The Best of Winter Renshaw - An 8 Book Collection - Winter Renshaw Page 0,669

text of mine today.

Forty

Jude

* * *

They say if you rip a Band-Aid off quickly, it hurts less.

I don’t know about that.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours feeling the sting of that rip, but I know it’ll be nothing compared to what Love’s about to go through.

Any minute now, she’s going to come back to The Jasper, knock on my door, and eventually realize I’m not there anymore. Maybe the super will tell her I moved out. Maybe Raymond will tell her I’ve been blacklisted. That combined with the fact that she has no way to reach me is going to make her think I ghosted her, and knowing her, she’s going to blame herself. She’s going to think it’s because she told me she loved me.

And that’s how it looks.

She told me she loved me and I bolted.

Her love will eventually be displaced by revulsion, but that’s the way it was going to go down in the end anyway.

Strolling down Neptune Avenue, I stop next to a couple at a crosswalk and wait for the light. From the corner of my eye, I see them nuzzling, laughing, clasping hands and slowly bumping into each other, like they can’t go more than two point four seconds without touching in some capacity.

Wasn’t long ago, I knew that feeling.

The yellow-haired girl rises on her toes and kisses her boyfriend—the way Love always had to rise on her toes to kiss me—and my knotted stomach sinks.

The crosswalk lights and I get ahead of them because I can’t take another second of watching some of the happiest moments of my life play out in front of me in real time.

A block or so ahead, I see a “Coming Soon” sign in a storefront window, and once I’m closer, I realize it’s the building we toured for Agenda W.

Everything happened so fast, and it ended just as quickly.

I blinked and I met her.

I blinked and I lost her.

I lived for those moments in between.

My only wish now is that someday I might run into her, might get a chance to tell her that I’m sorry—even if she doesn’t believe me and even if it doesn’t matter. I just want her to hear those words from the very lips that had no right kissing her in the first place.

Keeping my stride, I make my way to the pharmacy on the corner to grab Piper’s insulin. An older man in a Mets t-shirt waits before me, but other than that, the place is unusually slow for this time of day.

I slide my hand in my back pocket to grab my phone, but there’s nothing there.

I must have left it at home.

“Next,” a woman’s voice calls a moment later as the man in front of me shuffles away with a white paper bag in hand.

“Here to pick up for Piper Cunningham,” I say, grabbing my wallet.

The pharmacy tech working the register gives a warm smile, her eyes gliding back and forth between her computer screen and me.

“Whoops,” she says, waving her hand in the air. “I typed the wrong name. What did you say your name was again?”

“It’s for Piper Cunningham,” I say, enunciating every damn syllable because I don’t have all day. Lo has to head to work soon and I’ve got to pick up a pizza for us on the way home.

“No, what’s your name?” she says, flashing her oversized smile. “For the notes.”

“Jude,” I say. “Jude Warner.”

“Thank you, Jude Warner.” She says my full name, and I think of Love. But then again, I’m always thinking of Love. “Okay, let me grab that for you. Two seconds …”

She trots off to the back and returns thirty seconds later with a white bag.

“Okay, with insurance, today’s total is going to be three-hundred six dollars and eleven cents,” she says.

I don’t bat an eye as I grab my card. Hunter had given me an advance, most of which I used to pay our rent for the next six months, and I’d also set aside several grand for Piper’s medicine. He hasn’t asked for any of it back, and I don’t think he ever will because fifty grand is probably pocket change to him.

“You look really familiar,” the girl says, pointing her finger and squinting as I sign for the meds. “Have we met before? Do I know you somehow?”

I’ve never seen this girl before in my life. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s all of twenty-two. I’ve got damn near an entire decade on her. I