Free Shattered by Elizabeth Lee Page A

without saying that Hap was clued in. I hated to break it to them, but this wasn’t going to be the happily ever after that they’d hoped for. As much as I wanted to run up, wrap my arms around his neck and tell him how much I’d missed him, I couldn’t fight the dormant anger that I’d let be suppressed by the sadness and guilt.  He left me.  It was bad enough that Garrett was gone, but that wasn’t his choice.  Jesse had left because he wanted to.  I brought my hands up and covered my face, hoping he would walk back out the door before I had to face him.
    “Hey, Lyss.” The tone of his voice was hesitant, surely he knew I was in shock to see him. “How are you?”  It was hard to tell if he meant, “How are you?  It’s been nine months since I last saw you.” or “How are you after getting completely shit-faced last night?”  Just hearing his deep, raspy voice sent a ripple across my skin.  I really thought he was gone.
    I looked up to see him standing beside our table.  He looked the same. He’d let his hair grow out, just a little bit longer, but it was same jet-black color and messy tousled look I remembered. The glow of his suntanned skin led me to believe that he’d been hiding out somewhere sunny as opposed to what I’d assumed, which was that he must have crawled under a rock and died, or fell off the face of the earth.  Why else would he have just completely disappeared from my life? Everything that had happened the night of Garrett’s accident flashed in my mind.  I couldn’t even begin to form a complete sentence.  Instead, I pushed out of the booth and looked directly in the eyes I’d tried to forget. “Don’t,” was all I could come up with before I ran out of the diner.  
    “Alyssa, please.” He followed me out the door. “Can’t we just talk?”  
    “No!” I yelled out, not breaking my stride as I walked across the street.
    His hand stopped mine before I could pull the car door open and escape.  The contact of our skin sent a shock up my arm. “Please.” I turned to see the desperation in his eyes.  He pulled his lip between his teeth and brushed a stray hair from my cheek.  His hand rested on my cheek.  I caught myself turning my face into his strong, warm hand and quickly pulled away.  As much as I wanted to fight it, everything that I’d felt for him was still there.  I still wanted him to touch me.  To kiss me.  The guilt and anger that accompanied the desire was too much.
    “I can’t do this, Jesse.” I pulled my face from his and quickly sunk behind the wheel of my car.  I drove away, leaving him alone on the street.
    I wasn’t ready to talk to him.  To ask him the string of questions that had been running through my head for months.  To explain my erratic behavior the night before.  I wasn’t ready for any of it.  So, I did the only thing I could think of to avoid the entire situation.  I went home, opened the desk drawer and retrieved my new foolproof method of not dealing with it.
     
    I hadn’t planned on sleeping the entire day away, and I definitely didn’t plan on sleeping for the next two.  Yet that’s exactly what I did.  Aside from a few trips to the bathroom and a couple stops at the desk drawer, I completely cut myself off.  The sleep was a welcomed release, broken only by the thirty minutes that it took for each pill to dissolve into my system.  It was in those few brief interludes that I allowed myself to think about Jesse and Garrett.  I thought about all the heartache that was now attached to the two people that used to bring so much joy to my life.  They’d pulled me, a girl whose best friend had found someone else to occupy her time, whose mother was intolerable and whose father would rather sit alone in the cab of a tractor than spend time with this daughter, out of obscurity.  They’d given me the closest thing to family that’d I’d ever had and the only thing I thought I’d ever need.  The existence that