The Cusp of 30 (Working Title)

Chapter 9: "A Beautiful Christmas Tree."

(Author's note: Reader, you will briefly meet a character named Vanessa in the following chapter. Just note that, in my revisions, Vanessa will be mentioned earlier as to not appear so suddenly here. Thank you.)

Chapter 9

"When did you get this piece of crap?" said Zeke. His car was parked just two spots over.

"I've had this for a while," I said. I didn't feel like getting into the details of how I'd gotten the car. I just wanted to get him the hell out of that bar, the hell away from Trish.

He opened his car door. "You know I don't live in Harbor Pines anymore, right?"

"Oh, really?" I said, but I did know. After he left for rehab, I would drive by his place almost daily, desperate to know the moment he came back, but I never found his car in its usual spot again, and within a month, I spotted a little blonde girl peering back at me through his sliding glass door, her hand so sadly placed on the screen as if she knew I was looking for someone who wasn't there.

"Just follow me," he said.

We drove to the opposite end of the county, and I was surprised that he was making this daily commute to work. There was an Acme within walking distance from his apartment building, and, logically, I thought it would be smart to work there and not drive at all, but maybe he just really liked our store, or maybe he just really liked the people.

He opened the door and reached out his arm, motioning for me to walk in first. The apartment felt so open despite its small space, and I was shocked to see that a lamp had been left on—something he never allowed at his old apartment. Even the smell of it didn't feel like him. My eyes were then drawn to a painting on the wall of a tiny sailboat on a bay, but I didn't get a chance to look closely at its details because Zeke had, grabbing on to my hips, turned me around and immediately started to kiss me.

He lifted me up and carried me into his bedroom. I noticed the walls were a pale green, and the ceiling might have been tan, but I couldn't say for sure because my eyes were fixed on him, on his chest and especially on his mouth—which I loved to watch because it let me know what was about to happen. He would press them tightly together when he needed to slow down, and he would bite his bottom lip when he couldn't help but just go free—my favorite. If they were relaxed with just a tiny space keeping them apart, then he was savoring the moment, just enjoying me, and I would take my thumb and softly drag it across his lips so that he knew I was enjoying him too, and then we would look at each other and he'd get nervous, and he'd grab my hair from the back of my skull and pull me into the base of his neck, where I would softly (and sometimes a little harder than I intended) bite down, but I knew he was loving me, just too afraid to let me see—or at least that's what I led myself on to think, because how could someone love me and then leave the way he did—but I pushed that out of my head because, right there and then, that is what I needed to believe was happening. The warmth of his body, the beautiful sound of heavy breath coming from his nose as he tried to contain himself—it consumed me.

When I woke up, he was still snoring, but not that obnoxious snoring that some men do—Zeke never snored like that, even when he was really drunk. I looked around the room for his old alarm clock, but I didn't see it anywhere. In fact, I noticed there was nothing from his old apartment here. Not even the same bed frame.

I needed to know the time because I had to be at work by nine. His hand was gripped around my thigh, and part of me wanted to never move again, but I slid from underneath his grip and tiptoed out of the room, slowly closing the door behind me.

I spotted my purse on the floor below the painting—it must have fallen off my shoulder when he spun me—and then I really looked at it. It was a simple and beautiful bay blended with blues, purples, and yellow, as if reflecting a sunset but without the sun. I hadn't seen all the colors last night, and I realized that was because the natural light from the window was hitting it, and that is when I really noticed the bay window stretching almost from the ceiling to the floor, and I was so surprised that he could afford an apartment with such a fancy-looking detail on our Save-A-Lot salary, and I figured his parents must have been helping him afford it. From the window, I could see my filthy car on the street and the not-so-pretty apartments across the road, but there was also a water tower in the distance that was nice to look at. I thought about the view of the window from the ground, and I imagined us putting a beautiful Christmas tree right in front in December for the passers-by.