I wasn't good enough for her. I wasn't good enough for anybody. Everything I ever attempted was wrong, everything I attempted was a failure. I would never do anything right, no matter how hard I tried. I was going to fail every time, yet I tried so hard to push that thought away even when I'd known that it was true, so entirely true. The one exception was always Maggie. Even as I continually crushed myself, she would wait, and wait.
The days I didn't have the energy to stand, she was there. The days I hated myself, she was there. The days I wanted to bury a bullet in my skull, she was there. She was my only constant, my only assurance of familiarity. Yet, it was that exact familiarity that I wanted to push away for fear of hurting her - or was I pushing her away so I could hurt myself? Would I have been alive if it hadn't been for Maggie? Should I have thanked her for that?
"Let's go see someone, then. Feeling like that isn't normal." Maggie stated, as though she'd known it all.
A doctor? I wasn't crazy, I just wasn't myself. I was unsure of my feelings, and I wasn't able to puzzle things together. I wasn't sick or anything. I just needed confirmation in my life, confirmation that I could do something right. Confirmation that I was able to feel like other people had, that I was able to do something right for myself and for Maggie.
I was a failure simply because I was a failure, it was a lose-lose situation. I was born as that, and had always lived as that. There were those special few that'd been able to see through it, and those were the ones who were still there. Even when I lied and said I was fine, they hadn't taken my word for it. Never. It was as though they held built-in bullshit detectors, seeing through every fraudulent word.
It just felt like every time we'd gotten closer, something would force us take a step back. That step back was always me, and I knew it. I wasn't the type of guy who could give her the world, nor could I make her the happiest woman on the planet. There were very few things I could do for her, and many more that I couldn't. Even then, all she ever did was accept what I was, like she always had.
As usual, the only thing I served to do was smack her faith and love in the face, stomping on her heart time after time. Again and again, like a broken record, I tried to break something that worked. I tried to break myself, and I tried to break her, but none of it ever passed. She hadn't given up on me, and hadn't looked like she planned to. Why did she refuse to give up, when there must've been something, someone better out there?
"Sorry." I took a breath, turning towards her. "I'm sorry, Maggie."
"What do you mean?" Maggie brushed my hair out of the way with tips of her fingernails.
"I'm the worst. All I do is make you feel things a person like you should never feel." I answered, my clenched teeth tightening every word. "I love you, too. But I can't get too close to you, I can't lose something that important to me again. I just fucking can't."
Maggie ran her index finger underneath her nose, sniffling ever so slightly as her nose began to run. The next thing I had known, her hands had encased my jawline and were pulling me in. Following her movements, I leaned in with her hands until my mouth had met her own. Softness and the taste of cherry had overtaken my mouth as we had slowly fought a war in our mouths, a waltz of the tongues.
Backing into the fridge, she held her own as my hand began to glide up her chest. It had taken moments before her breathing had become slightly rugged as my hands began finding new places to travel. Maggie, however, had stopped me just as my hand wanted to slide into the front of her skirt. The look on her face had kind of said everything, not that I was looking.
"No sex tonight." she hesitantly spoke. "Can't we just be together? Like together."
**
Opening my eyes to an afternoon orange, I was met with the worst non-hangover headache I'd likely ever had. Thud, thud, and thud. It pounded harder than Bubba and Little Johnny in their cell. Completely drained, from the inside and out, I sat up and let my eyes navigate the room in search to see if there was any Ibuprofen in this house. Not that sitting around and looking was going to help any.
"Here." Maggie sat up in her bra as she handed me a bottle of Advil. "You have your headache face on."
"Why do you have them?" I opened the bottle.
"I get really bad headaches when I'm on my period, so I keep them close." Maggie answered a little too openly as she stuck out her tongue. "Glad I could help."
Getting out of the bed, I slipped on the closest pair of jeans I could find and then searched through the walk-in closet to find a button-down shirt. As bad my condition was, I still had a job to do. That job was meeting with a new distributor. This had been a new distributor group, and Crest had wanted me to deal with them personally.
Hopefully I would've been able to finish at least somewhat quickly and the come back home to pass out. If everything would have gone to plan, which was unlikely, it wouldn't have been more than two or three hours including the drive to and from. It was the worst day possible to do this, but it was a job I was brought in to do. How would I look if I just ditched this and did whatever the hell I wanted? That wasn't good business.
As I had begun to head out of the door, I stopped and turned while fixing the cuff on my shirt. "Caleb is staying here, just in case."
**
Driving through what appeared to be a dock, I was surprised to find it quiet despite all of the cars as the SUV had pulled into one of the buildings that had resembled the warehouse I was in before, except this one was brown on the outside instead of that eyesore of a yellow. Yawning, I popped the door open as the driver shifted into park and jumped out to find several men waiting, six of which held guns of their own.
Stretching, I approached the man without the gun. He was possibly Middle Eastern, though I wasn't the least bit sure and was too exhausted to care. While standing silently, the man studied me as two bags of money were set down in between us. Two of his men had come forward and searched through the bags for one of two things, money or a wire - though, I suppose the latter could have been traded for a bomb or something equally as useless.
"A kid?" he smirked. "Is that how seriously Below Zero takes us? Crest is asking to get screwed."
"Might wanna be careful about who you're talking to." I picked up the empty pistol that sat on the table and pointed it at him. "Bam. Bam. Bam. Dead."
"Who do you think you are?" he asked. "I have been good friends with Crest for some time, and I'm surprised he sent someone like you as a representative. Such arrogance from a litt-"
His derogatory speech was ended with a laugh from Chrissy as she sat on the top of the SUV, keeping an eye on the laptop screen as she surveyed the surrounding era for police or any possible interruptions. Her reason for laughing hadn't been quite that apparent, until she looked up and turned her head to the client we had been working with. Honestly, if I was worried about anyone there, it would have been her. She was a bit of a loose cannon, and someone I probably should've left with Maggie instead.
Everyone was quiet, and professional - just like they were being paid to be. Chrissy, paid or not, was someone that had a death wish and typically used every possible avenue to try and get her head blown off. It was amazing how lucky she consistently was. Had it been her own craziness that prevented people from shooting her on the spot, or was that her charm? I hadn't quite understood her, and I don't think I was the type who ever could figure her out.
"Such arrogance towards someone who works directly under Crest." Chrissy smirked. "If Cyrus wanted to, he could destroy you with once sentence. You'd be ruined."
"Let's not turn this into some mess. I'm fried, so hurry it up and we'll forget all about this." I lit a cigarette. "Sounds fair to me."
Further exchanges were minimal and the meeting had went by relatively smoothly. Before the expected time, everything was marked off and shipped off to the respective areas. With that, we had been back on the road and were headed back to my house - of course, after stopping for something to eat and some coffee. At some point, I'd given up on just deciding to pass out. It was already somewhat late in the afternoon, and if I fell asleep, I would've been up all night. Though, I wouldn't have cared much either way.
Trying to sleep at night was awful for me. Everything decided to come on strong at once, from my stress to the memories of my past. It left me with taking sleeping pills night after night, unless I had gotten so fucked up that I didn't need them - which was been rare with Maggie around. She hadn't ever let me blow myself up with drugs and alcohol. It was annoying, sure, but she had done it for obvious reason. Even after she'd gotten sober and off of drugs, she was still always around after I'd gotten messed up.
Exhaling the smoke out of the window, I took a look into the front of the car and caught the driver looking at me in the rear-view mirror. "Got something nice to say?"
"You're lookin' pretty pale. That's it." he responded. "Want to swing by a doctor?"
Did I look pale? Should I have seen a doctor? Did it even matter if I went to see a doctor? No human alive could read inside my mind, not to even speak of just a regular doctor. If I was lucky, maybe I was terminally ill and I could finally die without doing it myself - or more realistically, I was just overly tired and my body wanted to rest. With my luck, it was more than likely the latter.
"I'm fine."
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