Best of my Love

Chapter Nineteen

I stared into the snow on the tv. Deeply breathing and hardly blinking. Don hadn't called or returned any of my calls in almost a week. I was sure it was nothing. He probably got caught up in the creative process and couldn't stop. I knew it happened to J.D., so why couldn't it happen to Don?

The sound was turned up. The static scratching pined to be the only thing filling my thoughts. 

I wish you would...

I stared at my boots by the door. The same boots Linda bought me months ago. All lonely and aching to go out. 

Maybe I should go to work...

I bit my cheek and continued staring. The leather that caught a streak of sunlight was a cherry reddish-brown. The light that hit the small buckle went straight into my eyes. 

It could get your mind off him...

I shook my head, still staring into the reflected sunlight. 

Na, you already called in sick...

I dropped my head to the side, staring out the bright window. 

It was so peaceful. The sun filtered through the clouds on an angelic way, bouncing off of houses and buildings just down the mountain. 

San Fernando was it with (what I considered as) my first major earthquake a week or two before. Although I was a few miles away from where it hit and where the aftershocks were really bad, I thought the house was going to disintegrate with me in it. 

Don called me at work several hours later. He was almost screaming, saying he had called several different people to see where I was. 

I told him I was alright and that the house was too. That was the last I had heard from him. 

I jumped at the sudden ringing of the phone sitting on the counter, staring at it for a second before springing up and rushing to it in two long strides. 

"Hello?" I almost shouted. 

"Hi, this is Clyde Jackson," I rolled my eyes at the man on the line. "I'm calling from Asylum records, looking for Christy Lloyd, is she home?"

"Hi, Jackson." I chuckled. 

"Hey, doll."

"What's up?"

"I have about an hour or so to myself, I wanted to see if you'd join me for lunch."

"Oh, Jackson, I love to, but what about Phyllis?"

"I just dropped her off at the doctor's office."

"Is she okay?" I heard the distress in my voice. 

Phyllis was a troubled girl with many sad moments for such a happy life she led now. She was that way long before she met Jackson. We connected in a way that I hadn't connected with any of the others by, and we always tried to tell each other our feelings when we were around one another. Sad or not, it was a sort of a mutual therapy that both worried and satisfied our partners. 

"She's fine. She just hasn't been feeling well for the past couple days so I made her a doctor's appointment."

"Did she tell you to leave her?"

"She won't let me stay, which should worry me, but she told me not to do that either so I can't."

"I don't think that's how that works, Jackson."

He laughed at me and said, "I'll be there in twenty-five."

"Okay." 

"Bye."