Juice stared into his glass.
Another day had gone by. Another day wasted.
All day long he had watched security footage; of random shops, of ports, of highways. Everywhere he could hack his way in to. It was a hopeless search, there was no trail to follow. She was gone for three months. Three months in which his world had lost all its colour, whereby only shades of gray had remained. He got a headache from all the hours of staring at a screen, from the grief that he was pushing away because he was afraid he would end up at the floor of his apartment again if he didn't.
He was sitting at the bar all alone. His friends had given up on keeping him company a long time ago. He didn't even want them around. There were no jokes that could hoist the corners of his mouth, there were no memories that could give him the tiniest bit of warmth. There was nothing but anger and despair and a deep, gruesome pain that never subsided. Very occasionally it slumbered for a brief moment; but it always came back, hitting him even harder than before.
His brothers weren't in a much better shape than he was anyway. Clay and Jax found it just as hard that the murderer of their wife and mother was nowhere to be found. They were just as embittered as he was, but contrary to him, they could deal with the pain. They were making progress during their bereavement while he wasn't moving forward at all. Every time he saw a girl with blonde hair, he hoped it was her. Whether he was out on the streets, in the supermarket or in the clubhouse; again and again his world stood still for a brief moment – before it all blasted apart ruthlessly.
"You're still sitting here?"
Juice felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned away his upper body so the touch disappeared and drank from his glass with a grim face. A girl hoisted herself on a bar stool next to him and leaned with her elbow at the bar. He looked briefly at her, but her face didn't look familiar. Although that wasn't saying much: for weeks all faces passed by in a blur. He turned his head away from her and stared forward.
She slipped off the stool. For a moment he thought she was leaving, but she kept standing next to him. Her fingers glided around his hand and she moved it to her breast. Right through her thin dress he could feel her hard nipple.
"A man like you shouldn't be here on his own." She bent over to his ear and whispered: "Take me. Do what you want with me. I promise you I won't disappoint you."
Juice tore away his hand. The thought of sex made him feel sick. He didn't want sex. Not ever again. Not as long as Dana was forced to...
"Go away," he grumbled.
Instead of leaving, her hand glided to his crotch. "I can make you forget about her. You need to relax. You..."
Juice grabbed her arm and tore it to the side. There was a loud snap, where after the girl started to scream. "My arm! You broke my arm!"
He snorted, immune for her tears and sobs. "I could do whatever I wanted with you, right?" He emptied his glass, slammed it on the bar and stood up, a little wobbly. "Stupid whore." He spitted at her feet and rushed past her. Her screeches followed him, but he didn't care. He never wanted to see her face again.
In his dorm room he fell down on his bed. He turned on his side and caressed the side of the bed where she had slept. Closing his eyes, he pretended she was lying there. Her face towards him, a smile around her lips.
"I love you, Juice."
He reached for her cheek, but his fingertips met nothing but emptiness. There was nothing, she wasn't there. Breathing out heavily, he rolled on his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. Hot tears glided down his cheeks and he screamed and screamed. The pillow muffled his voice, making sure nobody would come to calm him down. He kept sobbing and screaming until he was so out of breath he feared to choke.
As soon as that thought really hit him, he rolled himself into a ball and kept sobbing quietly. "I can't go on like this, Dane," he cried. "I can't go on without you anymore."