Perfect Match Enemies to lovers romance - Leia Stone Page 0,5
snapped.
“Fuck you, Cruise. You’re fired.” I slammed the phone on the counter and the mouthpiece cracked. This place was going to go down in flames and I didn’t care anymore. The fryer was on its last leg anyway. I just wouldn’t serve food for a few days until Darcy got me a better offer. I would need to convince my grandma to sell it. She was co-signer on the bar for that third personal loan, so I’d have to run everything by her.
I glanced at my watch.
One hour until opening.
I should go for a walk, get fresh air, but it was too damned hot out for that.
My phone alarm blared, and I glanced down at it.
Meds.
Heading behind the counter, I started to robotically pop off the lids of the four different medications I took to keep my body from rejecting my donor heart. Every day, every time I took these pills, it was a reminder of that night. A reminder that I was here and my sister wasn’t. I held the handful of medicine in my palm for a second and considered not taking them. There was a darkness at the corner of my mind, lurking there ever since my twin died, and sometimes I wanted to fully let it in, to give in to those thoughts.
Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I popped the pills into my mouth.
Chugging them down with tap water, I searched for a grief support meeting nearby on my phone. Maybe I could get to one before I had to open the bar. They seemed to be the only thing that helped. Hearing other people recounting their shitty lives was the only thing that made me feel normal, made me feel like I could keep going. I wasn’t suicidal, I didn’t want to kill myself, I just didn’t want to be alive. But I was starting to wonder if there was a difference.
Chapter 3
Millie
I banged on Julie’s door like a cop, much heavier and more aggressive than I’d intended, but with the amount of vodka rocking through my body, I wasn’t aware of my own strength.
Julie opened the door looking freshly showered and in cute pjs, holding a bottle of wine and popcorn. When she took in my clearly hammered and disheveled appearance, clutching an open bottle of vodka to my chest, she tried to yank the wine back, but I reached out and grabbed it. The two bottles clinked when I clutched them between my arms.
“I need this,” I slurred and stumbled into her apartment.
“So … you started early,” she observed.
I nodded, slowly, and the room spun as I did. “Right after our lunch, actually.”
Right after Colin’s parents had called to see how I was doing and tell me they would always think of me as their daughter. Then I’d told them I was closing the cupcake shop.
Things had spiraled after that.
Julie sighed. “It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling.”
I glared at her. “Don’t shrink me.”
She held up her hands in a sign of peace. “Honey, I think you’re doing great. It’s only been a year and … you’re great.”
I chuckled, taking a deep swig of the vodka before handing it to her. “Drink.”
She sighed and pulled a swig from the neck of the bottle before coughing. Her mouth puckered like she’d swallowed a lemon. “Geeze, let me mix proper drinks. We haven’t drunk straight from the bottle since your power hour on your twenty-first birthday.”
I took the vodka back from her as I stared at the polka-dot wallpaper that graced her entryway, remembering when she and John had put it up two years ago. Colin and I had helped.
“It’s been a year and I haven’t kissed another guy, my career is over before it really began, and I’m still mourning the life that was taken from me. The future that was taken from me,” I said aloud, pacing her apartment. “What if I never have kids? I’m twenty-seven. What if I am ready to date next year at twenty-eight? Let’s just say that I meet ‘the one’ right away, but he doesn’t propose until I’m thirty-one and we have a year engagement. That’s thirty-two. Then he wants to fucking travel, and just, ‘be a couple for a few years’ before we try to start a family. Suddenly I’m forty and my eggs are shit and I’ll never be a mother.”
Julie’s eyes widened as she reached for the bottles. “Wow, is this how you think all the time?”