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“Jeremy, there’s a problem.”
Jeremy glanced up from his computer at the young woman peering at him from the doorway and rubbed his head. Today, he’d heard that phrase—or some variation of it—more times than he could count. Certainly, more than he had the patience for.
“What kind of problem, Mia?” he asked, trying to stifle a sigh.
Mia’s forehead wrinkled as she stepped closer to his desk. “I don’t know exactly. The computer shows we have a ton of Adidas golf shoes, but I can’t find any in the stockroom.”
He forced himself to take a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault everything that could possibly go wrong today had gone wrong, and Jeremy was about to lose it. She was relatively new to Johnson’s sporting goods. Most of the time, she was an extremely competent employee, but apparently, she was having an off day. Then again, everyone seemed out of sorts. “Which Adidas golf shoes, Mia? We carry dozens of styles in the Adidas brand, and I need you to be more specific.”
“It was the power sport.”
“Please, get me the SKU, and I’ll go with you to the storeroom to find it.”
She flashed him a brief, sheepish smile. “Sorry. Should have thought of that. Thanks, boss,” she called out as she hurried out the door.
As Mia disappeared out the door, Jeremy stood up from his desk with a groan, his thigh twinging in pain. As assistant store manager, it was his job to deal with situations like this, but today had frayed every single last nerve he had. Stress made the pain in his leg worse, and he could already feel the nagging discomfort signaling a headache coming on.
He dug in his pocket for the small container of pills he carried with him at all times and shook it thoughtfully as he considered what to take: painkillers, muscle relaxers, or migraine pills. He frowned when he realized he’d gone through more migraine meds in the past month than he typically did. He’d had more headaches than usual. Not enough to send him running for his doctor’s phone number, but it was something he needed to keep an eye on.
After a moment of deliberation, he chose the muscle relaxer and migraine pills and swallowed them dry. He didn’t feel like walking down the hall to the breakroom for water, and after fifteen years of chronic pain, he was a pro at taking pills. He made a face. Not something he was proud of at all, and definitely not the kind of skill he could put on a resume. He resented that he’d been forced to become good at it, and that he’d spend every day of the rest of his life monitoring his pain levels. He was thirty-six years old, not eighty-six. He should be fucking beautiful men and living his life to the fullest. He’d never planned to go into retail. Hell, he had nearly two-thirds of a business degree. He’d planned to get his MBA, get hired by a big corporation, and work his way to upper management. Once upon a time, he’d hungered for a challenging career.
He shouldn’t be struggling to keep the pain at bay after a stressful day as a middle–management peon in a sporting goods store.
Jeremy resented the fact the accident had taken his future away. This wasn’t the life he’d dreamed about, and he felt the bitterness rise in his throat, sharp and choking, as he thought about the accident that had shattered so much more than his left femur and temple. It had shattered his dreams, too, and not a day went by when Jeremy didn’t wish he had a reset button for his life. He wanted to go back in time so bad he could taste it. If he could, he’d jump back to his early twenties when he was living with his former boyfriend, Stephen, too proud to accept money for new brakes.
If he’d known then what he did now, he’d have taken the money as fast as he could and dropped to his knees to blow Stephen in thanks. His pride had cost him a perfect body and the path to a perfect life. He’d never have either again.
Frankly, it was a miracle he’d survived the accident at all, and for several long years—as he struggled to piece together his fragmented memories and relearn to use his badly damaged left leg—he’d wished he hadn’t. Every night when he collapsed in bed, in pain from the physical therapy, frustrated by his lack of progress in occupational therapy, and mentally exhausted from the psychological therapy, he’d thought about giving up. He’d been close to it more times than he could count. He’d shaken enormous handfuls of pain pills into his hand and stared down at them, sometimes for hours, but, eventually, he’d returned all but the prescribed dose to the bottle and continued to struggle forward.
He wasn’t sure why he could never go through with killing himself. He had nothing and no one to live for, and yet, somehow, he’d kept going. He clawed his way back into the real world. It had been a decade and a half, and he was still picking up the pieces from the accident. Now he existed in a weird limbo, alive and functioning, but too damaged to enjoy a full life.
He was damn proud of what he’d accomplished but being truly happy seemed too far out of reach no matter how hard he worked.
“Jeremy?” Mia said, peering up at him with dark eyes, a worried frown wrinkling her soft brown skin. “I got the SKU for you.”
He cleared his throat and stuffed the container of pills in his pocket. Everyone in the store knew about his physical limitations and that he regularly had to take pain pills, so at least she wouldn’t think he was up to something illicit. It galled him though, knowing everyone knew how crippled and damaged he was. They all treaded lightly around him, of course, not wanting to say anything to upset the boss, but it didn’t matter. He saw pity in their stares, their too-kind smiles, heard the offers to help with things he was perfectly capable of managing. They knew as well as he did that he wasn’t whole any more, and he never would be.
“Okay, let’s go find this golf shoe and figure out what the hell is wrong with the inventory,” Jeremy said, falling into step beside Mia. He envied the graceful way she walked. His stride was longer but it had a hitch in it, a remnant of the damage done to his leg and something even extensive rehab hadn’t totally been able to do away with.
Half a man, Jeremy thought to himself.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
***
Hours later, Jeremy dropped his phone on his kitchen counter with a clatter, not bothering to plug it in. Except for the occasional employee calling in sick, no one ever called to talk to him, and work was the last thing he wanted to think about right then.
The day had gone from bad to worse when he realized the problems with inventory went far beyond what Mia had found. There were discrepancies all over the place, and he’d had to sit down with Dwight, the shoe department manager, and tell him this was his third warning. If the guy didn’t shape up soon, he was going to lose his job. Firing people was one of the things Jeremy hated most about his job, and he could almost guarantee he’d have to fire Dwight in the near future. As a result, Jeremy had stayed well after the normal closing time, trying to reconcile the inventory listed in the computer against what was actually in the stock room. He couldn’t figure out what the hell Dwight had done to screw it up in the first place, but it had taken hours to straighten out, and he wasn’t looking forward to the discussion he’d need to have with the store manager about it the following day.
Jeremy scrubbed a hand over his face, irritated and exhausted. He wandered into the kitchen and pulled open the door of the freezer, staring with disinterest at the food inside. His stomach rumbled noisily, but nothing appealed to him. He had to eat something, though, and he grabbed blindly for the meal at the top of the stack. He tore open the packaging, stabbed the plastic film with more violence than was necessary, and tossed the food in the microwave.
He leaned against the counter as he waited for it to heat. Despite the long day at work—or maybe because of it—he wanted an outlet for his frustration. These days, the only forms of release he had were workouts at the apartment complex’s fitness center and laps in the pool. That morning, he’d lifted weights and did the physical therapy exercises he was destined to do every day for the rest of his life. He wanted to work out again, but he had to be careful not to overdo it, and he knew better than to double up on his workouts. Swimming would have been okay, but the pool was closed for the night already.
He slammed his palm against the counter, irritated.
The remainder of the evening loomed before him, dull and predictable: microwave dinner and TV on the couch before going to bed alone. It had been his life for the past eight years—since he got out of the inpatient and residential rehab facilities following his accident—and day by day, it was wearing him down.
Except for the throbbing headache—which the pills had barely touched—and the twinge of discomfort in his thigh, he couldn’t feel a damn thing. It scared him, wondering if he was slowly slipping back into the depression that had consumed him in rehab. What exactly was he living for these days? Sure, he was alive, but he didn’t have much to show for it.
He glanced around the apartment as the microwave beeped next to him and felt a sudden wave of resentment for the life he lived now.
The problem was he had no one to blame but himself.