Morning came slower than it ever had as Veronica stayed up for half of it.
After Fabian had made such an abrupt confession, she'd remained completely silent wondering what else to say. She didn't feel like she 'loved' him, so she assumed the most convenient answer would be not to reply since it was better to end the conversation altogether.
She'd kept falling asleep and waking up at intervals and now her eyes were heavy and staring at the ceiling. Her neck twisted to check her alarm clock right beside the bed which was a few minutes past five and she often got up by six.
How was she going to leave this room to face him ever again?
It was over twenty minutes before she heard the front door open and close.
Veronica slowly sat up wondering if it was a burglar or Fabian leaving. It was supposedly the second option unless Davie would be throwing a barking.
She slowly shuffled to the edge of the bed, trying not to stress her cracked ribs. On reaching the door, she placed her ear on the thick wood to listen for any sound of movements. 'This is stupid. Why am I acting like a child?'. She sighed before unlocking the door to go out.
Davie wagged his tail from beside the door probably complaining about her locking him out of her room. "Ohh, I'm really sorry boy", she dropped a knee and he reluctantly walked to her before she hugged him. "He left, huh?".
Davie barked, pulling back from her embrace before rushing to the coffee table. "Woof!".
Veronica noticed a short note on the table which made her wonder if that was the current trend in men. "My bad", she picked up the paper which wasn't as short as she'd expected.
To summarize everything, he was apologizing for going too fast and making her feel pressured. He said he was serious about her and was ready to take it slow if she gave him a chance. Lastly, he was going to tell everyone she was having a sick day after an accident.
"Fuck no!", she slapped her forehead. She knew they'd start asking him how he'd known and why she couldn't call in herself. Fabian who wouldn't take it as a big deal would probably say he'd spent the night at her place. "But if I go to work now, it'll look like he tried to lie for me".
She noticed there was more writing at the back reminding her to take her medications judiciously.
Veronica glanced to the side to find the bag of medicine. She first went to take a shower before eating cereal. It wasn't like she couldn't cook, but Fabian was right about there being close to zero ingredients.
After taking the important medications and not the ones for her anxiety, she returned to her bedroom wondering 'what next'. It was still around 8:00 AM and she wasn't even tired after barely sleeping the night before.
There wasn't much to do at home without a phone and there weren't any fun games on her laptop. She once had a TV but sold it to get a laptop.
She moved to her wardrobe to get out the underutilized laptop which had a little dust on it.
After dusting it with her sleeve which was a bad habit, Veronica plopped onto her bed to unlock it. "Ugh...my ribs", she groaned.
There were hundreds of accumulated mail...
She had two emails, one for work which was on her phone, and a personalized one. After scrolling for a while, she realized most were for her bank transactions. There were a lot of spam emails, then something else...
Some unknown sender kept asking to see her and talk about something. The person claimed to be watching her...
"Nice way to raise my anxiety". She rolled her eyes before moving to check the latest news. To be honest, she only kept tabs on work-related news and any other important news would be gossiped about at work.
"Hmm". A word seemed to be trending on Twitter which was where she got most of the juicy gossip back in the day. "Splat". She tapped the hashtag and the first picture that appeared made her freeze.
Although she'd only been there at night, it was a picture of brain matter sticking to the wall. For a second, she'd forgotten just how uncensored Twitter could be at times. She scanned through the comments and people were saying the person who did it should be brought to Justice. Some said the man must have been Superman to bash someone's head in so much and someone who claimed to be at the bar beside the scene that night mentioned that a girl was being beaten by that man and dragged to that alley.
Her heartbeat quickened on reading the comments under his where people were asking if she was a gorilla woman to be able to bash a man's head in like that and a few speculated that a third party must have helped.
She left the post and continued scrolling to find a short video of her getting tossed around in the bar leaked—luckily her face was barely visible. "Ohh no". She went through the comments to see most people supporting the man since she started it first.
Her jaw clenched in anger. Someone even asked what right she had to slam a bottle to his head just because he probably wanted to sleep with her, wasn't it a woman's nature to be slutty?
"People are so ignorant these days!", she spat out. She had no regrets about hitting him with a bottle since he didn't seem like he was going to let her be. He might have even dragged her into that alley when she was leaving so what else did she have to do?!
The bartender, Tim like any other person would be interested in protecting his business more than an irregular customer.
'The problem now is where I dropped my phone'. She shut her laptop before deciding to take a nap. It felt like she'd only slept for a few minutes when someone—or a group of people began to pound at her door.
"Miss Veronica Miller", an unfamiliar male voice called out and she jumped up from sleep. "Are you in there, Miss Veronica Miller? This is city police and we'd like to have a word with you".