Ricochet (18 page)

“There’s
just… I don’t know. There’s too much bullshit to wade through. This… this was
all a mistake,” he stammered.

“You
don’t mean that,” I sobbed.

“Yes,
I do. I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t want to keep hurting you. You deserve a fresh
start and so do I,” he uttered.

“You
don’t want to hurt me? That’s hilarious because this fucking hurts. This hurts
worse than anything else I could find out. This hurts worse than anything else
you could do to me,” I maintained.

“I
just… I know that’s not true. Trust me, this is for the best,” he insisted.

“Where
is this coming from? Did something happen this weekend? If you cheated on me or
something just tell me, we
can fucking talk about it, don’t
just…
you don’t have to do this,” I begged.

“Do
you have somewhere you can go?” he asked, coldly.

“So
you’re breaking up with me
and
you’re
kicking me out? Really? You’re really doing this,” I gasped.

“Lilly…”
he sighed.

“No,
I don’t have anywhere to fucking go. I’m really bad at maintaining
relationships, apparently,” I lamented.

“What
about Regan?” he asked.

“Regan
hasn’t talked to me since you beat the shit out of Hunter in her bathroom,” I
explained.

“Well,
I’m not going to put you out on the street. You can stay here as long as you
need to. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight until I can get your bed put together
in the other bedroom,” he offered.

“Wow,
is it that bad that you can’t even sleep next to me? What the fuck did I do?” I
sobbed.

“I
just think we need a clean cut, that’s all. As clean as it can be, anyway. I
don’t know if I can seamlessly transition into being roommates, so the sooner
you can find a place, the better,” he wavered. The crack in his voice made me
lose it. The trembling sadness that made it seem like this hurt him as much as
it hurt me. The hint that he might not want to do this, but feels like he has
to. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how someone can wake up one day and
decide they don’t want to love you anymore. I want to be angry. With all the
shit he’s put me through, he should be the one groveling while I pack up my
shit and walk out on my terms. This isn’t fair. I try to find anger and it isn’t
there. All I can feel is broken. I sank to the floor and buried my face in my
hands. I could no longer control the sobs, and they wracked through my entire
body. Cash joined me on the floor, and pulled me into his chest. I cried
harder.

“Don’t…
don’t make this harder than it already is,” he stammered.

“If
it’s hard, why are you doing it?” I pleaded.

“I’m
a piece of shit, Lilly. I love you. I do. But I’m also a piece of fucking shit,
and I don’t… I don’t want you to have to keep paying for it,” he explained,
tears welling in his own eyes.

“What
the fuck did you do? We are too old to be playing these games. Just tell me
what this is really about,” I begged.

“I
can’t. I’m selfish, and I don’t want to hurt you anymore. But mostly I’m
fucking selfish and I don’t want you to hate me,” he confessed.

“There’s
nothing you could do that could make me hate you,” I argued.

“Well,
you’re wrong.” With that, Cash stood and stormed out. I heard the door to the
apartment slam. I dragged myself to the window just in time to see him peel out
of the parking lot.

It’s not that I thought we were
invincible. I’m not a complete fucking idiot. I just never thought it would
happen like this. I’d imagined a life together with Cash, but I’d also imagined
a life without him, he just happened to still be a part of it. If anything, I
thought we’d just fizzle out and drift apart. I’d wake up one Wednesday morning
and realize that I was bored. We’d spend evenings in silence, staring at the
television. We’d stop fucking. We’d realize we loved each other, but weren’t in
love. We’d part ways amicably and remain wonderful friends. We’d teeter on the
verge of inappropriately flirtatious and make future significant others
uncomfortable. I’d call him after a bad break up and he’d come over to console
me. Ice cream and sappy movies would turn into platonic cuddling, because we
care about each other. Then one of us would make the move, and he’d fuck me
until I forget my last name. He probably has a girlfriend, so he feels bad, and
we don’t talk for a while. I find a guy who’s mediocre but worships the ground I
walk on. I make him let Cash be in the wedding party. I’m not even welcome at
Cash’s wedding, although he calls me the night before to make sure he’s doing
the right thing. I tell him I don’t know. He does it anyway. Years go by, we
maintain contact. He gets into a fight with his wife and calls me to meet him
for drinks. We start a glorious affair, made all that much more exciting by the
fact that it’s bad, and it’s wrong, and we shouldn’t. That’s as far as I got,
it kind of fades to black from there.

Of
all our possible outcomes, I never thought “and we didn’t talk anymore after
that,” would be one of them. At the very least, we should go down in a blaze of
glory. Not this. I want to fight. I want to push back. I want to make him tell
me what happened.
 
I want to hate
him. I don’t want to be this slobbering puddle of broken-hearted fuckery. I
know something happened. I can see it in his eyes. I can hear it in his voice.
I wish he would tell me what and just let me fucking hate him. This wallowing,
shattering sadness makes me yearn for the charge of white-hot hatred. I wish I
had somewhere to go. I wish Regan would answer my calls. I thought about just
showing up over there and crying on her doorstep. Potential awkwardness with
Regan is a much more welcoming thought than continuing to lurk around Cash’s
apartment, bumping into each other and crying every time he avoids making eye
contact with me. We’re like strangers. Worse than strangers, he smiled more
when we were strangers.

I’ve
used all my sick days to fuck or recover from fucking. I have to use vacation
days to look for an apartment, and my request for immediate vacation was
denied. The soonest they can grant me off is three weeks from now. I want to
quit my job and move to Florida with my parents, but I know this is a terrible
idea. I can barely stand my parents when I know I have a home to go back to. I
love them, but I love them from a distance. The conversation with Cash to let
him know we had to side step each other for another three weeks did not go
well.

“That
sucks,” he sighed.

“I
am aware. I am aware of the suckiness of the situation. Why don’t I just… You
know what, I will just sleep in my car at the rest stop down the highway. Or
move into the janitor’s closet at work. It’ll be fine,” I quipped.

“You
know that I’m not going to let you do either of those things. Why don’t we go
talk to Diana, see if she’s got an empty unit you can move into,” he suggested.

“You
think that’s an option? You think I can stay here? Ride on the elevator where I
fell in love with you? Walk past all the spots in the halls where you took my
hand in yours? Walk through the fucking lobby where you’ve kissed me goodbye
more times than I can count? Be your fucking
neighbor?”
I scowled.

“Well
I figured being my neighbor would be a better option than continuing to be my
fucking roommate. Sitting on the couch where we kissed for the first time,
where I fucked you more times than I can count. That’s the shit I can’t handle,
Lilly, and I need you out of my fucking apartment. Sooner, rather than later,”
he exclaimed. I was taken aback by his cruelty.

“I
don’t want to be here, either, but I also do not want to lose my job. I want to
move on with my life as soon as fucking possible, especially since you don’t
even have the fucking balls to tell me why it’s suddenly so God damned
intolerable to be around me. All you’ve got is a bunch of ‘it’s not you, it’s
me,’ bullshit, and we both know that’s the oldest fucking cop out in the book.
So why don’t you tone it down, act like a grown up, and fucking talk to me,” I
seethed, finally starting to find my anger.

“Lilly,
don’t. This isn’t… we’re not doing this,” he sighed.

“Why?
Why can’t you just fucking tell me where the switch got flipped? Why, because
you’re scared that I’m going to hate you? Guess what, I already fucking hate
you. You know why? For wasting my Goddamn time. You pushed, and you pushed, and
you pushed for me to let you in. Then when I finally do, you pull this shit? I
refuse to believe that you are that big of a fucking sadist that you would
string me along for this long just to hurt me. I know you better than that. So
something happened. Something happened, which if I found out about, would be
more painful for you than
this
. That
kind of narrows it down, and I’m not a fucking idiot,” I spit.

“Oh,
Lilly. We’re not doing this,” he groaned.

“Don’t
be such a pussy! I already know what you did. Come on, go down with a little
honor, man,” I taunted.

“Really.
What fucking off the wall scenario have you cooked up?” he challenged.

“You
fucked Claire. That’s why that dude showed up here looking for you guys. She
took off with you for the weekend, and you fucked her, over, and over. You were
fucking her when I called you, and you had your brother cover for you,” I
accused.

“You’re
fucking insane,” he retorted.

“Maybe,
but am I wrong?” I challenged.

“See
here’s the beauty of the situation; you can sit there and wax poetic all day
long about what you do or don’t deserve, call me whatever you want, think
whatever helps you feel better, but I don’t have to answer to shit. Welcome to
the real world, where not everything gets wrapped up in a neat little bow for
you to process. Sometimes shit just turns out badly. My suggestion is that you
spend less time trying to figure this out, and more time looking for a fucking
apartment,” he barked. Fucking. Noted. He stood and grabbed his keys from the
kitchen. He walked towards the door and paused. He turned to look at me.

“I
didn’t want it to be like this, Lilly,” he said, “I didn’t want all this…
venom. I thought it would be different, I thought it would feel different. That
it would have that kind of sickly sweet pain like when you had a loose tooth as
a kid. I thought it’d be sad but hold a little bit of beauty. That’d I’d tell
you we couldn’t be together and you’d shed a single tear and walk off into a
grey dawn,” he mused.

“Shut
the fuck up,” I interrupted, rolling my eyes, “get the fuck out of here with
that shit. I’d imagined things a bit differently, too. But, to echo your
earlier sentiment, welcome to the real world, where that kind of shit doesn’t
happen.”
 
Cash shrugged his
shoulders and nervously bit his lip.

“Listen,
I just don’t… I don’t want either of us to say anything else we might regret. I
would like for both of us to be able to look back on each other fondly, so just
do me a favor. If you love me… let me go,” he said before turning to walk out
the door. Maybe I should let him go. Maybe I shouldn’t waste another ounce of
my energy or drop of bodily fluid on him. It’s time to accept that he’s not
fucking around. That he’s really done. Whether he found somebody else or fucked
somebody else or just spent a weekend without me and realized how much happier
he was alone, it didn’t matter. Time to knock off the denial and deal. It was
also sinking in that I had absolutely no one. Cash had become my entire fucking
world. The only friendship I had cared to (barely) maintain was with Regan, and
she wasn’t returning my calls. My entire world was crashing down around me and
I have no one.
 

I’ve
got to give it to Cash, though; I wish this could be a little less bitter and a
little more bittersweet. We’re probably not good for each other. I just wish
that I would have known that our last kiss was our last kiss, I would have made
it more memorable. I think it was a quick peck as he left for the weekend. I
wish I would have known our last fuck was our last fuck. Maybe he did, and
that’s why he made it special. I wonder how we’ll say goodbye for the last
time. When I find a place, and pack the last of my bags. Will he sigh and wish
me well? Kiss me hard for the last time? I wonder what it will be like if run
into each other, if I run into him out with a new girlfriend. I bet he treats
me with disdain and then tells his new girl all about how miserable I was, turn
me into a cautionary tale to make her feel special and better. I am such a
fucking idiot.

I
picked up the phone and tried to call Regan for the 200th time. To my surprise,
she answered.

“Hey,
Lil. What’s up?” she asked.

“Why
have you been avoiding me, Regan?” I immediately challenged.

“I’ve
just been really busy. Is everything okay?” she deflected.

“No,
everything is not fucking okay. Which you would know, if you hadn’t of blown me
off for the past fucking month,” I cried.

“I’m
sorry. Things got weird I didn’t know what to say,” she defended.

“Things
got weird? I’m so sorry that things got weird for you. I needed you. I still
need you and you weren’t fucking there,” I accused.

“I’m
here! I’m here. What is wrong?” she asked. I started sobbing as I tried to tell
her what happened.

“I
can’t understand you. Come over. Sounds like a Ben and Jerry’s kind of
situation. I have to run to the store. Meet me at my apartment in thirty?” she
comforted. I hung up and tried to pull my shit together. At least I can get the
fuck out of this apartment. I packed my suitcase with a week worth of work
clothes and headed towards the door.

Regan’s
car wasn’t in her spot when I pulled up, so I turned the car off and waited. I
stared at my phone. If Cash had made it back home, he wasn’t the least bit
concerned about where I was. Maybe he noticed my things missing and sighed in
relief that I had found somewhere else to stay. Regan pulled up next to me,
base thumping. I jumped out of the car and grabbed my suitcase from the
backseat. Regan greeted me with a hug.

“Damn,
got your bag packed. What the fuck happened?” She asked.

“I
don’t even know. We’re done, I guess. I need to crash on your couch for a few
nights,” I explained.

“Ah,
man. You know my door is always open but it’s like… a really bad time. This
fuck boy has been staying with me… I might have a boyfriend, I don’t know. But
I’m kind of getting railed, like, on the regular. I can help you out with like,
paying for hotel for a couple nights,” she droned.

“Are
you fucking kidding me? You’re gonna turn me away so you can keep getting
dick?” I seethed.

“No,
it’s just… it’s a weird situation,” she stammered.

“Fuck
you, Regan,” I spit. I threw my luggage in the passenger seat and tore out of
the parking lot. I deleted Regan’s number from my contacts.

Cash’s
car was back in his spot in our parking lot. I didn’t want to go back in there.
I also didn’t want to deplete my bank account by living in a hotel because I
needed to be able to pay for the deposit when I finally am able to look for an
apartment. I have no idea where I’m going to go. I gathered my wits and
sprinted across the cold parking lot to the building. I closed my eyes and
tried to control my breathing on the elevator ride to our floor. I opened the
door to the apartment slowly and quietly. I breathed a sigh of relief when I
didn’t see Cash. That meant I could sneak to the guest bedroom and shut myself
in without him knowing I was even there.

I
crept down the hall and heard him raise his voice from the bedroom. The door
was shut, and against my better judgment, I pressed my ear against it. He was
arguing on the phone.

“I
don’t know. Not right this minute, but yeah. She’s still here… What do you
expect me to do? She doesn’t have anywhere to fucking go… That wasn’t part the
deal… You know what? Fuck you. I don’t even care. She already knows… No… You’re
a fucking sociopath… Because! She figured it out! What the fuck… She doesn’t
need to see… God damn it, you fucking bitch… You know, do whatever you gotta
do. And then never fucking contact me again you fucking cunt,” he bellowed.

I
backed away from the door. Cash cursed and something crashed to the ground. I
moved quickly back to the living room. I sank onto the sofa and stared at the
wall. I heard the bedroom door open, and I turned towards the noise.

“Hey,
I didn’t hear you come in. You okay?” he asked.

“I
guess,” I croaked. No, you fucking idiot, I am not okay. He sat next to me on
the couch and placed his hand on my knee. I stood to retreat to the other room.