Cross Fire (Part II)

Chapter 5

I wake up the next morning in an empty bed. Shawn hasn't come home all night. Even though I don't understand his reaction, I still feel bad about our fight. I take my phone to see if I have any messages from him.
I don't.
I decide to call him, but he doesn't pick up. Why is he being so childish?
I send him a text.

Can we please talk? I don't like how we left things last night.

After a few minutes my phone buzzes with a message from Shawn.

Be home in an hour.

After an hour and a half, Shawn walks through the door, looking like he was dragged behind a car. I go to greet him and smell the alcohol on him from five feet away.

"You're drunk.", I state.

"You're observant.", he mimics me.

"I can't talk to you like this. Call me when you sober up." I say, grab my car keys and leave.

I drive around for a while and decide on going to my old apartment that I've kept just in case. I started coming here more often lately. I like being alone, and Shawn's house always has people in it. As I sit on my sofa I start considering this more. I really have been spending more time here, and Shawn is right, I have been staying late at work. I have also refused him 90% of the time when he'd ask me to go out. I realize his feelings are valid, and start to question why I needed time away.
In the months after, I felt smothered. I wasn't left alone at all, I couldn't drive anywhere by myself, I was constantly asked how I was feeling, I was babied, and worst of all I was reminded every day of what had happened.
As much as I wanted my life to go back to normal, it hadn't. That was the reason I wanted to go back to work as soon as possible. I would have, much earlier, but Shawn wouldn't hear of it. He felt I wasn't ready, and that I wasn't healed.
Jess and my parents left two weeks later and they kept calling me every day to check on me. I had to talk about it every damn day, when all I wanted was to forget. Shawn kept trying to get me to see a therapist and I kept refusing.
I tried to tell all of them that I was OK, and that I wanted to stop talking about Kate, but they never heard me. They would start talking about how they could have lost me and how what happened was a hugely traumatic event. As if I wasn't there. As if I didn't stare down the barrel of a gun, sure that I would never see them again. I wanted things to go back to normal. I wanted nice lunches with my parents and drinks with Jesse. I wanted Shawn to stop treat me like I am so fragile and I wanted his friends to stop pretending they cared about what happened to me. Most of all I wanted for my name and face to stop appearing on every headline, and stop reading every insensitive comment people made about me.
Having camera flashes in your face is not a natural thing. I wasn't born in to this, and I sure as hell wasn't going to get accustomed to it after tragedy hit me. So, I decided to stay at work or stay at home. Work provided me with a wonderful distraction. I knew everybody had found out about what had happened, but work was the only place they didn't dwell on it. I asked Brian and Kristen to never mention it, and they agreed. My other coworkers just told me they were glad that I was doing ok, the first day I appeared at Via and that was it. It was back to business as usual.

I lounge around the apartment all day, trying to watch TV, but nothing seems interesting enough. It i 8 p.m. when my phone rings and I see that is is Shawn.

"Good morning sleeping beauty", I say.

"Um, hey... Where are you?" he says in a raspy voice.

"At the apartment."

"Can I come over?"

"Yes. We need to finish our conversation."