Three beers later, I gave up and decided to call him when we left. My phone was almost dead and I couldn’t hear a damn thing anyway. I turned it off to save the battery and stuffed it in my back pocket.

Six

Zeke

I’m not sure what was worse—knowing my snowflake was somewhere she had no business being, or being jealous of not being there with her.

The truth was I missed The Pit. We’d been talking about going back and playing a gig there on our own time, but things were picking up for us and everything was happening so fast.

More than anything, though, I felt fear. I knew what went down in the dark corners of The Pit, and I also knew I didn’t want Patience running around there alone. I hadn’t thought about the fact that the girls would go there when she told me she was going to Charleston to play a game. I wished I’d asked her not to go there alone.

I spent the next three hours walking the floors. I tried to get high and kill some of my nerves, but it didn’t work. I called her phone over and over again until finally I just got her voicemail. I’d known this fear with Patience before. It seemed like I was constantly worried about her. She wasn’t ignorant, but she always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong fucking time. The Pit would always be the wrong place for her.

When my phone finally rang, I couldn’t answer it fast enough.

“Hey, Zekey. It’s Megan. I’m calling for Patience. She’s shitfaced, dude. She said she’ll call you tomorrow.”

I could hear Patience talking in the background and she sounded muffled.

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s puking beside my car. No worries. She’s in good hands. I’m taking her back to the hotel she’s staying at and she’s leaving with her teammates in the morning to go back to Florida. I’ll make sure she calls in you the morning.”

I ran my hands roughly through my hair.

“Y’all had no business going to The Pit. You both know how dangerous that place can be!” I yelled into the phone.

It wasn’t my thing to yell at females, but I was so worried and pissed that I couldn’t help it.

“Dude, she’s fine. She’ll call you in the morning.”

And then the phone went quiet.

It took everything in me not to trash my phone again. I wanted to throw it at the wall, but I couldn’t. It was killing me being this far away and not being able to be there for her. She was drunk and sick and who knew what else, and I was hours away stuck on a fucking bus, helplessly waiting for her to call me back.

That night I couldn’t sleep for shit. Every hour my emotions changed. For an hour, I’d be so pissed that I could kick someone through the face, and the next hour I’d be so worried that I wanted scream. It fucking sucked.

The sun peeked through the curtains, the bus in stop-and-go morning traffic, when my phone finally rang. Looking at the screen, a picture of a smiling Snowflake popped up. Pressing my finger against the screen, I answered.

“Feeling better?” I said rudely into the phone.

I hated being mean to her, but I hated that she kept me up all night worried, too.

“Not really. I feel like I got hit by the bus I’m riding on. I’ll be back in Florida in about three hours.” Her voice was raspy and rough.

She was definitely nursing a serious hangover and as bad as it sounds, I couldn’t help but think how much she deserved it.

“Well, that’s what happens when you drink too much. You get sick and you feel like shit the next day. I hope it was worth it.” I sat up and threw my feet over the side of my bunk.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

I shook my head in aggravation and took a deep breath. Long-distance relationships sucked so much ass.

“What’s wrong with me? Are you seriously asking me that? You went to The Pit… alone. Every time you go to there something happens to you. I spent the entire fucking night worried about you.”

“Shut the fuck up, man!” Tiny called from the bunk beside mine.

“Kiss my ass and go back to sleep,” I yelled back.

I put the phone closer to my ear.

“I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

I knew when the words came out that I sounded like a little bitch. Shit, I felt like one, but I was so angry with her. It was just like old times.

“I’m fine, Zeke. So stop it,” she said softly into the phone.

It was obvious she was surrounded by other people and didn’t want to have this conversation in front of them, but I never gave a shit about what other people thought. Then again, I’d never really given much of a shit about anything. Thinking about it now, caring about someone kind of sucked some ass, too.