Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
The thought filled me up, then scooped me out until I was empty.
Not for the first time, I told myself if he was happy, it would all be worth it. At least one of us should be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Joey
I felt weird, restless. There was nothing special about today, other than the strange buzz beneath my skin and the weight in my chest. It wasn’t as if I didn’t always carry some kind of weight there, but it was heavier, like someone had packed more on me when I was sleeping.
When I got off work, I grabbed dinner before returning to my apartment. I drank a beer, ate, showered, tried to quiet the collision of agitation and exhaustion in my head.
“Fuck,” I groaned, put on my gym clothes, and headed out. The gym was within walking distance, a couple of blocks away. It was dusk, the streets and sidewalks still loud and crowded in that way the city always was.
“Hey, Joey. How’s it goin’, bro?” the guy behind the desk greeted me. I couldn’t remember his name.
“Doing okay.” The place was busy, which didn’t surprise me. It was always packed at night, everyone getting their exercise in after a long day’s work.
I went straight to a treadmill, didn’t bother going slow as a warm-up. It wasn’t how I was trained, of course. When I first started at the gym, I had no clue how to do any of this. All I’d known was that I needed to tire out my body and mind every day and that I needed to be strong. Though I’d never be a big guy, I had definition now and knew how to move my body in ways I never had.
I ran until my legs ached, until sweat wouldn’t stop stinging my eyes, no matter how many times I wiped it away. Only then did I decrease the speed and let myself fall into a cooldown.
Afterward, I worked my way through weight machines. I saw Darrel across the room. I’d gotten to know him over the years, coming to this gym. His buddy had helped train me in boxing.
Someone was working out behind him, but I couldn’t see who it was, Darrel’s body blocking him as he spoke to one of the guys. When they finished chatting and the guy walked away, Darrel looked up, his eyes landing on me. “Hey, Joey. How’s it goin’, man?”
Damn it. As much as I liked Darrel, I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone tonight.
“Hey, Darrel.”
The guy behind him came into view then, moved around Darrel, took a step closer…and the world started shaking beneath my feet. An explosion went off in my chest, stealing my breath, weakening my knees, fuzzy, blurry colors dancing before my eyes.
He kept his hair different than he used to. Buzzed on the bottom, leading up to a fade, a little longer on top. His eyes were still a storm, a clash of sea during a hurricane, threatening to sweep me up and drown me.
My hand shot out, grabbed a machine, because I really couldn’t hold myself up. I couldn’t breathe. Why the fuck couldn’t I breathe?
Gage.
“Man, you okay?” a faint voice asked. I could feel whoever it was standing close, but the sound was muffled by the thunder in my ears.
We stood there, watching each other, and I couldn’t read him. I could always read Gage. We could speak without words…but that was the boy I knew. The man standing in front of me wasn’t that boy anymore. I wanted to go to him, cling to him and never let go, because he was here, finally he was here, my past colliding with my present, making me fragile and needy and… Gage.
“Jojo,” he whispered, but somehow I heard him clearly, even though he stood farther away than the guy who’d checked on me. That name, hearing it after more than ten years… It all came back to me, this flood of love and passion, happiness and pain, so much fucking pain and loneliness that I gasped, choked on it.
I loved him.
I hated him.
“I don’t want you anymore,” his words assaulted me.
I opened my mouth, not knowing what would come out. “That’s not my name.” I turned, shaking, stumbling, dizzy as I took step after step away from him.
“Joey,” he called after me, his voice following me the way we’d always promised to do with each other. Where he went, I would go; where I went, he would go.
What I was, Gage was.
What Gage was, I was.
“I don’t want you! Don’t you get that?”
The second I stepped outside, I gasped, trying to suck air into my suffocating lungs, and then I ran, just fucking ran. I was that kid again, the one who was afraid, who couldn’t stick up for myself, only instead of running toward the one thing that made me feel strong, that built me up, I was running away.