014 • Juice

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. . .

SIX MONTHS LATER

. . .

Juice felt the pressure of her back against his stomach, her bottom against his waist. Her breathing sounded right next to him and with a satisfied feeling he snuggled closer to her, until the strands of her hair were tickling his nose. His hands glided up from her hip to her breast and a little dazed he discovered that she was still wearing a shirt. Just like him.

As soon as he realized it wasn't Dana who was lying in his bed, he pulled back his hand immediately and sat up straight. The girl muttered something, turned around and looked up to him. A slow smile spread across her face. 

"Who the hell are you?" he snarled. With his foot he shoved her to the side, so she almost fell out of bed.

Although most people sped away lately when his face turned into a grimace, this blonde wench didn't flinch. "Lotte." She sat up, with her back against the headrest of his bed. "Calm down. We haven't done anything."

Suspiciously, his eyes wandered across her pretty face and from there to her upper body. Before he met Dana, there was no doubt he would have done something with her. "Then what the fuck are you doin' here?"

Although he had gotten used to croweaters who always wanted to touch him, Lotte's hands rested on the blankets, folded. "We talked last night. A lot. You were pretty drunk and I think you took more than alcohol alone. Don't you remember?"

There was something soothing about her voice, which made him relax a little. He closed his eyes, ignored the pounding of his head and tried to see something in the dark wood of which his memories of yesterday consisted. Then he shrugged. He didn't remember her face.

"You told me that you had trouble sleeping, because of that girl. That you tried to find some rest after taking pills and alcohol, but that you still woke up every hour and panicked. Then I told you that it might be wise to not fall asleep alone, so that you aren't continuously reminded to the fact that she isn't around anymore. I told you that my boyfriend died during a car crash, and that I had trouble sleeping alone too." She looked at him, there was a sympathetic smile on her lips. "I think it helped."

Juice bent his head. He remembered barely a thing from last night. Only – that she had been with him. But she hadn't been there at all. Her absence filled him again and sharply breathing through his nose, he pressed his lips together. 

"Now you feel bad," she said softly. "I get that. But at least you had a good sleep for once. If you do that more often, you will see that things are lighter during the day as well, because the lack of sleep makes you more emotional."

Juice didn't know what to say. It felt like he had betrayed Dana by sleeping with someone else, even though it had been sleeping alone. They had been lying close together, in an intimate way. Like he only wanted to lay with her. But he couldn't ignore the truth: he'd had more sleep than every day before. 

"And now?" he huffed. "You want me to share my bed with you for the rest of my life?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "That sounds like a long time." She gave him a slight smile. "But maybe until sleeping goes better, so that we can phase out again?"

Grunting, Juice ran a hand across his face. What was she, a fucking shrink? If he needed a therapist he would find one, but he knew he was so fucked up that even a therapist wouldn't know what to do with him anymore. "Why you doin' this?"

"Because I know how you feel, Juice," she said quietly. 

Juice clenched his fist and hit the wall, right next to her face. Pain flashed through his fingers and the girl flinched. "You have no idea how I feel," he snapped. "I wished she'd been under a fucking truck, instead of in the hell she is now!"

"That does not alter the fact that I know how it feels to be not able to sleep. To feel that your whole world crumbles down every morning, when you discover that the one you love is no longer with you." Her voice sounded controlled, despite his outburst. Not scared – and not heated either. Just gentle, and it calmed him down a bit. "You suffer, Juice. Everyone sees that and nobody knows how to help you. I'm around the clubhouse for two weeks now, a friend brought me here. As soon as I saw you for the first time, I felt your pain, I recognized that lost look, that longing for someone who is no longer there." Her hand glided to his and even though he wanted to pull it away, he didn't. "I know the other girls want to help you by offering their bodies – that's just how they are. I'm not like that, Juice. I might hang out here, but I haven't slept with your brothers and the only reason I slept with you, is because I knew you wouldn't want sex. You just needed someone to displace the loneliness."

A lump formed in his throat. He stared at her fingers that were on top of his. The gesture wasn't compelling, it was soothing and he felt the longing rise to bury himself in her arms, to feel a little bit of love after Dana's love had been torn away from him so brutally. 

Scooting a little closer to him, she laid her head against his shoulder. "It's not my intention to replace Dana or to make you forget about her. I just want to be the friend that I wished I had in that dark period of my life." She squeezed his hand. "Maybe our situations are nothing alike, but we both feel that emptiness inside us. That emptiness of which we know that nobody will ever be able to fill it. I will neither be able to fill that void, Juice, but I can help you deal with it."

Juice took a deep breath. Tears were on the edge of his tear duct again. For weeks – no for months he had been looking for ways to get his life together, to recover from that horrible loss. The alcohol and pills had brought him nowhere, nor had his anger. It wouldn't harm to try this, right? His head dropped to the side, until it rested against hers. 

"Okay," he said so soft it was only a whisper. I got nothing else to lose anyway...

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