Still Falling | ✓

0.5 | prologue

He'd felt alone for a great deal of his
life. This was not supposed to feel any different, but it did. He thought he would have mastered pain by now, but he hadn't. He hated that he hadn't.

The five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. He'd known them all, except the last. Denial was the hardest. After Elliot told him of her decision while on the flight to Zurich, he'd been in absolute denial, because why would she do that to him? Why would she leave him, and in such a manner?

He was stuck in the first stage the longest. Anger felt oddly satisfying, a friend he'd long forgotten after she came into his life. Now, it gingerly sauntered back, a mocking grin on it's lips while he stood with his head bowed in defeat.

He didn't bargain for long. How could he, when there was no one to bargain with? She was gone. And somehow, he found himself at fault. It was like a curse. Depression comforted him. It sucked the life out of him, but he'd become accustomed to it. In the storm of sadness he felt an eerie calm. But that storm sometimes shifted back to anger. Like a pendulum.

Anger.

Sadness.

Anger.

Crippling depression.

Again and again and again.

It was past four in the morning, but he had not gotten a wink of sleep. He was stuck thinking, swimming in a vast pool of depression all night. Moonlight shone through the window, a sliver catching the envelope sat next to him on the bed. Parker had handed it to him yesterday morning with a concerned look on his face, but didn't say a word about it. He knew better than that.

He got out a piece of paper from the envelope and typed the number scribbled on it into his phone. He hit the call button, brought the phone up, and listened to it ring.

His heart should be beating wildly now, but he couldn't feel a thing. Did he still own one?

The ringing stopped, and so did his breathing. The air went dead. He was going to open his mouth, but was beaten to it.

"Hello." A man's voice. It made his blood go flaming hot. "Who is this?"

He was about to end the call when another voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"Jamie, who is it?" It was hers. The first time he was hearing it in eight months.

What the fuck, he thought. What. The. Fuck.

"I have no idea. The line's silent."

"What?" There was something new in her voice. Like fresh panic, with a hint of realization. Had she been waiting for him to call? After so long? No, that was wishful thinking. "Jamie, give me the phone," her tone was hard.

Not like this.

He ended the call and continued to stare into the dark. It was the dead of night, and she wasn't alone. That meant they were sharing the same bed. Had she been so quick to move on, when it was her decision to leave him?

Again, his depression shifted to anger. His body shook, eyes filled with hot tears that failed to fall. He clenched his fist. Pain ate him raw, like bacteria in an open wound. In a flash, his phone made contact with the wall with a loud smack. He was breathing wildly, felt the flaring of his nostrils.

And like a pendulum, he shifted. And shut his eyes.