Page 7 of All the Beautiful Things
“Oh God.” I groaned as Hudson’s response repeated in my mind.
Had.
My hands clamped to my mouth and I rushed to the bathroom. My knees slammed into the cold tile, making me cry out in pain. I barely managed to fling open the top of the toilet before I gagged and puked up whatever was in my stomach.
“I had a sister.”
Those were Hudson’s words.
Which means she was dead.
Since that very last time I saw her, I’d always figured she got bored with coming to the prison and wasting a night when she could have been doing something normal. Never… never had I considered this alternative.
We had both lost siblings. People we’d loved. And in the nights where he knew about me, where he held me and let me cry about Josh… he related.
He related to me in ways he could have shared. He intentionally held back such a colossal part of himself, all while I was struggling with learning how to open up.
I’d given him all of me. All the ugliest, darkest, most regretful parts of my life and he’d taken every one, while holding back possibly the most important parts of himself.
And that… that betrayal might have hurt worse than the lies.
I stayed bent over the toilet, emotions rushing through making me hot, making me shiver. I stayed there until I had nothing left in my stomach before I shoved back and collapsed against the bathroom cupboards.
My apartment.
My job.
They’d handed me everything.
Now what did I have?
Nothing.
But I’d rebuilt my life, such as it’d been, before.
I’d do it again.
* * *
The squawking bellabove the door startled me, making me jump as I stepped into Judith’s. It’d been four weeks since I was there, but it felt like a lifetime ago. The place looked the same, not that I’d expected anything to be drastically different since it’d probably all been the same since the sixties, but it felt different.
Maybe it was me that was different.
Regardless, my legs trembled as I headed toward the bar area where there was a bucket of silverware, cleaned from the look of it, and next to it were the napkins and paper rings. There were very few customers. An elderly couple sat at one table at the far end. At another table, a lone male with a beard more salt than pepper sipped on coffee and read the paper.
I collapsed onto a stool by the silverware and since Judith wasn’t out front, I started rolling it like I’d spent so many hours doing before during downtimes.
My eyes were red and scratchy. I’d cried for what felt like half the day before I picked myself off my bathroom floor and managed a shower and to change into clean clothes.
It’d taken effort to do the simplest tasks. My bones hurt and every muscle in my body ached but I’d managed.
In the past, when I’d run from Hudson, he’d chased me. I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for him to do so this time. And I hated that while I’d been getting dressed, I’d imagined him, only a few stories above me, probably pacing like a caged animal, wanting to come to me. Wanting to demand I give him time for his explanations and excuses.
He’d throw them all at my lap and expect forgiveness.
I knew him well enough to know that.
I had nothing to give him.
