The last few days have been one long emotional rollercoaster showing no signs of slowing down, going around every loop and around every screaming corner until I'm left begging for mercy or throwing up or both. All I wanted to do was rip off the safety bar, jump off, and regain my equilibrium. What I really needed was vacation from myself. Unfortunately, that breaks all the laws of human nature, so I'm stuck with myself for the rest of my life. I was nothing short of emotionally drained. That's the price I have to pay for my wake-up call to the wonderful world of reality, I suppose.

It's been no leisurely ride on the ferris wheel for Greg, either. Being too wrapped up in my own feelings and my own selfishness until his possessive streak took hold and I had the gall to act surprised when it did. Like he was ever going to let me walk out of here without the last word. It wasn't over until the tall guy with the cane said so. A few wayward thoughts weren't enough to get me booted out of the apartment. However, they were enough, along with all the other turmoil of the day, to reduce me to a pathetic weeping wreck on the bed.

I finally stopped, exhausted, and slowly put myself back together piece by piece. No more tears left to cry, no more energy to waste feeling sorry for poor little me. A few pieces were missing or didn't fit right. Tomorrow I'd look for the rest of them. Right now I needed some rest.

An arm tightened around my waist. A beard scraped and scratched my shoulder.

"Hey," Greg said quietly in that 'how-are-you-feeling?' doctor voice while he curled up as close as possible without becoming a second skin.

"What? What do you want, Greg?" I could only hope he didn't decide to suddenly continue the interrogation. That would reduce me to Thorazine and a padded room. "Please, not now, I'm tired..."

"You okay?"

"No," I muttered. "But maybe I will be someday."

"I'm not going to just let you go, Jimmy. Not after all we've been through."

"Thank you. All is right with the world now."

"All I want is James Wilson. That's all I want from you."

"I can do that." A weird feeling crashed over me. Looking back, I would later identify that feeling as joyous relief.

"I could never hate you, Jimmy. Remember? If there's one thing you should remember, it's that."

"How can I forget? You won't let me," I managed to answer before exhaustion took over. I was asleep before the last word hit the air.


"Jimmy, tell me something, " my friend said as he watched me pour two bowls of Cheerios.

"What?" I asked warily. I didn't sleep enough and was cranky and hardly in the mood for the third degree, which I was going to suffer through anyway. He could have at least waited until I finished my first cup of coffee. It's times like this when I wonder where Greg got the habit of saying exactly what's on his mind, his mother's side or father's side, so I could put the blame where it belonged.

"This Thomas person, if that is his real name–"

"What about him?" My voice was edgy. I met his blue-eyed gaze and held it.

"You liked him?"

"Sure I liked him. Why?"

"Would you go back to him if you could?" he continued as if he didn't hear my question. Selective deafness. He'd probably list that as one of his finer traits.

"No," I replied as I lugged the full gallon of milk to the table and drowned the cereal in it. Then I dumped seven heaping spoonfuls of coffee grounds into a soup cup and topped it off with boiling water.

"You said you liked him. Why won't you go back to him?"

"'Like' can mean a lot of things, Greg."

"Like what?" Not teasing. He really wanted to hear my response. "The feeling wasn't mutual, was it?"

"It may have been, at first," I said after several gulps of beautiful caffeine oblivion began to run through my bloodstream and take over my nerve endings. "He was a nice guy. And he loved to read. You should have seen all the books he had. He had seven huge floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed full. He even had a Raymond Chandler first edition. But in the end we just didn't mesh. His taste in everything from music to movies to food to books were completely different from mine. This guy had actually read War and Peace, for crying out loud, twice. He zigged and I zagged. In our case, opposites didn't attract. It was only a matter of time before we called it off."

"But Julie caught you first."

"Yeah. Like I said, he was a nice guy. I wish we could have remained friends"

"When was the last time you saw him?" Greg asked as he scraped the bottom of the bowl for runaway bits of Cheerios, then poured a second bowl.

My appetite wasn't up to par; I just stirred the milk into a tiny whirlpool while the pulpy cereal disintegrated. "The night Julie told me about the detective. She filed for divorce the next day."

"Thomas never called or wrote to you or did anything to contact you after that?"

"Nope."

"So what really happened?" Greg politely inquired.

I needed another few gulps of caffeine heaven before I could answer. "He blamed me. It was all my fault a detective was following us, now he's all embarrassed, now the neighbors are going to complain, blah blah blah. You'd think he was living next door to Fred Phelps the way he was carrying on about his neighbors having a heart attack over him being caught with another man. Anyway, he said he never wanted to see me again, so I left."

"You miss him?"

"Not really. I wish it didn't end the way it did, though. I regret that if nothing else."

"Was he worth it, Jimmy?"

"No. But he had one hell of a book collection. I'm sure he's reading Hemingway right now and actually liking it. He had the entire Hemingway collection."

"You reading anything right now, Jimmy?" Greg asked with mock sincerity. Only asking just to hear the title and find a way to steal the book before I was finished, whether he actually wanted to read the damn thing or not. He knows he can drive me crazy and get away with it.

"I was going to see if I could find my copy of Misery."

"Well then," he beamed as if he'd won a free lifetime supply of Vicodin, "You won't mind if I steal The Alienist again."