Haze, Andrea Wolfe [english novels for beginners txt] 📗

distressed by the fact that he couldn't stay here and talk to me due to his workload. I, on the other hand, was perfectly okay with the situation. I wasn't ready to tell him, not until I gave it some more thought.

Yeah, sorry, Jesse. I can't pay rent this month because I got fired because I didn't take your advice. Now we'll both get kicked out of the apartment!

No, I wasn't about to do that.

I shared my lonely meal with no one, washing it down with lemon-flavored sparkling water that I desperately wished was a cocktail. I wasn't sure why I wasn't permitting myself to drink, because temporary escape sure felt like a good idea.

It was so hard not to think about what had happened, especially because I kept telling myself not to think about it. Telling yourself not to think about something was definitely the best way to ensure that you actually did think about it. Think about it way too much. Brains could be so cruel.

After starting to feel nauseous as I replayed that cruel event from today in my mind, I realized that I needed to drop it. I put on Netflix and put on the first movie that showed up in my recommended section, not even looking at the title.

Thank God that Jesse would leave before me in the morning so I wouldn't have to maintain some dumb charade where I snuck out ahead of him to pretend that I still had a job.

Before I fell asleep, I thought about how much I wished Jack were here, even though I wasn't totally over the blaming him phase of my grief. I debated trying to call him on my mangled piece of technology, but I let the thought go.

Tomorrow, I thought. Everything good is tomorrow.

Chapter 19

"You want four-fucking-hundred dollars to repair my phone?"

Tomorrow was definitely not good.

I was at the cell phone store, trying my damndest not to give myself a heart attack. Well, at least if I had a heart attack and died, I'd get out of paying my student loans. Hmm...

"Ma'am, you didn't pay for the accidental coverage and the parts are still expensive for this model." The clerk was timid and mechanical, obviously someone who was just reciting company policy and barely listening to me.

"You fucking piece of—" I was mad at everything again, but I stopped myself abruptly. "I just don't get it." I rested my hands on the counter, took a deep breath, and stabilized myself. This guy was a mere retail peasant, probably just doing his job so he could pay for college.

Shit, I might end up like this...

Waking up had been peaceful—well, until I remembered I didn't have a job or any real plan at all. The coffee left in the kitchen cupboard was old and stale, and my wonky coffeemaker from college didn't do it any justice on top of that. If I hadn't needed the caffeine so badly, I probably would have just dumped the pot down the drain after the first miserable sip.

There were few things that made me madder in this world than shitty coffee.

On top of that, it rained the whole way to the phone store. As soon as I got inside, it stopped immediately. I hadn't heard from Jack or anyone else, and with my broken phone, dialing numbers was a formidable task, nearly impossible. I had tried to call the cell phone store, but after ten minutes of mistyped digits, I gave up.

Although it was tough, I regained my composure and tried to relax. "Is there anything else I can do about this?"

The employee nervously eyed the line of customers that was forming behind me. "At this point ma'am, not really. You could get a cheaper phone or get a temporary prepaid phone from somewhere."

Ugh. I really liked this phone, the primary reason why I got it. Timothy had tried to convince me to order one of those fancy protective cases—he was always obsessed with new gadgets; I think he was more excited about them than he was about me—but I had forgotten to follow through with the plan. His bitching about how expensive they were in the retail phone stores had definitely contributed to my lack of action. Ordering stuff online was easy but also easy to forget to do.

I snatched up my phone and thanked the employee for his time, tossing in an almost inaudible I'm sorry for my behavior at the end. He seemed like he was probably used to people acting like I did.

I checked at a couple of other places, pricing out prepaid phones because I most likely wasn't going to be able to find a job if I couldn't type any numbers into my phone. The problem with getting a prepaid phone was that my contacts wouldn't transfer over, which would mean hours of trial and error as I tried to manually decipher the mangled digits on the cracked screen.

Time was definitely something that I had—but that still seemed like a waste of it.

After arriving back at the apartment, I sat down on my bed and started pulling up job listings on my computer, feeling more and more helpless the more I clicked. I really hated starting over, especially since I had been in such a great position. Starting over after you had just started over was tremendously miserable.

I would have to figure out the new subway schedule and plan my days differently. I would have a new boss and co-workers. I would have to find a new nearby coffee shop.

I didn't want any of that right now. Why couldn't things go back to how they were?

I liked how things had been before I got into this mess. Yeah, I felt like kind of baby for whining about this—everyone changed jobs now and then; it wasn't that big of a deal—but I couldn't control how I felt in my compromised state.

My phone buzzed once, just a text. I figured I'd barely be able