Might As Well Be On Mars // Motley Crue

Slice You Apart

Two days later, Evie started her work week like nothing had happened. Like there wasn't a hole in her because her loving boyfriend/roommate had suddenly freaked out on her and fucked too random women with one of her friends and then disappeared for sixty hours and counting. She couldn't tell Jessica, her closest work friend, that. If she did that, she would not only start crying uncontrollably in front of a bunch of toddlers, but she would also let her coworkers know how absolutely insane her life was, being the daughter of a rock n' roller, and all.

She did her best to stay distracted by staying busy, and it worked decently well. Until she left for home. It was an hour long commute home, about half of it spent walking to and sitting at bus stops. Evie made it about two minutes into her ten minute walk to the first bus stop when she started to break down. Usually when she was leaving work, the first thing that crossed her mind was how excited she was to be going home to see Nikki. But today, she knew that Nikki wasn't going to be there when she got home.

She cried on that walk, shielding her eyes in case any of her coworkers were leaving for or coming back from lunch. She calmed down a bit on the first bus ride, but the quietness of the transfer stop (a fifteen minute wait) left her alone with her thoughts again. She cried shamelessly at that stop and on the final bus home, not caring about the stares from the people passing by. She was allowed to mourn because she had been betrayed by someone she thought loved her.

Mick knew what had happened the minute she walked through the front door. Evie may not have cared about crying in front of strangers, but she always felt embarrassed to do it in front of her father. She glanced up at him quickly and then scurried up to her room.

Mick thought about going up and comforting her, but he decided she needed her space. He only went up twice. First, to ask if she wanted dinner ("no") and second, to tell her he was leaving for work ("bye").

When she was sure her father was gone, Evie went downstairs. She snacked on some goldfish, then stood in the living room, seemingly for no reason. She felt numb. She felt empty. Suddenly, she wanted to abandon everything she had worked for. She wanted to quit her job. Maybe she would find a new one, doing something entirely different than anything she had ever done. Or maybe she would sit in her room all day doing nothing. She didn't know which she preferred. She wanted to stop selling the stuffed animals she spent hours upon hours making. It made her feel lame.

Speaking of lame, Evie wanted to abandon all of her friendships. She really only had two close friends and she hardly spoke to them during the summer, but after a month with the most adventurous, thrilling person she would ever know, she couldn't imagine seeing all those plain, boring people at school and trying to pretend like she was interested in their plain, boring lives.

And how was she supposed to go back to school? How do you go from working more than part time at a respectable job during the day and riding with rockstars at night to eight hours of listening to teachers yammer on and on and doing hours of homework each evening?

That was it: she couldn't go back to work, she couldn't go back to her friends, she couldn't go back to school. She needed to...

There was a knock on the door. Evie snapped out of her trance and fear shot through her. It was eight thirty on a Monday night. Who could be at her door?

Slowly, she walked towards it. She knew she was too short to see out of the peephole, but she still tried anyway. As she was trying to get high enough on her tiptoes to see who it was, she heard a keychain clang against the doorknob.

Evie gasped and took two big steps back. She stared in horror as the knob turned and the door creaked open.

"Hey..." Nikki said. His confusion at Evie's state almost made him forget his nervousness. "I knocked, but you didn't answer, so I..."