me wishes he would forget about me and live his goddamn life. But part of me doesn’t want to miss out seeing him living a good life.”
“Why can’t you see yourself living a good life?”
I laughed. “You know, you told me to write a letter. I lost the letter. I never destroyed it. I lost it. And that letter is… it’s fucking haunting me. So, any of your advice is worth nothing to me.”
“Yet you still show up.”
“You want me to write another letter?”
“Do you want to write another letter?”
I rubbed my jaw. “I want to leave. And I want to never come back here again. Because the fucking truth is simple. It’s love. Love makes me feel this way. Act this way. Love makes me who I am. But because it’s not fucking roses and diamonds, it’s thought of in a different way.”
“Love. Okay. And who exactly do you love, Josh?”
I put my hands to the couch I should have been seated at. I leaned forward and felt the fire roaring from my eyes from the twists of fate that burned in my heart.
“I love the one I can never have.”
Chapter 41
Just Go Home
NOW
(Amelia)
“Hey, you have to come smell this.”
I had tried counting the stars three different times and lost count after just two. The stars meant nothing to me, but the distraction meant everything. I was lost without Josh. I was lost without the letter to Delilah. I couldn’t stop playing it in my mind, thinking about the fact that he was the one who wrote the letter. He wrote that letter to someone named Delilah, who was the person he truly loved. And yet the letter was written in such a way that said Delilah was gone, but I didn’t know what that meant.
Gone as in distance.
Gone as in time.
Gone as in forever.
Fingers snapped next to my ear. “You hear me?”
“What?” I asked Mags.
“You have to check this out,” she said. “It’s so gross.”
I stood up and followed her into the restaurant.
I had no desire to smell anything gross. But most of the staff was gathered near the walk-in fridge.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Chrissy said as she bolted from the fridge covering her mouth.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You just have to see and smell it,” Mags said. “Mitch is going to fire someone over it.”
“There was a smell in there,” Daniel said as he wiped his hands on his dirty apron.
He was one of the cooks and thought he was working in Paris at a top restaurant. He wasn’t all that good of a cook. The only reason Mitch kept him was because he did all the stuff nobody else wanted to do.
“What kind of smell?” I asked.
“Like the date he paid for last weekend,” someone called out.
Everyone laughed.
“What’s going on back here?” Mitch’s deep managerial voice boomed.
It was like being in high school again, watching everyone scatter as though we were under the bleachers, smoking, and the principal came to bust up the fun.
“Hey, Mitch,” Daniel said. “We’ve got some seafood that went sideways in here. Found it in the back corner. No idea how long it’s been in here.”
“Who the hell was in charge of the fridge last week?” Mitch asked, looking for a head to chop off.
Lucky for me I was a waitress.
I inched back and had all intentions of going back to work.
But then Daniel being Daniel, he darted into the fridge and grabbed a handful of whatever had gone bad. He showed it to Mitch and the smell turned its way toward me.
The second it touched my nose, my stomach launched like a rocket.
I put my right hand to my stomach as my eyes spied the oozing and gooey liquid of what used to be something edible.
I vowed right then and there to never eat seafood ever again.
But that meant nothing for what was about to happen.
“I’ll gladly clean this out,” Daniel said to Mitch. “But my ass isn’t taking the-”
I turned and spotted a trash can.
A hand went to each side of it and I buried my face into the trash can as I threw up.
And it wasn’t just some cute girl throw up either.
It was… bad.
I screamed like I was dying.
The sound of my stomach emptying slapped against the sides and bottom of the trash can and sounded so loud, I went from sick to embarrassed.