The Girl with the Red Hair
Two Weeks Later
Christina
Two weeks had passed. It didn’t happen in a blur but more of a sluggish haze. It felt like time couldn’t even bear to pass itself. That was how slowly it moved, like even it knew that each day simply marked another where we didn’t speak. Two agonizing weeks of silence, where I drove myself mad, wondering if Cole missed me or not. Was he hurting the same way I was? I had no idea because not a single text had been sent or received by either one of us. No phone calls or missed calls either.
Did you know that two weeks was more than enough time for the entire campus to hear about what had happened and label me as the villain in this story? Of course you knew that. Anyone with half a brain would know that I’d be called a whore or a slut whenever I walked by a group of girls.
Fourteen days of not seeing Cole but hearing about him every single time I was on campus was a different kind of pain than it used to be. It felt like all the girls made sure I heard what he had been up to, where he had been, and how happy he seemed without me. Their words were like daggers; they hurt, and I bled. If I didn’t have to go to class in order to graduate, I probably wouldn’t have left my apartment. At least not until the dust had settled a little more … or something else had taken my place on the gossip circuit.
Worse than all that though were the questions that random guys hurled at me like they had some sort of right to. They always seemed to do it when they were in packs though, so if I noticed one coming in my direction, I tried to change course. It didn’t always work.
“Do you only fuck baseball players? What about the basketball team? You shouldn’t discriminate against other athletes,” this guy said to me one time as five of his friends looked on and laughed.
“Why don’t you guys go fuck each other?” I fired back before walking away and willing myself not to cry.
Even though it looked like I had myself pulled together on the outside, mostly because I had actually started brushing my hair before I left the house, I was completely broken on the inside. And it had nothing to do with all the name-calling and messed up comments.
Heartache was a kind of pain you couldn’t see, but it existed with each breath, reminding you that you were slowly bleeding out, slowly dying. The wounds might not be visible, but they ran deep.
I did my best to distract myself with work for The Long Ones and the waffle restaurant as often as I could, but there was only so much research that I could do before my eyes felt like they were going to fall out of my head. Not to mention the fact that anything regarding The Long Ones brought back the night I’d screwed it all up, and anything regarding the waffle restaurant … well, it made me think about Cole, too, for obvious reasons. He had become so intertwined with every part of me that there was no escaping him.
When the distractions were gone and my thoughts invaded my mind, I crumbled. Every night since Cole had walked out of that apartment door, I’d cradled my phone, wanting to dial his number. But I knew there was nothing I could say that would make things better. Not that he would have even answered the phone in the first place. And that rejection still would have stung even though I deserved and expected it.
I wanted to text him all the time and tell him how much I missed him, just so he knew I was thinking about him, but it felt selfish somehow. Mostly because I knew I would have been holding my breath, waiting for him to tell me he missed me back. That wasn’t fair to him, and I refused to do it to make myself feel better.
I sat at the kitchen table one morning, sipping coffee and wondering how long it would take before I forgave myself for what I’d done. Why is it easier to forgive other people? Is it because we accept their flaws more willingly than we accept our own? Or is it because we hold ourselves to standards so high that there’s no margin for error, that we simply aren’t allowed to make those kinds of mistakes?
“Have you called him yet?” Lauren rounded the corner and tapped her finger on the table, breaking me from the trance I had been in.
“And say what? I still love you, but I still don’t remember anything. And I miss you so much that it hurts with every breath I take. And I know you think you hate me for what I did, but you could never hate me more than I hate myself.”
Her eyes widened. “It’s a hell of a start.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing’s changed. If Cole was willing to forgive me and wanted me back, then he would reach out.”
I took a small drink of my coffee, which had now grown lukewarm. Lukewarm coffee was as gross as lukewarm beer. I pushed it away, and Lauren grabbed it as she moved into the kitchen to pour herself a cup.
“He’s stubborn. But you also hurt his pride. And his ego. He can’t be the one to chase you this time. Not after what happened. It would make him look weak.”
“I know. You’re right. But I don’t know how to fix it. And until I can actually do that, I can’t reach out to him.”
“Just promise me that you’ll think about it. It’s been weeks. At least send him a text and tell him you’re sorry and that you miss him. Extend that olive branch. After all, he did get suspended for three games because of you.” She placed two fresh cups of coffee on the table as she sat down next to me.
“He got suspended for hitting Logan. That was going to happen with or without me in the equation.”
“That’s not how it happened,” she said with a look that told me she knew more than I did on the subject.
“How did it happen? And why are you just telling me now?” I asked, feeling annoyed because the suspension was old news.
“Logan was talking about you, and Cole lost his temper.”
Even after everything, Cole still defended me? “Are you sure?”
“I’m very sure. Logan said something awful about you, and Cole punched him in the face for it,” Lauren said with a laugh. “Wish I could have seen that. How were we both so wrong about Logan?” she asked, and I knew she was thinking back to when Logan had first pursued me and how she had encouraged me to say yes because he seemed so nice and un-Cole-like.
I blew on my coffee before taking a tentative sip. “I guess he’s a really good actor.”
“Or a sociopath. He definitely would have sold you into sex trafficking,” she said, and I rolled my eyes, assuming I was about to get another lecture. “No. You roll your eyes, but I’m mad I didn’t see it. I pride myself on being a good judge of character, and he completely tricked me.”
He had tricked us both.
“I don’t care about Logan,” I said, sounding as exhausted as I felt. “I only care about Cole.”
“Yeah? Then, you should tell him.” She stuck out her tongue before pushing up from the table.
“I can’t mess with his head like that. His season’s almost over. And you’ve seen his batting average.”
I gave her an incredulous look because Cole had absolutely been dominating at the plate since he came back from his suspension. He was hitting home runs in almost every game. Not that I’d witnessed any of them in person, but I’d been following him online, quietly cheering on his success from behind my computer screen.
“He is hitting like crazy. But you see how mad he looks? He’s only hitting like that because he’s picturing Logan’s face on the ball. Guarantee it.” She gave me a small smile.