Read Me Without You for Free Online Page A

near the courthouse. I sat outside, as if early morning sun rays might find me, even though experience tells me that the skyscrapers all around me will block them. This patch of cement only sees sun for an hour or so at noon, and only in summer, because the monstrous tower across the road is at just the right angle to block direct light altogether in winter. And knowing all of this from years of arguing at this court house and having brunches and lunches at this very café in between sessions, I sat out here anyway. I’m not sure if that makes me an optimist or a slow learner.
    I’ve been sitting here looking at the blank page of this journal for a few minutes, trying to remember how to start. It’s been five years since I wrote in one of these books. They were busy years, years with zero time or tolerance for the kind of self-absorbed navel gazing I once did in these things. I bought this particular notebook nearly six months ago, on a bad day, when I was sure I was about to get sick again. It’s always there, right at the front of my mind, and that wasn’t the first time that I’d convinced myself that the remission had ended and the nightmare had returned. The bad day passed and I stayed well, but I kept the journal on my desk at home—a visible reminder every time I walked past. I can’t afford to take the beauty of life for granted, because I’m living mine on borrowed time.
    Journaling has been my solace and companion during the troughs of my life, but more than that, it was always a simple way to take the intangible essence of myself and make it tangible. Thoughts are like vapour—they disappear in the wind. But words on paper… well, that can be forever, or close enough to. I can write my soul here today, and come back tomorrow to check—is that still who I am? I suppose when I’ve felt lost in time, my journal has been an odd type of compass.
    Ah, prattle. That’s what I used to do on these pages, I’d let the thoughts drain from me like I was bleeding out and the paper was absorbing my essence. I stopped writing because it felt like a self-indulgent waste of time, and time was something I could not afford to waste.
    I’m running on virtually no sleep between the late night with Callum and the insanely early morning I had studying up for court today. I’ve been sipping today’s green smoothie—extra kale and wheatgrass. I felt I needed the vitamin boost. And all of these thoughts are just a way to postpone facing the real reason I’ve come running for this journal again: I’m feeling unsettled. I don’t do unsettled, not these days, when everything is in place and organised and I know exactly what it is I’m here to do.
    I only agreed to have dinner with Callum because I was caught off guard. Shit, I could easily list a dozen reasons why now is not the time to start a relationship. That judgmental look he cast me on the ferry really got my hackles up, and the next thing I knew, I was genuinely enthralled in the dinner conversation.
    Yes, there was a moment late that night when, lying in his arms in the darkness of his half-renovated apartment, maybe it was nice to daydream about seeing him again. We could meet for a casual coffee, or a drink together at the bar on the ferry one evening. We could talk for hours again, make love at his place. This time I’d stay and we could wake up together and he could explain to me how he managed to live in that godawful unit. It reminded me of Grandma and Pa’s house, during the second week of my renovations. The first thing I saw when we stepped inside was the wall of paint samples. He’s obviously had ideas over time about what the colour scheme might be: in perfectly straight columns and rows, he’s painted tiny patches. There are dozens of them now, all perfectly ordered, line after line of indecision.
    The kitchen is in pieces, there’s a jagged hole in the ceiling in the living area where he obviously intends a light, and the skeleton of a built-in