Page 23 of I’ll Paint You a Sunset Someday

April 2045

Hallee

Darkness surrounds me, pulling the breath from my lungs. Screams of neighbors ring out in the distance. Avery . . . Marlowe . . . my chest tightens. I need to help, to help, to help, but my weary muscles won’t hold up my body.

A disappointing whimper escapes through my parched throat.

No one can hear me.

No one is coming for me.

No one knows I’m here.

My frantic eyes search for something, anything at all to hint at where here is, but all I see is blackness. Oblivion—it has come to take me.

Please, anyone . . . come save me from the abyss.

I can’t breathe.

I’m suffocating.

I—

—jolt awake in bed as if the sheets have burned me. My room is spinning uncontrollably as my chest rises and falls to the beat of my pounding heart.

It was only a nightmare.

I’ve never actually needed the water on my side table, but there’s not a single night that I’ve gone to bed without it. Avery and I call it my emotional support water—there just in case.

Tonight, I’m thankful for it as the cool sweat on the glass drenches my fingers, and I dab the drops carefully on my neck to curb the nausea tossing my stomach like a laundry machine. The first sip of water stops the tumble, but leaves the queasiness.

I haven’t thought a whole lot about why I always sleep on the left side and not the middle of my bed, but now the empty half is mocking me, laughing at my longing for comfort. Laughing at my longing for Dean.

The short-term leases on this life have started to chip away at me. Shouldn’t “freedom” bring peace? If so, why do I only feel it in the presence of him?

Tonight is the first night since getting his sweatshirt that I haven’t worn it to bed, and that coincidence is almost funny. Propping my extra pillows up, I arrange them to imitate his presence. My shaky hands clench together and I inhale deeply, counting to six, before exhaling too quickly to be helpful.

Jesus, why haven’t I figured out how to handle this yet?

Too much. I’m too much. How can I expect someone to understand me when I don’t even understand myself?

A pool of shame gathers in my eyes. With another deep breath, I sink further and further into the pillows. What if I suffocated in the darkness? The moon would be the only witness. Trying hard to focus on its light, my imagination transforms it into a balloon floating in the sky. The conversation with the old woman replays in my mind like an audiobook.

Somehow. Someday.

She wasn’t hopeless. She was certain someone would remember. Hearing her desire to leave a mark made me realize how deeply I desire the same thing.

What is my purpose here? A near-silent, consistent tug on my heart has made me wonder about it. If we could maybe—no. We could never.

This world is an empty one.

This love is a fleeting one.

I need to accept that before it eats me alive but—what is life without love? What is love without memories? What are memories without time?

Was this really the grand design?

My cascading tears are the waves that hold me under, drowning me alive in the growing grocery list of doubt. When I finally come up for air, it feels different somehow.

Sharp. Enraging. Powerful.

I’m a handful, but I don’t deserve to be alone. No one does.

It’s been a few weeks since our first date, and Dean has brightened up every part of my days. The little moments have become my favorite ones. Getting coffee in the mornings, holding his hand on the walk to work, knowing who is behind the knock on our door, his familiar touch on my lower back, the way his grip tightens when he kisses my forehead.

Now that I have something worth losing, fear is lighting the path to our inevitable end. Each day is a steady and constant train ride through time, propelling us along a perpetual cycle of countdowns that turn the past into the present, the present into the future, and the future into the past. Well, the future that doesn’t exist, because does anything exist if we can’t remember?

Some gift.

Losing the low also means losing the high, and the only thing worse than feeling the pain of loss is to feel nothing at all. If only it was my choice. I think I’d choose to remember.

Thoughts circle like a lion waiting to pounce.

I have no purpose.

I will make no difference.

I’m the sum of a life forgotten.

The weight crumbles me as I roll over and lay my hand on the side where I wish Dean was. Tears soak my pillow as I close my eyes tightly. Sleep, please take me anywhere but here.