Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
After what I’ve learned tonight, nothing makes sense anymore.
Irina makes no sense anymore. And now she’s here.
But I want her to leave.
“What’s wrong with your foot?”
“What?” Her question surprises me.
“You have an old injury?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you favor it.”
“I ran twenty-three miles on that foot today. I don’t think I’m favoring it.”
“But it was injured, right?”
“So?”
“So what happened to it?”
“It got smashed with a crowbar.”
She winces. “How long ago?”
“Seven years.”
“Did you get proper treatment?”
“Twelve hours of surgery.”
“Wow. They have good hospitals here.”
I smile despite the conflict coursing through my mind. “They do, I guess. The foot was a mess. It’s got pins and plates in it still.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“Everything still hurts, Irina.” And this comes out way too soft, which also puts a tinge of honesty on it. Hell, more than a tinge. Those words—that one sentence—is overflowing with truth.
“Yeah.” She slides sideways in the chair, places her hands under her cheek, yawning. Her head propped up on the arm, her knees tucked up to her chest. Cradled in the curvature of the chair back like a fetus. She sighs. Then her eyes close and I swear to God, a few seconds later, she falls asleep.
She got one true thing out of me and then she was done. Satisfied. Content, maybe.
I watch her for a little bit, wondering what I should do now. It’s pointless to keep this charade going. What she told me tonight changes everything.
But I am reluctant to let go. Because if I let go of this, I don’t think there’s anything left for me.
The next morning at four a.m. I am staring at the ceiling where that poster used to be. I would like to put it back up, but she’ll see it. And then what? Then I’d have to start spilling the story, I guess.
I turn over, shove my face into the pillow, and drift back off to sleep.
A knocking on my door jolts me just a few moments later. “Are we training or what?” Irina’s voice is muffled and low from the other side of the barrier between us.
All this time the training has kept me going. It has gotten me through the pain. The training and that last promise from Benny. “You will fight the Sick Heart and you will win. And it will all be fine.”
But he was lying.
There was no fight.
Nothing was ever gonna be fine.
It was always gonna end up just like this.
“Nah,” I tell her. “Go ahead and go back to sleep.”
“What?” She tries the doorknob. It jiggles. I turn back over to look at it, cursing myself for not locking it last night when I got up and left her sleeping on that chair. She opens it and waits in the hazy darkness of the doorway. “I thought we were training?”
“There’s no point, Irina.”
“What do you mean?”
“You should just go home.”
“What? Why?” She steps into my room and walks halfway to the bed. I can smell her shampoo from here. She’s already showered. She’s dressed in the same nondescript training clothes she prefers, black training shorts and a white tank top. “What’s wrong?”
Everything’s wrong. “Nothing’s wrong. Just…” I can’t even finish it. So I just go silent. Then I turn over, turn my back to her, and close my eyes, forcing the world to go away.
I’m actually drifting off again when I hear the soft tapping of her bare feet on the concrete floor. The smell of her shampoo gets stronger and the heaviness of her presence behind me is too much. So once again, I turn. “What?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me. I just… I don’t want to do this.”
The look on her face is painful to watch. Because it’s not anger, it’s… rejection. Or the results thereof. “You really want me to leave?”
I wait for the tantrum. I’ve grown used to them over the past few years. One-night-stand girls lying next to me in my bed in the morning, looking at me like I’m an asshole when I tell them they need to get the fuck out.
But Irina isn’t one of these girls and we didn’t have sex last night, and she’s not feeling dejected because she gave me something and got less than she expected in return.
She’s just… disappointed, I think. To finally meet the real me.
Irina sighs. Then she pushes me over and climbs into bed with me.
“What the hell are you doing?” I say it too loudly. Too much objection in my tone.
“I’ll sleep if you want to sleep. But I know what this is.”
“What are you talking about?”
She turns her back to me. There is literally like ten inches of space between my body and the edge of the bed, but she manages to fit herself into that space, her warm back pressing up against mine.
I scoot over. Not to give her room, but to get away from her. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but—”