Page 20 of The Intimacy of Finding You

I couldn’t handle it. Tears burned the inner corners of my eyes. “But he said yes, Jack.”

“I know.”

“I’d just gotten him back.”

“I know.”

I sniffled. “I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, huh? He’d tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen.”

Jack’s turning signal clicked in the background. “I’ll help you look for him, but we may just have to wait. Who knows, maybe he’ll show back up.”

Shaking my head, I wiped the stray tears that’d fallen down my cheeks. I started to walk forward, passing the room Papa had just been discharged from. “If we don’t find him, I won’t get my hopes up again. Not like that. I can’t go through this again.”

“Go home, Cal. Feed the pup. Feed yourself. I’ll close the bar early and come help you look for him after you’ve had time to decompress. You’ve got the day off, and your grandfather just got out of the hospital, so maybe stop and see him for a little longer. I know you were in a rush to get back to Tobi when we took him home earlier.”

Decompress. As if that was something I could even consider right now.

The moment I closed the front door behind me, I heard the telltale tippy-taps of Fishbowl running through the house. He ran straight for me, sliding down onto his front paws as his entire body shook with excitement.

I bent down to pet him, but he was so excited to see me that he just couldn’t handle it. His tail wouldn’t stop wagging as he started spinning in circles, whining and huffing for attention I couldn’t reach to give him. “Come here, Fishy.” I laughed, trying to catch up to him so he would calm down enough to get what he was begging for.

After a moment, I stood and shook my head, rounding to the couch instead. The moment I sat down, Fishy did a running jump, his short, stumpy legs and oddly long body landing right beside me on the couch. His excitement and his floppy black ears made everything seem okay, if only for just a moment. I could always count on him to make me feel better.

“Come here, bud.” I opened my arms, letting him practically tackle me with his entire twenty pounds of pure love. He kept huffing and panting as he tried to contain himself. “Hi, Fishy. I see you. You missed me, huh?”

All I got in response was him seemingly finding the off switch in his body to settle down, resting his head right on my thigh. I patted down his head, making sure to scratch the white fur on his throat. He was a silly-looking thing, but he was mine. My little Fishbowl, too small to contain the big amount of excitement he seemed to have inside of him.

Jack would be coming by soon. I rubbed one of Fishy’s ears as I talked to him. “Pops is out of the hospital. That’s who you smell on me. He’s settled in and doing well at home.” His big, dark eyes were peering up at me, not daring to look anywhere else. “And I have another person I hope you can meet. He’s an old friend of mine. Which, calling him a friend just feels wrong on a hundred different levels, but it’s all I can really call him right now. Maybe an acquaintance at this point. You’re probably going to pee with excitement when you meet him. If you meet him. I hope you meet him.”

God, I hoped he’d meet him one day. But I wasn’t supposed to be hoping right now. I’d done that already, and the relief that’d followed had been ripped straight out of my chest. I leaned my head back against the couch, still petting Fishy with one hand as I stared at the ceiling of my house.

It wasn’t dark enough outside to see anything in the sky. The wooden structure blocked it all out, anyway. Though if I were going to hope for anything, it would be for something to be watching me. Waiting for me. Waiting to be able to tell me it would all be okay. I had to believe that—I had to hope for that—or this would all be for nothing, and I’d have nothing left to believe in.

chapter eleven

There wasn’t enough time. There was too much time. I was confused and uncertain. I wasn’t even sure what I was uncertain about. Something important, I’d bet. Did it really matter, though, if I couldn’t even remember what it was?

I didn’t know. Maybe it was the whiskey talking. Damn whiskey—the one drink I hated the most. Especially cheap whiskey like what I was downing now. I’d gotten it off one of the guys that were usually around the subway. Traded it for a sandwich I’d stolen from the hospital.

How pathetic. How sad. Woe is me, Tobi Weaver, too fucked up to commit to the one thing I used to beg for in silence. I’d wait until I knew whoever it was I was living with was asleep, and then I’d whisper it into the dark. I’d whisper wishes of getting better. Getting out. I wished and wished and even wished upon a thousand stars, yet none of those wishes ever came true.

Now that it’d been dangled in front of me, I’d done the only thing that’d made sense at the time.

I ran.

Hayden, the sweet nurse from the hospital, had tried to talk me out of it. He’d even brought a doctor in to tell me how dangerous it would be to drink right after getting over alcohol poisoning. I told them I understood. I told them I didn’t care, and to discharge me.

Thank god they didn’t have an address on file for me. I knew the hospital bill was going to be outrageous.

I scratched over my beard, missing the way it’d felt to take a hot shower with the heavy-duty antibacterial soap they’d had there. I missed how clean the gown had smelled, no matter how offensive and strong it was. At least it’d smelled like disinfectant rather than old, musty, and moldy, like the clothes I’d been wearing for far too long on the streets.

I watched people pass by from the little alley I’d found to rest in, away from everyone and everything. I was shielded from the world here. There was some guy way down the other side, but he didn’t bother me. He was drinking too, actually.

How sad.

I wondered just how pissed Callum was right now. He’d said he had to go take care of something and get his car. It’d only taken me a few minutes to make the decision to leave. There wasn’t enough time to explain it to him. There wasn’t enough time to understand the decision myself, even though I was the one who made it.

Callum was too perfect. Too good. Too easy to fall into comfortably. All I’d do was ruin it all. I knew how detox worked—I knew what he’d have to see me go through, and the lengths I’d be willing to go to for the lies I was willing to tell. Once an addiction took over the mind, it took over the body, too. I’d already been craving more after agreeing to go home with him. It was an automatic response. Maybe it was survival, or maybe it was selfishness.