Some Day One Day

22

It came back
The urge had come back. It came back viciously like a bloodthirsty beast with a vengeance of its own. It returned to me like a scorned lover whose bitterness goaded them to revenge me for neglecting them.
The torturing burn in my left arm had started a few days into the week. I couldn't believe it. It made me thoroughly upset because I thought I was doing fine. I had been doing fine. I was winning this ongoing battle that had continued to break me down for days, months, and years on end. I'd run far away from it, far away from the beast and its infernal paws. It hadn't bothered me in a couple of months now. It had been out of reach from me. But like every runner in the race of life, I started to get tired from the obstacles I continued to meet. I started to get exhausted and weak. My weakness burned me with its heavy weight, forcing me to slow down. That gave the unmerciful beast a chance to catch up with me. Now I was in the middle of a fight, begging for freedom so that I wouldn't succumb and throw away everything that I had worked so hard for.
But it was hard...because I started to yield to that beast. And that's when I started to get a desperate rush, an undying compulsion...
Like an impaired patient, I needed a doze of that forbidden antidote to nullify that pressing, burning desire that burned through my arm and the rest of my body.
Now, I was lying in bed. Tears were drifting astray from eyes that stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Every single part of me was immobile except for the most vital organ of me—my heart. It seemed to have a personality of its own for its behavior was temperamental, stopping whenever the shock of what I'd almost done lambasted me, and beating vastly whenever the thought of what would've happened afterwards slashed across my mind.
I'd come close...I'd come so dangerously close, and I couldn't believe that I was allowing what another human being made me feel drive me to such peril.
There was a man who lived on the second floor. He wasn't just any ordinary man. He was the kingpin of all drugs trafficking in and out of this area. I'd known of him. One couldn't live here without knowing about him, and if they were deaf and blind, they'd still know.
Upon one night when lamentation and self-vituperation was at its pinnacle, I'd wondered aimlessly to his doorstep, a doorstep that I was all too familiar with. He'd answered peevishly, but when he saw me, his features relaxed and became somewhat wanting. 
He'd then asked me what I wanted.
I'd frozen.
We'd stared at each other for a long time, neither of us saying a word. He licked his lips and leaned against the doorjamb, asking me what I desired and how he wouldn't mind giving me anything I wanted. That's when the impact of what I was doing flailed me real hard. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Tears had formed in my eyes and my bottom lip had quivered in abhorrence. My voice was tearfully husky when I'd told him 'nothing', that I wanted nothing...and I quickly escaped what was only a doorstep away from the downfall of my entire life.
The quietude of my apartment was ironically loud, railing at me of what I'd nearly done, what I'd nearly asked for. I was daringly requesting for my life to be thrown away...I was basically hanging off the edge of a cliff...clawing onto its borders...grappling onto it...screaming for someone to hurry and save me before I fell into my demolition. I was pleading, pleading for someone to lift me up and take me far, far away from the cliff onto sturdy ground where I knew that if I ever fell, I could always get up immediately without being so broken. If I ever fell off of this cliff, there would be no return...
When I'd gotten home, my inhaler, which I'd been doing great without for a while, was my only source of air until I was adequate enough to breath on my own. I'd retreated to my bed and cried and cried. Tears were as endless and torrential as the pain and anguish that tormented me...but there was also some abnormal joy and eminence.
I was proud of myself because I'd come face to face with something that had once been unbearable, incorrigible for me to deny...and I'd actually managed to find the will power within me and walk away from it. I'd walked away from someone who could very well give me the poison that acted as benefactor now, but an assassin later.
Another reason that seemed to help me say no was the fact that, the supplier lived in the same apartment that Shawn and his family had stayed at. That's why I was so familiar with that doorstep, because that had been Shawn's home...and I don't think I could've ever taken something so diabolical, something so lethal from a place where I knew someone as innocent as Marissa had been.
I'd cried for hours then, and now into the wee hours of the morning, I was crying still...but unlike before, these tears were silent.
My arm still ached and craved hotly, but I lay as inert as a corpse on my bed and stared at the ceiling in the shock of nearly breaking down and selling my soul to the devil.
There were many reasons for why I'd nearly driven myself to madness. Rent was raised a hundred dollars, my car was still giving me problems, and work had become far more intricate and backbreaking.
As much as I wanted to dispute and deny it, another reason was Shawn.

Seeing Shawn with his child and another woman was like a beacon of harsh truth to me...
I wasn't over him.
And I wouldn't be over him for a while.
The fear of not getting over him was something I'd been trying to ignore for a while, but now like dried cement, it settled and made the fact that I might never get over him concrete. Something was terribly wrong with me. Was this just an ongoing infatuation that had stuck with me since my early years with him? Or was this something short of an obsession? Was it my constant obsession with the past?
Or was it the fact that I was still very much in love with him like I had been four years prior? Is that even humanly possible...to still be in love with the same person after four years of not being around that person? I remember asking myself these questions when I was younger. Back then, the irony of it was that I feared that maybe I loved him too much. What we had when we were younger was so beautiful, so out of this world that I wondered if my peers along with my parents were in fact right that we were two foolishly in love people that liked the idea of being in love and knew nothing of what it truly meant to be in love. Isn't it true that young people can't possibly know what love is? Young people can't experience love the way older people can. Other times I figured spectators were just jealous of us because we had something special that ordinary people didn't get to have in their entire lifetime. They didn't know what we went through. They didn't know what it was like for us...what that feeling was...whenever we were together.
They didn't know.
Yet, 'they' had been a big reason as to why I made the decision to destroy what was good and what felt real.
I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering what to do with myself. What did I ever have? What could I ever do?
Unable to come up with an answer, I drudged to the kitchen cabinets and zeroed in on the sleeping pills. I hadn't been taking them lately because I'd become invulnerable to their effect. The last few days at work had been hell because of my lack of shuteye, so I figured I would use the pills once again, hoping their effect would manifest in me.
And it did...
The next week was a blur. I turned my phone off and unplugged the house phone so that I wouldn't be bothered. I worked constantly, with my eyes and ears closed because I was still shaken by what I'd nearly done to myself. I tried to let it go and not think about it, but by trying to do so, I thought about it more.
By the end of the week, the urge became so potent that it was disrupting me at work.
It was the weekend, which meant I'd be working in the kitchen. I was at a table putting food together for the buffet, trying to pray away a headache. But like they say, God has selective hearing when listening to prayers. My entire body hurt like I'd been bludgeoned. My feet were bundles of discomfort and I'd staggered a couple of times because they felt heavy. I'd tried eating but couldn't afford to stomach anything.
I was just completely out of it.
"Beyonce. It's time to go to the front. The guests will be arriving any minute. Speed up girl." The kitchen's manager who we called Miss Carolyne, instructed me tartly. Rolling my neck that always seemed tense because of that rigid mattress is slept on, I looked up at the clock and sighed. Staring at the time made me grimace when I calculated how much longer I'd have to be there.
"Yes ma'am." I said through a heavy sough and started carrying out different entrees to the front. On one of my many trips from the dining area back to the kitchen, I ran into none other than Dreux who wasn't supposed to be working today since it was his day off. By the casual, homey clothing he wore though, I knew he was probably only here to get his check. I couldn't help but notice how good he looked in gray sweats and a t-shirt.
"Damn girl—"
"Yes, yes I know," I waved him off knowingly as I walked towards him, "I look like crap."
The smile on Dreux's face was all condescending and when I sucked my teeth at him he laughed.
"You know, you need to take a break. Everyone's always complaining how you're always here and never taking any time off."
"Well...it's not like I have anything better to do anyway so I don't mind. Came here for your check?" I asked him with my many attempted smiles of the day.
"Yeah. And I forgot something in the locker room, I'm gonna go get it now—"
Dreux cut himself short when the swinging door of the kitchen opened and out came a thoroughly industrious Miss Carolyne with a large fruit bowl. Both Dreux and I knew that was our cue to stop talking and go about our own affairs. Bidding him farewell and him doing the same to me, I rushed back to the kitchen and put out everything else that would be needed.
"Okay, now here are your tables for the day." Miss Carolyne told me as she handed me a notepad with numbers to my tables.
"Thank you." I said with propriety and a matching smile when I truth what I wanted to do was take the notepad and stuff it down her throat. The dinning area was divided into halves. The one half that had pink chairs belonged to the other server and the other half with pale green chairs belonged to me.
I had more tables. Giving me more work had been a pattern ever since I'd joined them in the kitchen. It's obvious this was commonplace with newcomers, but I held my tongue and tried not to complain because I obviously needed the job.
Miss Carolyne ventured off to lecturing me about things she'd already said before. When she was done, I made my way to a section beside the front desk to the coffee maker. I groaned vexingly at the fact that I had to go from table to table asking these high-profile guests what they wanted.
"Oh...it's her." I heard someone say smugly. I turned to find that it was one of the two front desk clerks. Unlike most of the workers who worked unseen in the back the people who worked at the front desk were young and at the same age range as I. And unlike them, these ones truly disliked me for reasons I'd never cared to understand why. I'd heard them talking rudely about me once but their childish behavior flew right over my head.
"Um," the one with the brown curls began with a meanly, "You forgot to start up the coffee maker."
I gnawed at my gum to prevent me from calling her a bitch. There were two coffee makers. One was for the dinning area. The other, they were supposed to make daily for guests who came to the front instead of going to the dining area. Nobody else was supposed to do it but them but they were too got damn lazy to do it by themselves as if it were a severe task. At first I hadn't known that and always did it on my own until Dreux told me that they were playing me. It didn't take long for me to figure that the people who worked at the front thought they had some sort of upper hand over those who worked in the back. I didn't know grown people could be so childish.
"I didn't forget anything." I told them coolly, not in the mood for altercations today.
"What do you mean? It's your job." One of them began heatedly and almost immediately, she smiled in amazement and her posture straightened as she looked past me. The other girl did the same.
Reflexively, I turned to see what had them so immediately smitten and gripped onto the carafe's handle when every limb in me, fingers included, weakened.
Ojay's father stepped through the automatic doors like the boss he was and was followed by Ojay who talked on the phone with a seriously determined look on his face, and none other than Shawn who walked in with his head held high as he scoured the place he'd just stepped into.
My heart screeched and slammed hard against my ribcage, making me curse soundlessly. The other ladies standing behind me murmured their own impressed versions of what they saw. I looked at Shawn's face first, and my stomach churned before constricting. It then tripped over itself and fell onto the base of my torso.
He was clad in a suave, dusky black suit that tailored him to so much perfection that it should've been deemed ungodly and sinful. Inside was a black shirt that I'm sure was not made to be unbuttoned from his collar, teasingly down to the middle line that separated his chest. Guiltily, I found that I liked that he had his shirt open at the top. It gave him this sexual air of casualness, yet still professionalism. Why God made this man so breathtaking I was yet to know. He'd worn thinly-framed, tortoise shell shades and I didn't realize how much I appreciated not seeing his eyes until he took them off, folded them and slipped them into the pocket of his shirtfront. Upon his channeling of the place, Shawn's eyes collided with mine and we both reacted the same way—we did double takes at the same time. Me from how damned handsome he was and he probably from the shock of seeing me there. He knew I worked in a hotel, he just didn't know where and at this moment it would actually be a surprise had Ojay told him as opposed to not doing so.
On his face was a confluence of bewilderment that was expected, dread that made me hurt...and if my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, slight amusement that confused the hell out of me.
He slid his eyes down my frame and I was immediately shamed by what I was shackled to wear in order to keep the job. Along with shame came something else.
Like a tick that persisted on tormenting its host, pain started to seep its way back into my heart which was still yet to beat. All I could see now was a son latched onto him. The thought alone was as unbearable as the moment I saw the little man in his arms.
Unable to look him in the eye any longer, I regressed to the section beside the front desk, unseen my Ojay and his father.
I tinkered with various condiments that fell from their basket just to give my quivering hands something to do. When I heard the girls in their flirtatious greetings of them, I shook my head dismally. Then figuring that they'd purloined their full attention, I grabbed the carafe holding it steadily in my arms and went back to the dining area.
As I told myself not to panic, I wondered over and over why they were there. There were a lot of reasons for them being there. The main one had to be they had a business meeting. Business meetings and conferences were held here on a daily basis, as this was somewhat a business oriented hotel. I hoped to god that they would go straight to one of the conference rooms and stay there so that I wouldn't have to see them. As I stared at the door, my heart palpitations were dire with anticipation and dread.
When I saw Ojay's father strutting into the dinning area, I rolled my eyes heavenward and asked God why. That was all I asked him...why.
Then, as if trying to make myself feel better and mellow the situation out, I prayed to God once again that they would move eastwards to the pink chairs so that I wouldn't have to serve them.
Once again I was scolded that I truly should have known better than to think He would make things easier for me because they all started loitering in one of my assigned tables. Both Ojay and Shawn had searching looks in their eyes that made me want to crawl into a table and hide beneath it. Shawn must have told Ojay that he'd seen me, and Ojay probably finally confirmed to Shawn that this was the hotel where I worked.
It didn't help that for one night Shawn had made history in one of the rooms of this very hotel.
I knew what I had to do, but I couldn't because my knees were terribly weak. I continued to flash hot and cold. My lungs clenched, ceasing any supply of air. When I did inhale deeply, air was still elusive.
I thought of a way to get myself out of this predicament, but to no avail.
Damn it.
They were the first and only guests there, which unfairly meant that I had no other choice but to go over to them and serve them like I was hired to.