After a while, I completely forgot that I had told her I was on my way home.

Until I got there and found her waiting up for me. I was f**ked-up and tired. I just wanted to sleep.

She was angry with me, I could tell. But the state I was in, I didn’t care. She tried to talk to me, but I walked by her and went straight to my bedroom, where I promptly passed out.

I woke up ten hours later, my body aching and sore and already in the throes of some heavy withdrawal, and Aubrey wasn’t beside me. She was gone again, though this time she had left a note. I picked up a piece of paper from the pillow beside me and squinted in the late-afternoon light that filtered through my window. I scanned the contents, trying to make sense of it.

Aubrey had gone back to her place. She wasn’t coming back tonight. She’d see me during the week.

Shit. I had really messed up.

I knew she was upset with me. And in the harsh light of sobriety, my body trembling, my stomach ready to heave, I just couldn’t handle it. I needed her. I needed my girl, who made it all better.

Without a thought about what I was doing, I picked up the phone and called her. She answered right before it went to voice mail, as though she had been debating whether or not to pick up.

“Please come back,” I cried, my voice breaking on a sob. I didn’t allow her to say anything. I just cried into the phone, pleading with her to come back to me. I needed her so f**king badly. I ached. I hurt. I wanted more pills. But for the first time I was pretty sure that I wanted her more.

“I can’t, Maxx,” she said regretfully.

I wouldn’t accept that. “Aubrey, please! I want to hold you. I just need to be with you right now. I’ll come there if I have to,” I said desperately. I would do whatever she wanted so long as I could touch her. Just touch her. I craved it.

Aubrey sighed, and I knew I had her. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she finally said, giving me exactly what I needed.

She arrived at my apartment fifteen minutes later, looking like the answer to all of my prayers, if I was a praying sort of guy. I pulled her to the couch and buried myself in her. And she gave herself to me just as she always did.

I was in too much emotional chaos to feel that there was a distance that hadn’t been there before, that she was pulling away from me.

I was too thankful to have her naked body beneath me, her mouth on mine. I ignored everything else.

It wasn’t until after we were finished, and she was making her excuses to leave, that I realized what was missing.

Her.

I had had her body for a time, but I didn’t have her heart. And that made me wild.

Later that evening, after I had taken a few pills to even myself out and was feeling more in control, I decided to confront her. Aubrey had just walked into my apartment, and I watched as she dropped her purse on the table and came over to the couch where I was sitting.

She gave me a smile that seemed disingenuous. She didn’t reach out to touch me like she normally did. She didn’t lean in to kiss me. She sat beside me, a careful distance between us. Her altered behavior distressed me.

“What’s going on with you, Aubrey? I feel like you’re purposefully holding back from me,” I said, trying not to sound as pathetic as I was feeling. I watched as a myriad of emotions flickered across her face. I grabbed her hand and lifted it to my lips, unable to hold myself back from touching her a moment longer.

She yanked her hand back, and I watched as anger settled over her features. She gave me her coldest stare. “Why should I give you everything when you give me nothing? When you’re willing to stop the crap you do, then maybe I can trust you with all of me.”

My mouth hung open in shock. Aubrey never talked to me like this. She never got angry and pissed. “What?” I asked as she got to her feet. It was then that I saw the tears in her eyes, and I was at a loss.

She leaned down and kissed my lips. “I care about you so much, Maxx,” she said, making my heart clench violently in my chest.

She never said I love you. I had given her my heart, so why couldn’t she give me hers? Why couldn’t she tell me what I needed to hear? That she loved me? I felt alone in this torment of feeling. Her silence, her refusal to say those three little words, made me insecure. It made me doubt her.

It made me doubt us.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged. “I love you!” I was fighting dirty. I knew I was using those words as my weapon. But I didn’t care. I’d use anything I could to make her stay. I needed her, now more than ever.

I started to cry. Ugly tears slid down my cheeks, and I watched as Aubrey’s face softened. Maybe the tears would do it. Maybe they would make her stay. She wiped the wetness from my face, then turned her back on me. I sobbed more loudly as she picked up her purse from the table and opened the door.

She didn’t turn to look at me. She refused to look at the tears, which were entirely her fault. “Get yourself together. Please.” And then she left.

She abandoned me to my misery.

I couldn’t sleep. I had taken a few pills earlier and knew it was only a matter of time until they wore off.

I had tried calling Aubrey a dozen times since she had left me earlier in the evening, and she never picked up.

I was becoming desperate.

I was losing it.

I was losing her.

I was in a bad place. I couldn’t see my way through.

Not able to toss and turn any longer, I threw on some clothes, laced up my boots, and grabbed my art supplies, throwing them in a large canvas sack.