Don't Leave Me Here Alone

Chapter Eight

One year earlier

It had been roughly one full year since the break up. November brought icy paths and white tipped grass crunching underfoot. Bare branches shook in the chill wind that slipped under his clothes like frigid fingers. Adam pulled his thin coat tighter and tucked his red scarf into the collar. He licked at his chapped lips, even though he knew that made them worse. Tiredness bled into his vision, making reality a disjointed and echoing thing— a copy of a copy of a copy. So overdone it had all lost its meaning to monotony. Students trundled past in groups. Friends. Lovers. Both.

Adam was alone.

There was really no good word for the opposite of lonesome, Adam thought. One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment. But the fact that those two words bore definitions rather unrelated to each other perfectly displayed why 'lonesome' could not be properly mirrored. It did not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely. Although lonesome could easily contain all of those words in itself.

Lonesome, at least to Adam, meant a state of being apart. Of being other.

Alone-some.

And that was exactly how he felt at the moment.

Dusk had painted the sky a hazy twilight of reds and oranges and deep purples. It glowed with the intensity of a bonfire. Most people on campus were done for the day; heading back to their dorms, or more likely, one of the nearby bars. Adam was not done. He had packed up after hive lectures and was currently heading straight to the library. He might have caught up his GPA, but now he needed to regain his reputation.

It was proving to be a lot harder to get back.

Tomorrow was the anniversary of his mistake of breaking up with Zachariah. It had been a whole year since he'd seen the man or heard his voice. A whole year without his cursing and his jokes. Without his God-awful cat names and his all-black outfits. Without his smile and his touch. The ache was a gnawing pit in Adam's gut, and he hated it.

He wasn't going to be able to sleep. He hadn't managed more than a few hours a night for the past several weeks. Tonight, he wasn't even bothering to try. The library was open twenty-four hours a day, so he set himself up with an extra large coffee and some snacks. Adam was fine with counting down the hours to the anniversary of his own stupidity. Of him breaking up with Zachariah. Of him ruining his own life.

No.

Robert Parrish had ruined his life.

He couldn't allow himself to forget that. It hadn't been his fault, even if it sometimes felt like it was.

Either way, nights had become a slow torture of happy memories and guilt, of missing Zachariah and a pain deep in his chest.

The library was full of the rustling quiet of paper being turned and pens scratching across notebooks. Some of the tension left him as he sat at a lonely desk in the furthest corner of the top floor and pulled out his books. This, he could do. Extra credit work. Notes for Christmas exams. Essays. Reading. It was all a lot easier than his life outside of his books.

Dawn was just breaking the horizon when he finally called it a night. Early risers were arriving and chatting softly, breaking the silent hum. The all-nighters were heading to bed or to lectures. With a sigh, he finished his paragraph and packed up. Chill air bit into his tired skin as he pushed the glass door open and stepped outside. Tears slid down his cheeks, and it took the cold air on the wetness for him to process that he was crying.

He was so tired. But more than tired, he was impossibly lonely.

He sat down on a damp wall. He was aching everywhere. Even his soul ached.