Tomorrow
963 Words
Avery:
I drove home with the windows down, trying to breathe.
What the hell was I doing?
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles going white.
Driving a stranger — a bleeding stranger — to a shady bar on the ass end of town.
Smart, Avery. Really f*****g brilliant.
I blamed it on the shift.
Fourteen hours of blood and chaos, babies screaming, drunks puking, old men trying to die on my watch.
My brain was fried.
My body was running on fumes.
That had to be it.
I wasn’t thinking straight. Couldn’t have been.
Still, when I pulled into the parking lot of my tiny townhouse and cut the engine, my hands were shaking.
I glanced around the street — quiet, still, a single streetlight buzzing overhead — and slammed the car door harder than necessary.
Shoes crunching on the gravel beneath my feet, I rushed up the steps, keys already out, the weight of exhaustion pressing down on me.
Lock. Deadbolt. Chain.
I clicked everything into place, then leaned my forehead against the door for a second, breathing in the scent of cheap wood and old paint.
Safe.
Normal.
Boring.
I kicked off my sneakers, letting them thud against the wall, and made a beeline for the kitchen.
Wine.
I needed wine.
The half-empty bottle of Pinot on the counter was a blessing and a curse. I didn’t even bother with a glass — just yanked the cork out and took a long pull straight from the bottle.
The burn down my throat was a little too satisfying.
I staggered over to the couch and collapsed in a heap, my scrubs wrinkled and blood-stained, my hair sticking to my forehead.
What the hell was I doing with my life?
I stared at the ceiling, the fan whirring in lazy circles above me.
Years.
I had spent years in college — nose buried in textbooks, living off caffeine and pure spite, fighting for every grade, every internship, every miserable night shift just to make it to the ER.
It was supposed to mean something.
All that work. All that sacrifice.
And now?
Now I was dragging strange, bleeding men to sleazy bars and drinking cheap wine out of the bottle like some kind of trashy Lifetime movie.
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and laughed.
It came out sharp and a little unhinged.
This wasn’t me.
This wasn’t who I was supposed to be.
I didn’t have time for men.
I didn’t have time for anything but survival — stitching people back together, slapping band-aids over bullet holes, pretending like I wasn’t drowning in it all.
The hospital was excitement enough.
The chaos. The adrenaline. The life and death of it.
I didn’t need anything else.
I sure as hell didn’t need him.
Him.
Cruz De La Rosa. His name still burning in her mind from the paperwork she had to fill out.
The name tasted dangerous even in my head.
Tall. Tan. Blood-streaked and reckless, with tattoos curling up his arms like vines, and that smirk —
That stupid, lethal smirk like he already knew he had me pegged.
Why did he make me want to stay?
Why did he make me want to sit down next to him at that grimy bar and drink until the world blurred away?
Get your head out of the gutter, Avery.
I took another swig of wine, hating how badly my hands trembled.
He was trouble.
He was danger in a leather jacket, wrapped in a slow smile and a bullet wound.
And you drove him to a goddamn bar.
God.
I groaned and flopped onto my stomach, burying my face in the throw pillow. It smelled like fabric softener and defeat.
I wasn't that girl.
I wasn’t the girl who fell for bad boys with haunted eyes and bloody shirts.
I wasn’t the girl who made bad decisions at midnight because some tattooed stranger smiled at her.
Except... apparently, I was.
At least tonight.
I kicked my legs against the couch like a tantruming toddler and squeezed my eyes shut.
It was the shift.
The exhaustion.
The sheer goddamn madness of working in an ER where every night was a lottery between gunshots and heart attacks.
That’s all it was.
Tomorrow, I'd wake up, go back to work, and laugh at myself.
I'd pretend tonight never happened.
I'd file Cruz De La Rosa away under "weird hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation" and move the hell on.
Simple.
Easy.
I sighed and flipped onto my back again, staring up at the ceiling like maybe it had answers.
But even as I told myself all that, even as I tried to shove him out of my head, I could still feel his eyes on me.
Dark. Intense.
Patient in a way that made my skin crawl and burn at the same time.
He hadn’t been trying to scare me.
Hadn’t been trying to chase me either.
He just... watched.
Like he already knew how this would end.
Like he was willing to wait.
I wrapped my arms around my stomach, the wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the bottle in my hand.
No.
I wasn’t going to think about him.
I wasn’t going to fantasize about what it would feel like to let him touch me —
About what it would mean to let someone that dangerous get under my skin.
No.
No way in hell.
Tomorrow, it would all be a bad dream.
Tomorrow, I would be back in control.
Tomorrow, Cruz De La Rosa would be nothing but a stupid mistake I never, ever repeated.
I closed my eyes and took another long drink, willing the buzz to pull me under.
Tomorrow will be better.
- Writer
