Page 172

SOARING IN HER MANIA

Hugh

NOVEMBER 6, 2003

A T FIRST , I WAS NUMB, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY NUMB AS MY MIND TRIED TO PRO cess the trauma. Nothing I’d ever been through had traumatized me like walking into my room and seeing my teammate pounding my girlfriend.

My Liz!

Pain had socked me so hard in the solar plexus that I had to physically catch myself from collapsing in a heap.

My immediate reaction was to drag that traitorous friend off my traitorous girlfriend and break every bone in his face.

While I managed to rearrange that asshole’s nose, it did nothing to make me feel better.

Instead, I just felt hollow and disappointed in myself for not taking the high road. Because Pierce wasn’t worth my time and kicking his face in that night only made it look like the scales were even between us.

We weren’t even, and we never would be.

Yeah, I crushed his nose and caused two fractures in his cheekbone, but he crushed my world and fractured my future.

His bones would heal.

My heart wouldn’t.

The logical part of my brain urged me to acknowledge the betrayal, to take it in, absorb the emotions thrashing through me, and then cut my losses and walk away.

Because I had to walk away from her.

I could handle almost anything Liz threw at me, but not that.

I couldn’t handle that .

While Pierce had stabbed me in the back that night, Liz stabbed right through the heart. Unlike the knife sticking out of my back—the one I could survive—Liz’s blade shattered inside me like buckshot, splaying and splicing through my heart until there was nothing left.

The worst part of it all was Liz wasn’t even sorry.

When she didn’t return to school on Monday, I’d half hoped it was because she was crashing down from her high.

She hadn’t.

When I realized I’d left my charger in her room and finally worked up the courage to go get it last night, I ended up falling back into the habit of a lifetime.

She put her hands on me and I didn’t have the willpower to stop her. It was fucking awful because my body hadn’t gotten the memo that her body was off-limits, and it was still craving her.

It was a mistake to go over there, and I would send my sister in the future, but at the time, I’d hoped our interaction would snap her out of it.

But nope.

Like a fucked-up phoenix rising from the ashes of turmoil, Liz sauntered into school this morning still rampant and still soaring in her mania.

School was absolute torture because not only did Liz continue hooking up with my teammate but she was also relentless in her attempt to seduce me.

Sex was all she could think about, and every time I rejected her advances, she ran back to Pierce like a fucking nymphomaniac.

I understood her bipolar had a great deal to do with her sudden hypersexuality, but that didn’t ease the sheer fucking heartbreak I was enduring.

I knew this wasn’t who Liz was, and I knew she was sick, but I was too hurt and too fucking raw to separate the two.

My heart was torn to ribbons, and my confidence was at an all-time low. I felt like an expendable toy that she’d enjoyed playing with for nine years and had grown bored of.

I felt like I was nothing .

Nothing but collateral damage in her tornado of emotions.

Images of her face flashed through my mind like a damn projector playing behind my eyes.

I could still smell her on my pillow. I kept finding rogue strands of her hair on random items of clothing.

Jesus, it hurt so bad, it made it hard to breathe.

I wanted to ask her parents what the hell was happening and demand to know why she hadn’t been hospitalized yet. I stopped myself from contacting her parents because talking to them wouldn’t be good for me, and I had to start putting me first now.

I had no idea how to put myself back together, nor did I have the slightest inkling of how to work though the betrayal.

My only remotely productive achievement since the breakup was taking on a part-time job at the pool, and honestly, being in the water was my saving grace. It kept my mind busy and my thoughts off her. The fact that our lives were so deeply entwined made it impossible for me to go more than half a day without running into her.

I saw her every day at school.

I saw her at home when Claire invited her over.

I saw her at work, where she was a member.

I saw her everywhere .

The worst part of it all was that I still loved her, and I still wanted to be with her.

And I fucking hated myself for feeling that way.