Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 39095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
“Hello?” I said timidly into the phone. I couldn’t believe I’d answered. Why did I do that? Why did I want to get hurt again?
“Oh thank God!” Jackson sighed into the phone. “I was worried you wouldn’t answer again.”
Something about his voice was off. He didn’t sound like himself.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling dread wash over me.
“It’s Caleb,” he said, his voice urgent. “He’s been missing for over a week.”
My heart began to thud in my chest.
Missing? How on earth could he be missing?
“Where do you live?” I asked. “I’ll be right there.”
Caleb
I decided not to tell anyone I was in New York. Not my old friends, not my family. I didn’t want anyone to know where I was. My mother would tell me to be reasonable and go back to Las Vegas while my father would tell me to stop being so weak. I knew my friends wouldn’t understand. None of them had gone into the military and mostly worked in banking or medicine.
I just felt so lost and wanted to be left alone while I figured out what was wrong with me.
I knew my parents were staying at their house in the Hamptons for a while, so I decided to head to the apartment I grew up in on the Upper East Side.
My parents kept my bedroom for me for whenever I came to visit, set up just the way it was when I was still in high school. The same Jurassic Park and Batman posters on the wall, the same faded navy bedspread. It felt like walking into a time capsule which, in a way, was exactly what I wanted. I wanted to go to a time when everything still made sense and things weren’t so fucking hard all the time.
Collapsing into my slightly dusty twin bed, I slept for the next fourteen hours, not waking until my bladder was urgent. I had a dreamless sleep. Or, if I had dreams, I didn’t remember any of them. I was thankful for that because that meant no nightmares and Erin.
I’d dreamed of her almost every night since the reception, of the way she smiled at me and the way she moaned when I touched her and the genuine concern and compassion she had in her heart for a fuckup like me.
For several days, I hung around my parents’ apartment, not eating much and sleeping a lot. I was exhausted all the time and felt like I just couldn’t get enough sleep no matter how many hours a day I slumbered away.
I knew that I should call Jackson and let him know that I was alright, but I felt so guilty that he didn’t get to be with Erin anymore because of me. Maybe with me out of the picture, they would come back together and have the opportunity to make a real go of it.
Guilt gnawed at me for not getting in contact with Jackson, but the shame I felt paralyzed me each time I tried to call him. It wasn’t long before I took the battery out of my phone so I’d be less tempted to get in touch.
After the seventh day of moping around my parents’ apartment, I rented a car and decided to complete the tour of my former life. I started at my middle and high school, parking in the parking lot and remembering how many long hours I’d spent there studying and participating in after school activities.
I drove to the gym in which I was taught MMA. I was sorry to see that the building had been torn down at some point and made into condos.
I drove to Columbia and drove around the campus. I’d gone there for one year back when I was eighteen, but I’d hated every moment of it. I didn’t fit in and only stayed as long as I did because of my parents.
After I dropped out of school, I felt lost, one day winding up at the recruitment office. That was my next destination. I was sorely tempted to stop inside, wondering if I’d recognize any of the faces inside. But thinking about that turned my thoughts to Afghanistan, something I really didn’t want to contemplate at the moment.
There was just one place left to go on my tour: the BDSM dungeon I’d walked into when I retired from the marines that changed my life forever.
I popped the battery back into my phone so I could navigate from Columbia to the dungeon. Like always, the traffic was terrible, but I got there eventually, parking the car in a parking garage and walking the rest of the way there.
It was nothing like the one we built in Las Vegas. There was no club section filled with dancing people when you walked inside. There was just a lounge and a few private back rooms in which you could live out your fantasies.