the world on the other side of the glass.
Her gaze drifted to the digital clock beside the TV. It was nearly midnight. She watched as the numbers changed, the seconds ticking away, spinning ever onward. 57 seconds, 58 seconds, 59 seconds, until all the numbers jolted and changed, lining up perfectly at 00:00. Another day, just like all the others, gone.
It had been months now. Since... him.
Time had a way of blurring together, especially the last few months. Each day bled into the next, indistinguishable from the one before. Elowen was rarely around anymore. She still paid rent, technically still lived there, but she and Miles had been spending most of their time at his place. Lola didn't blame her. Elowen's life had moved forward, while hers had stalled... like Alex's shitty Ford Cortina.
No, she had to stop thinking about him.
The wine glass hovered at her lips, but she didn't drink. Her phone buzzed on the coffee table, vibrating softly against the wood. The screen lit up, showing BlockedNumber. She stared at it, her heart sinking.
She knew who it was.
For a moment, she considered letting it ring out, just ignoring it like she had done so many times before, but the sound gnawed at her. It felt like a presence, a weight pressing down on her chest. Lola sighed and declined the call, her finger tapping the screen more forcefully than necessary. The ringing stopped abruptly, leaving a hollow silence in its wake.
She set the glass down and turned the TV up, not because she was interested in the show, but because the noise helped drown out the thoughts she didn't want to face. Ross and Rachel were arguing yet again about whether they had been on a break or not (they were, Lola wanted to shout at them, but a break isn't a break-up and doesn't give you the right to shag someone else!) She and Alex however, were not on a break. That had been a break-up.
Her mind always drifted to thoughts like those. Thoughts of her and Alex. It always did, wandering back to that same place no matter how hard she tried to stop it.
