3 Breaths (2 page)

Taking a swig of the beer the bartender hands me, I can’t help but get lost in her beauty.

She takes a quick drink of her beer as I take her hand and lead her to the dance floor to dance with our friends and party the night away.

Ten beers, seven shots, and something else I can’t remember later, it’s time to leave. Everyone else is gone and Zoë is almost asleep in my arms.

“Let’s go, you party animal.”

She looks up at me with her hair in her face and all I can see are her teeth. I can’t help but laugh – oh, she’s going to be hurting tomorrow. Wrapping my arm around her, we stumble out into the cool spring night. The subway station is just a block away and after a fifteen-minute ride, we’ll be home.

“You good?” I ask Zoë as we make the short walk.

“Uh huh,” she responds, keeping up with me. The city is still buzzing; I swear New York never sleeps, and that’s why I love it here. Entering the stairs for the subway, we begin to walk down and Zoë wobbles.

“Hold on to me, okay?” I prop her up as we make our way to the bottom.

“Mm hmm,” she hums as her chin slumps toward her chest.

Waiting on the platform, there isn’t anyone down here, except for a bum sleeping on a bench. The train pulls up and we enter the empty car.

Zoë flops down in a seat, her head still hanging low and I wonder if she’s sleeping already. Sitting next to her, I wrap an arm around her and she nuzzles to me.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah. Baby?” she asks.

“Uh huh.”

“Can we go to Long Beach tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I respond, knowing she’s not going to want to do anything but sleep all day, but being a smart man, I play along.

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

The subway zooms down the tracks rocking us back and forth a little, and I rest my head against hers. Zoning out on the orange and yellow seats across from us. Then, the alcohol sets in and my eyes close. My mind drifting back to fucking her in the bathroom.

Suddenly, my daydream is cut short. Zoë shakes violently in my hold.

“Baby,” I yell holding on to her.

She doesn’t respond, her eyes are rolled back in her head, and I know I have to do something. She has had seizures before, but not for a long time and never with me. I know I need to protect her until I can get help at the next stop.

Laying her on the floor of the subway, I cradle her head, her arms and legs flailing. My insides break, burning in pain watching her hurting like this. “Baby, please,” I plead, crying, holding on to her, but she won’t stop and I don’t know what else to do. White foam pools out the sides of her mouth, followed by blood, and I fear she’s bit her tongue.

“Zoë!” I scream, freaking out, watching her like this, so…helpless.

Finally her body starts to slow and my heart skips a beat. “Zoë, oh, baby,” I weep, wiping my eyes so I can see her clearly and move around her. As I hover above her, she is still twitching a tiny bit and I wait for her to come to, cradling her head in my hands.

“Wake up,” I whisper, resting my forehead against hers just wanting her body to calm. The announcement for the next stop goes off, so it’s not long until I can get her off of here. My chest heaves watching her ragged breaths. She’s struggling. “Baby, please hang in there,” I whisper, looking at her as the train starts to slow.

Then her body settles and everything about her calms.

Thank God!

She’s going to be okay! She has to be. I count her breaths, waiting for her to come back to me. One…two…three…and then…nothing. I panic looking into her eyes – they are slightly open and glazed over. She is staring off, not looking at me. “No, Zoë!” I scream, shaking her by the shoulders. “You can’t leave me!”

The train stops at the next station, and I scream for help when the doors open, even though I know it’s too late. Looking down at her body, I knot my fingers into my hair, horrified. Her chest is still.

Tears cloud my vision as I lift her in my arms. Holding her lifeless body close to mine, I sit – crying – reeling in the agony of facing my greatest nightmare.

Everything around me spins.

Jesus, this cannot be real.

I sob into her neck, smelling her, my Zoë, my world, my everything…for one last time.

Closing my eyes, I sit on the sand of Long Beach after another hellish run and breathe in the fresh sea air. My chest feels heavy, and I wish the pain from the run would erase my mind, but it doesn’t.

I live in a constant hell.

The painstaking reality of my life is plagued with the images of Zoë dying in front of me. In my arms. I do my best to push those fucked up thoughts away and concentrate on what we had. That is if I can keep focused for long enough. Sometimes I can, and when that happens I can still smell her and picture her face – eyes – body – laugh, everything about her is at my fingertips, so close, but not close enough to reach. Even with the illusions that I hold on to, it’s not enough. She’s not here with me any longer.

I don’t want to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never see her again or touch her soft skin, but I have to, because she
is
truly gone. As fucked up as I am…I know what’s real and what isn’t. I will never feel her touch or her lips or look into her eyes. So for now, this is all that I have left, and it brings me as close to her as possible.

She might have unexpectedly left this world five months ago, but it still feels like yesterday in my head. The wound is fresh and burns me every minute of every day. The pain of losing her is like nothing that I’ve ever experienced. Every breath is brutal, my life really has zero purpose now, and it’s hard to find a point to opening my eyes when I wake up each day. Everyone says with time things will get better, but I don’t fucking buy that shit…it won’t.

Listening to the sound of the waves as they crash against the shore, I wonder why God didn’t take me, why her? There was no reason for it to be her time. The fucking doctors tell me that she died of SUDEP, Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, which in my mind is complete bullshit and confusing…maybe they think if they put a fucking acronym on it then it counts as an explanation. But it just means they don’t know shit.

My phone rings and it pains me to open my eyes – I attribute that to exhaustion and the tequila that’s still running through my veins from last night. Looking down at it through my dark shades, it’s my mom, my overbearing and controlling mother. I know better than to blow her off; she’ll just come find me if I do.

“Hey, Mom.”

“How’s the beach?” she asks, knowing that every morning I come here. I have since I lost Zoë, not able to bring myself to stop. I made her a promise before she died to bring her here and for that reason, this is where I feel the most connected to her.

“It’s nice, Mom.” There’s an underlying aggravation to my tone. I really don’t want to deal with her right now.

“Good, well, I just wanted to remind you of your sister’s wedding and that you need to—”

“I know, Mom.”

“Well, if you knew, you’d have gotten measured for your tux. Your dad’s going now. If you wanna meet him, he can pay for it.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I love you, Krane.”

“You too.” I hang up and lie back on the sand, closing my eyes.

Even though Zoë is gone, the connection that I feel to her here is so strong. I don’t want to leave, I never do, but knowing my dad, he’ll be pissed if I’m late. I get up and grab my towel, looking out at the vast horizon and the never-ending ocean.

Until tomorrow, beautiful.

Getting into my truck, I make the trip from Long Beach back to Oceanside, the town Zoë and I are from. I moved back here after I lost her. I couldn’t bear to go back to our apartment in the city with all of her things in it…it was just too much. So I rented a small apartment and left everything as it was. Call me a coward, or whatever you want, but losing her has fucked me up in all sorts of ways.

Pulling onto the causeway to cross back over to the main land, a red sports car cuts me off. I slam on my horn and yell, “What the fuck, asshole?”

The short, bald driver throws a middle finger in the air and speeds off.

Fucking prick!

My blood boils; I want to follow him, to wring his fucking neck to take out some of the pent up aggression. I catch his dumb as fuck plate that reads FA5T. I put the pedal down as a text comes through my phone from Ivy, Zoë’s sister. She’s struggling just as badly as I am. Right away, I let up on the gas and read her words.

Do you have Zoë’s iPod?

My world spins thinking of Zoë and her love for music. Glancing down at the old school, huge iPod that is plugged into my stereo, of course I have it.

Getting over the causeway, I come to a light and text her,
Yeah, I do. Why?

I continue on my way to meet my dad, waiting for Ivy, but she doesn’t respond. Pulling up to the tailor’s, I wish I had a bottle with me, so I could take a quick slam. I see my dad through the window dressed like he’s already going to a fucking wedding. I spray myself with some Axe body spray and hope it masks the scent of last night’s bender and my sweat from the beach.

Getting out, I run my hands over my hair in an attempt to tame it, but it’s useless. My reflection in the glass door shows just how shitty I look. My clothes look like hell from picking them off of the floor after stumbling out of bed.

Proceeding inside, my dad turns to look at me, the disappointment is written all over his face. He and my mom don’t understand why I am this way, but I really don’t give a shit; they don’t need to. They aren’t me and don’t have to live with the memories I do.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, leaning in and hugging him.

“Son,” he responds and pats my back. We pull away and I lift my sunglasses, the light from the inside of the store hurts my retinas, like a knife cutting through them. “Jesus Christ, Krane, you look horrible,” he scolds me.

“Thanks, Dad.” I know I look like crap, but it’s like it’d kill the man to give me a fuckin’ break every once in a while.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Do you really have to ask?” I shake my head, feeling like I am about to lose control. “I’m fucking dying inside, Dad.”

He walks outside and I put my sunglasses back on following him. He treats me like I’m a fucking kid when I’m almost thirty. I don’t need to take shit like this from him. “Krane—”

I cut him off, “If you’re gonna ream me, fucking save it.” I look off, waiting for his response.

“I’m concerned for you – you’re my only son and you’re not yourself right now. How long is this going to go on for? You’re angry, you’re drinking too much, and doing God only knows what else. What’s it gonna take to snap you out of this?”

My mind recalibrates – he really has
no
idea the impact of what losing Zoë has done to me. “If you lost Mom, how would you be after a few months?”

“A few months, Krane, it’s been almost six.”

“I asked you a question,” I bark back, since he’s evading answering. He ponders my question, blinking a few times. I can see the look in his eye, and it’s pissing me off. I need to leave before this escalates. I’m a loose fucking cannon, and if this goes further with him it won’t help a thing.

“That’s totally different.”

“The fuck it is,” I yell at him and walk off.

“Krane, wait!” he shouts, but I don’t look back.

If he can’t understand, then fuck him. I was with Zoë for years. She was my world, the only one who understood me. She stole my heart and tamed me when I was out of control. A lot like my mom did for my dad, so I thought he would understand, if anyone. But that’s not the fucking case.

“Can you be here in an hour?” Ling asks me.

I look around my empty apartment, like I have anything else to do. He knows I can be there whenever, so really the question is a moot point. Especially because fighting for him underground is my only source of income since I left the city and the life that Zoë and I had, where I was training every day with Logan. I used to have a plan to one day fight for a title, but that was before I lost it all.

“Yeah, the usual warehouse?”

“Yup.”

“See you soon.”