Page 74 of Hacking His Code

The microwave dings, and I grab my pizza rolls and settle into the couch, turning the television on to Hope and Frustration. The movie is twenty-eight years old, but it stars Ernestine Whitmore. A woman I’ve come to adore.

Every scene she’s in captivates me, from when she’s running in the rain, to her romantic embrace with Chet Inglewood, her co-star.

Hunter hasn’t contacted me since I left the hospital. I’m sure he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to make up some lame excuse for sending me back home. I want to believe what we had was something special, but to him, I was just one of…I can only assume a lot.

To me, he was everything.

His money still sits in my bank account, but I’ve put in a request to have the transaction reversed. If only I could reverse the entire week, but there are no take-backs. It’s one thing to have no idea what you’re missing out on; it’s another to know and crave it with every cell in your body.

My life is now torture.

A knock sounds on the door, and I drop a pizza roll on my twice-worn shirt.

Fuck!I hadn’t wanted to change today. I blot the sauce stain with a napkin, but it’s a battle I’m not going to win.

The knock sounds again, this time harder.

Part of me wants to hide and not face whoever has decided to pay me a visit.

But the very real possibility exists that it is the police at my door, telling me my mother has passed.

Each day the nurse calls, giving me updates on my mother’s condition. She’s never better, never worse. The doctors don’t want to wake her prematurely, but she can’t go on as she is forever.

The knock comes again when I’m just a foot away.

“Hold your horses, will ya!” I shout.

I open the door to a flamboyant pixie of a woman holding several bags.

“Neon—Sam? Sorry.”

“Oh, no worries! I love my new moniker. Hunter has taken to calling me it.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, unsure of what it is I’m feeling.

“Is that really how you greet guests? Can’t you see my arms are full?”

Neon rushes past me without being invited in. I stand, gawking at her, wondering how she knows my address and what it is she’s carrying.

She drops the bags on the couch and looks around the room, scrunching her nose. “Wow…not what I expected from Hunter’s girlfriend.”

“Not girlfriend. Not anymore,” I say morosely. “Why are you here?”

“Hunter wanted to make sure you got your things. There’s like a ba-zillion bags downstairs. Help me bring them up.”

“No! I don’t want them.”

“I understand. Breakups are hard. But let’s just get it all up here, so nothing is stolen.”

I sigh, as though her presence exhausts me. “Fine.”

It takes an hour for us to haul up the hundreds of bags Hunter sent with Neon.

“I can’t believe he didn’t just hire movers,” Neon says, plopping down on the couch.

“You should have just hauled it all to Goodwill.”

“Ummm…these goods would make it to my apartment long before they made it to Goodwill.”