You're Always You

Chapter Forty-One

David Minett

Fucking fuck it hadn't even been a day and he was falling apart left and right.

When Lydia went to bed, David hid himself in the bathroom for....He didn't know how long. But he didn't want her to wander out at any point and find him sobbing sleeplessly on the couch. At the very least she had to relieve herself in the night, he would get a warning when she knocked.

A warning to compose himself.

It was uncomfortable. He wished he could cry on the couch, but he valued saving face as best as he fucking could, which was terribly at the moment let's be real, over openly sobbing in front of Lydia and not being able to tell her why.

"Because in another life we're married"?

Yeah, okay.

She'd feel safer with an abuser than with a fucking crazy person.

Even David was starting to question his own sanity. What if none of his old life was even real? What if this was reality, and everything else had been a dream, and he was crying over a fantasy? If he was making an utter fool of himself, letting his heart crack and split apart like this, shattering into pieces all over the floor for nothing?

Arguably that was worse. That didn't make him feel any better at all.

He had to get home. He had to. And if he couldn't....

....

A cowardly thought crossed his mind, and most of him scolded himself, but the part of him that had thought it....

It must've been around midnight his phone buzzed in his pocket. A text, not a call, but from a...somewhat familiar number.

Not giving up already, are we?

"Fucking—" David muttered, throwing his phone at the bathroom door. Unsurprisingly, it broke apart again, but he didn't give any semblance of a shit right now.

Fuck you, asshole.

His phone buzzed again, as if in response to his thoughts, and that just confirmed everything for him. He was nuts. He was losing it.

At some point, he was too tired to cry anymore, and he was honestly surprised by how long it took, but eventually he managed to wander out into the living room and drop himself half-assedly onto the couch. He didn't have a pillow or a blanket, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything anymore.

And he slept terribly.

But of course, he woke up early as always, unable to miss a morning, and just...settled into his normal routine. He started making breakfast with what he had, which wasn't much—eggs and toast again, which irked him, because he never liked to make the same breakfast two days in a row, but he didn't have a choice.

Much like everything else in his life right now.

While cooking, he also had a pot of coffee going, and considering there wasn't exactly milk in the fridge, he couldn't drink it anything other than black if he tried.

What a fucking morning.

When breakfast was done, David brought it into the bedroom with a dead expression on his face. Lydia seemed to be awake already, and...given the alarm clock, David wasn't surprised. But, the smell of food perked her up, and she sat up patiently, smiling towards him hopefully and sympathetically. "....Feel better?" she questioned.

Numbness was better than pain, he supposed.

"Yeah," he replied softly, offering her the plate, which she took. "Sorry it's the same as yesterday. Eggs and bread are literally all that's in my kitchen right now. And they expire like tomorrow, so."