The Strip

Part 5

Rebecca POV:

You start the day well before the sun rises, with a gasp and a racing heart.

Tears leak down the sides of your face and into your ears. You wipe angrily at them, reach blindly for your alarm clock and sigh at the time.

3:13am.

Of course you've woken at 3:13am.

You scramble to find your phone, squinting at the blinding light as you check your notifications.

Nothing.

You drop it to the mattress and run a hand over your sweaty brow, collecting the moisture with a scoff.

You should try to get back to sleep.

Immediately after closing your eyes, you hear the shrill ringtone from your cell.

You reach for your phone again, only to see the still blank screen.

Nothing.

You know that sleep will evade you for the remainder of the day. That hasn't changed over the past two years. So, despite the heaviness of your limbs, you force yourself from the warmth of your bed.

You check your phone again, slip it into your pocket and grab the weighted blanket that Amelia bought you in that first year. You called it over the top, but on this particular day, you're grateful. The warmth of it just calms your frayed edges enough to get you to the kitchen.

There's a steaming cup of coffee already waiting for you on the counter. Inhaling the scent before taking a sip, you look out onto your balcony and see a huddled figure sitting at the dining set you found at the thrift shop.

You slide the door open slowly so as not to startle Amelia if she drifted off.

"Hey." She yawns, her jaw cracking as she shifts to pull the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "Couldn't sleep?"

You let the corner of your mouth twitch up at her in response.

She just looks at you, not speaking - her eyes absorb the lines of your forehead, the dark bags under your eyes. "I wish I knew what to do to make you feel better, Squirt."

"I don't think I'm supposed to."

Amelia nods and looks out over the cityscape again. Your apartment is small, and the view is absolute shit, but you know for a fact that your mother would have loved it. She would have found the beauty in the flickering lights, and the music in the honking horns. She would have loved feeling so far removed from the world to be able to just watch from above and enjoy normal people doing normal things.

But, you suppose she is doing that now.

You swallow hard.

"Costia called me last night." Your voice is hoarse as you speak around the knot in your throat.

"Costia's a bitch."

You sigh. "We were together for four years."

"Worst decision you've ever made, Squirt."

"Amelia, she wasn't wrong - what she said back then."

"She wasn't right, either."

"I should have been there. For Costia. For mom."

"You didn't know."

"That's the problem, isn't it? I didn't know anything. I didn't know mom was dying, I didn't know Costia was unhappy. I was so busy trying to run the fucking company, and I lost everything that mattered."