It was not even a proper break up scene. She was relentless and stone-faced. Even in this she couldn’t do things predictably. She wasn’t heartbroken or hysterical.
Her eyes were dryer than my dick right then.
It was startling and demoralizing how quickly she had me willing to beg. “Please don’t do this. We can fix this. There’s no reason on earth to end it. Please,” I repeated, soft and heartfelt.
She studied me for a while and it felt merciless, no softening in her eyes for me at all. “One question. That’s all we need to settle this for good. Has any of this meant anything to you?”
I blinked at her, all of the steam leaving my body.
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay, so what has it meant?”
She was smarter than me. It was a problem.
I tried to level with her, because I knew where she was leading the conversation. It could only end one way.
Of course, she knew that too.
I answered her, and it wasn’t clean and neat, nowhere near wrapped up in the perfect package that it needed to be. “I don’t want to stop,” I said, as sincere as I’d ever been. “I want this to keep going—us—a permanent arrangement.”
“Why?”
“Excuse me?” I honestly didn’t understand the question.
“Why do you want it to keep going? Because the sex is good?”
I started to answer with an obvious yes, but I was smarter than that.
Yes was obviously a trap. “First of all, that’s an understatement. The sex is phenomenal,” I began—
“Exactly!” she said it like it was an aha moment, and I knew I’d still stepped into that damned trap even though I’d seen it from a mile away. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I was trying to turn this into something more than it ever was,” she said. “It was foolish of me, but that doesn’t change the facts.”
I was stunned. Blindsided by her words. She was so stoic that she’d left me more than half in the dark. Was she saying now that she had feelings for me? And if so, what exactly were those feelings? And were they already gone, before she’d even given me a goddamn heads up?
I’d have really liked to know.
A part of me, some strange little, itchy twinge in my chest needed to know.
“Listen,” I said, rallying again for control of the situation. “You’re blowing this out of proportion. Clearly we need to have a talk about our expectations… and our feelings.” Boy, that word was a doozy to get out of my mouth, but it felt necessary. “And that text you saw, I didn’t even open it on purpose. And my response was clearly a joke. It didn’t mean anything—”
“This is my point. None of this means anything, and that is not the type of person I want to be. I want to mean something. I want my actions to mean something, and that something shouldn’t be that I can’t control my own hormones. This is done, Turner, and if you’re true to your word, I can keep working here as though this never happened. Business as usual, lives back to normal.”
My fists were clenched, and the itchy twinge in my chest had worked itself deeper, turning into a bitter ache.
An ache I’d never felt before, and didn’t know what to do with, and was profoundly unequipped for.
“My word is solid,” I said dully, a little in shock at how quickly this had gotten out of hand and escalated to this conclusion. “So fine, if this is what you want, what you insist on—”
“I do,” she interrupted. “I insist.”
“Okay, then we’ll just go on, back to business as usual.”
She left the room, as though that settled it.
It should have, I supposed, but for some strange reason, I sat there and reeled, nothing feeling settled, no part of me accepting the sudden change.
I went back to my texts, examining the stupid thing that had ended it all.
Me: What, only 2 of you this time?
They’d taken it as a challenge, which honestly hadn’t been my point. Sometimes I just couldn’t keep the sarcastic, intrusive thoughts to myself, and I’d honestly taken the crack without thinking. I was thinking hard about it now.
I approached her in the kitchen. She was making herself a latte and me a double espresso.
Ever the pro.
I wanted to shake her.
I wanted to beg her on my knees.
“That comment I made, in the text,” I began earnestly, “I can see how that might come across badly, but it wasn’t how it looked. I was just making an ironic statement, and those chicks took it seriously.”
She held up a hand, not even looking at me. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t have hard feelings. I knew who you were the whole time, and frankly, I think I needed this little reminder.”
“It wasn’t—”
“Don’t, Turner. I’m not changing my mind, and I’m not sure why you’d want me to. You have naked pictures of my cousin in your phone. She’s got pictures of your cock in hers. Yes, I saw all of that too. I apologize, it was out of line, but after I saw that text… I looked. I knew you hooked up with her, knew who and what you were from day one. Like I said, I just needed this reminder, and now it is time to move on.”
She didn’t sound even close to approaching mad, but I was getting there.
I supposed this cold reaction was better than tears or a tantrum, but somehow it felt more fundamentally damaging.
For her. For me.
“Those pictures were from months ago,” I told her fake calmly. It was an honest effort not to raise my voice. “Before I even met you.”
“She sent you a picture of her . . . privates,” she blushed bright red as she spoke, “last week.”
“And I didn’t respond!” Now I was raising my voice. “You saw that, right? I didn’t even open it. I can’t control what’s being sent to me!”
“Of course you can’t.” Finally, some spark behind her eyes that spoke of feelings. “Which is my point. I can control things like that. How you live is not how I want to live. Who you are is not who I want to be.” God, that hurt. And she just kept going. “I need to get back to being the kind of person I can respect.” Fucking ouch.
She was so set against me that her rejection felt like a third person in the room between us, and it was fucking brutal.
I just stared at her. How could it be over? It felt to me like it should never be over. How could she think it was over? How could she want it to be over? And what on earth could I even do about it?
The answer was demoralizing. I could do nothing. I had no right to do anything at all, in fact the opposite. I had to respect her wishes, and I was supposed to do it with grace.
“I’ll keep working here,” she told me after a while. I’d been staring at her for quite some time, like if I didn’t move from this spot, this moment, I could somehow fix it. “Cleaning up your messes,” she continued, not unkindly, “and you and l will quickly forget that this mess ever happened.”
But I didn’t forget. Couldn’t.
Couldn’t even muster up the will to try to forget or move on.
How sad was that?
I caught her quietly moving her things out of my room that afternoon and almost lost it. I sat on my bed and watched her go in and out of my closet and bathroom, not lifting a finger to help.