Snake Eyes

I.

It might have been the cold that brought me in.

Diners were never really my thing and neither was sitting alone in a booth staring out of the window like some manic pixie dream girl straight out of an indie film, but I was way too exhausted to even care at this point.

What is my thing is coffee and after asking for my third cup, the waitress settled on placing an entire pot in front of me with a subtle wink. The steam rising up from the mug was almost comforting; even more so when I wrapped my hands around it to warm them up.

Yeah it was just the cold.

There was a lot of laughing towards the back, a lot of shouting from the kitchen, and if I focused real hard I could barely make out the lyrics to Elvis's "Burning Love." This particular diner had that feel to it. That 1950's vintage type aesthetic if the vinyl seats and old school juke box was any indication. It was comforting. Warm. Just like the coffee.

One in the morning wasn't prime time for caffeine which is probably why the waitress looked at me funny when I asked for a cup. And the next cup. And the next.

I was fucking exhausted. The kind of exhausted where my bones ached and my stomach hurt and everyone around me was moving in slow motion. I felt high. It was almost disappointing that I wasn't. At least I would know that it would go away at some point. At least I would know it wasn't going to be an ongoing thing.

But if I was high, I wouldn't be thinking so fucking much. Thoughts of that damn phone call two days ago had me spiraling.

Down down down.

My mind was in a black hole and there was no getting out of it. There was no escaping it; like I was a prisoner to my own brain.

I'm pretty sure the last time I slept was before the phone call.

Fuck, that wasn't healthy. Then again, nothing I did was really healthy.

Like my initial desire to get wasted right after I heard the news. Walking in a daze from a long shift, my thumb had been hovering over Jay's name, the words already on my lips; "Meet me at Lone Wolf."

It was the lit-up sign of the diner that had caught my attention when I had looked up from my phone and before I knew it, I was pushing the door open and asking for a cup of coffee at nine o'clock at night. The place was nearly deserted and the coffee wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. I guess that's why I went back last night, why I came back today.

I either wanted to be drunk in a dive bar with loud music or just alone. Preferably with coffee. It wasn't like I was going to be sleeping anyway.

I was too fucking anxious for that.

"He's out."

Just those two words by a voice I hadn't heard in almost three years. They were enough to send me spiraling back to...to what?

What I was like before?

Was I really any different?

It was like I somehow convinced myself that I hadn't still been struggling to get out of bed every day. You can't spiral down to rock bottom when you were already fucking there.

The last few months, I had the bookshop to keep me occupied. It gave me a reason to actually leave the apartment. Hyper focus. I needed tasks, projects, books. For a while since getting the job, I wasn't thinking so damn much.

Maybe I had been doing better. And that thought pissed me off more than anything because now it didn't even matter.

I called in sick today.