“I love you, but I can’t do this to myself anymore. It’s sickening.”
Lola sat across from me inside our favorite booth at our favorite diner. She was the most beautiful I had ever seen her. Her blond hair was pulled back into a bun. The afternoon sunlight crossed her face. The table was clear except for two coffees, napkins, sugar, and silverware. In case you aren’t understanding how small this town is, it’s so small that the sign over the diner we were sitting in literally just read DINER.
“Are you listening to me, Flynn?!” She was not quite yelling, but was extremely frustrated.
In the kitchen, a cook placed two plates on the service counter separating the kitchen from the bar.
“Where’s Francis, Amy, and Leslie?” he shouted as the food started to die in the window. “We’ve got customers waiting!” The waitresses were about to reply when the missing waiter showed up.
“Sorry, Dave! I was out back on an important call,” he said.
He hurried over to our table, apologizing for the wait. He seemed so docile. Your average white college kid. He had on black shoes, blue jeans, and a plain white shirt. I watched him tie his apron as fast as he could. He must have sensed that now wasn’t the time to chat, so he just topped off our coffees. As he did, I examined his name tag, his facial features, his skin palette, his mannerisms, and the way he walked. He had wrinkles on his forehead, a long nose and high cheekbones, dark choppy hair, a sharp voice, and reserved body language.
You know when you experience an intense moment and every mundane detail becomes extraordinarily vivid? And it turns into an unforgettable memory? This was like that. I never forgot this guy. Maybe it was because of what was going on. The love of my life was breaking up with me. This was emotionally traumatic. The entire scene was seared into my brain.
Our mugs were red. Rings of coffee from her cup spotted the table. If you were staring at us from the side of our table, she was on the left and I was on the right. Our booth was next to a giant window. A little jukebox was fixed to the table—it took quarters. “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones played on the speakers.
“Fuck, Flynn, I’m spilling my heart out to you in my final good-bye and even now you can’t give me anything?!” She picked up a napkin from the table and dabbed her eyes. I hated to see her cry. It was the worst thing to me. But for whatever reason, I could never console her. I felt damaged in this way. Maybe it was from growing up without a father and never seeing a man treat my mother the way she should have been treated.
“I mean, you’re twenty-four, for fuck’s sake, and you live with your mother! You don’t have a job, Flynn!”
“I write.”
“You write? Ha, is that some sick joke?! Flynn, stop it. You aren’t an author. You’ve never even finished a book. You send half-baked, unfinished ideas to publishers, expecting book deals. What’s wrong with you? It doesn’t work that way! I mean, why do you think every company you send your ideas to replies with the same letter? Every time reiterating what I have been saying for years—‘great promise but finish the damn thing!’ You can’t even keep a literary agent. They all drop you because you never deliver. You put your work ahead of me. You put your writing first in this relationship. You get so caught up in it that you lose touch with reality. I want to be with someone who is achieving their goals. I spent years by your side, Flynn, trying to help you, support you, encourage you, and grow with you . . . but no, you haven’t changed one bit, you start amazing idea after amazing idea, but you never finish anything, and . . . and that’s why I . . . why I’m finishing this.”
She grabbed her purse and exited the booth as fast as she could.
“I don’t want to ever see you again, Flynn.”
My breath stopped. My chest tightened. The blood left my face. I vacantly stared downward, clasping my hands between my knees. Even though I appeared to be made out of stone, tears began to roll down my face. It was an emotionless, hollow cry.
Seconds felt like hours. I tried to get up from the table, but my legs gave out and I collapsed back into the booth. I tried again, slowly rising from my table. I put on my coat and walked out of the diner. I jumped in my car and sped off. I looked in my rearview mirror. My face was tangled with emotion. Tears poured out. As I drove, I couldn’t get an image out of my head: my car hydroplaning on the tears that fell from my face and flooded the streets, veering across lanes, and crashing into the back of a garbage truck. Not wearing a seat belt, I smashed through the windshield, shattering glass and landing twisted in the back of the empty truck. Then the compactor turned on, easily crushing my body into red paste.
As the macabre daydream ended, my car sputtered out. I pushed the accelerator, but nothing happened. Out of gas on the edge of town. I pulled over to the side of the road just under a bridge. This was truly nowhere. I opened the door, left the keys in the ignition, and ran.
I ran and ran, not knowing why. I sprinted with what felt like an empty body, head tilted toward the blue sky. My throat burned. Then my lungs. Then my legs. My whole body felt as if it were on fire. I suppose I ran because I wanted to feel something, anything. The blocks turned into miles, and the minutes into hours. My sprint turned to a wobbly jog. I stumbled off the street, collapsing into someone’s front yard. I had no idea where I was. I lay there, my face pillowed by blades of grass, staring into the dirt. My mind empty. My lips salty from snot and dried tears. I pushed myself up and knocked on the stranger’s front door.
“Hello, I’m sorry; may I use your phone?”
I called my mother to pick me up.
“What the fuck, Flynn? What happened?” my mom said when she arrived.
I sat quietly in her car, motionless, my head erupting with a fever.
“See, Flynn, this is what happens when you go running in the winter! Who the hell does something like this?” she said in a judgmental yet loving way. She continued to lecture, but the words began to fade, like hearing music from the outside of a nightclub, muffled and dark.
“Lola broke up with me,” I said.
“Oh, Flynn, no, I’m so sorry,” she replied.
My mind snapped back to reality and I finally thought about what had just happened.
That’s when it hit me.
Everything Lola had said was true.
She’d always told me I worked too much, that all I cared about was work, but since I never finished my work it was in vain. She even tried to justify my actions, saying that if I had ignored her for a cause, if I had put our love aside for something greater than myself, it would be one thing—but I was living in a loop. My creative pursuits were all I had that brought me any joy, and I became fanatically devoted to my craft. It was my way of feeling complete. I would hole myself up for days on end. Wake up, coffee, cereal, write, lunch, write, dinner, write, sleep. Manuscripts piled up, littering my room. I would write, stream of consciousness, uninterrupted for hours, ignoring the world outside. It was a kind of mania. If I wasn’t writing I was lost and depressed. I would talk out loud to my fictional characters, figuring out dialogue. She believed that I was detaching myself from the real world through my stories. That I was spending more time with my characters than with her. She’d go on to say that the stories I wrote never ended, and because of this it would never stop. She said every story needs an end, and that if there is no The End, then you cannot begin the next chapter.