Authors: Paige Powers
“So I called Jack. He’s always liked me. He came over and…we slept together. You know that now, obviously. And then we slept together a few more times. He looks at me the way you look at Starla. I’m sorry if this hurts you but you hurt me too.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Ben said, choked up. A solitary tear slid down his cheek. He tried to wipe it away before Mina saw, but it didn’t matter. She was crying too, big ugly tears. But in his heart, Ben knew that everything she said was true.
Mina ran her hands over her face, trying to dispel the dejection. “I’m going to leave, okay? Just give me a day or two and then I’ll be gone. You and I are over, Ben. But maybe we’ve been over for a long time and it just took this to realize it.”
Then she leaned in and embraced him. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, pressing her face into his chest. They sat there and cried together, her tears dampening his t-shirt. Occasionally Ben leaned down and planted a kiss on Mina’s hair. Even though he was angry and hurt and relieved, he still cared about the woman sitting in front of him.
Once all of the tears had been cried and the sorrow had been wrung from their bodies, they broke the embrace. Mina stood up and pursed her lips.
“I need to go help Jack,” she said. “In a few minutes will you help me carry him downstairs? I’m going to flag a cab and take him to the emergency room so he can get some stitches or something.”
Ben sniffled and nodded, still trying to process everything that had gone on. Mina flashed him a weak smile and then disappeared into the bedroom. As she tried to bandage up Jack’s wounds, Ben could hear small howls of pain. Even though he had cheated on Mina as well, he couldn’t help but feel smug and happy to hear his former girlfriend’s lover in pain. Was it awful of him? He didn’t really care.
Mina toddled out of the bedroom with a limping Jack clutching to her. She gave Ben a pleading look, at which point he rose from the couch and went to help. Supporting most of Jack’s weight on his shoulders, Ben assisted Mina in getting her lovebird out to the curb. They sat him on the sidewalk and went to flag down a cab.
“I’m sorry about how all of this went down,” Ben said as he stuck his arm out, hoping to wave down a taxi as quickly as possible.
Mina nodded. “I’m sorry too. This is never how I thought we would end.”
“Me either.”
She took a deep breath and let it out unhurriedly. “I’ll have most of my stuff moved out later tonight. I may need to come back for some of the bigger furniture but for the most part, I’ll be out.” She was averting her eyes so she didn’t have to look at him straight-on. “It’ll be weird, won’t it? After being together for so long?”
“Yeah.” A cab driver acknowledged Ben with a bob of his head and began pulling his car towards the sidewalk.
When Mina finally looked up, her eyes were watering heavily, like she might cry again. She motioned to Jack. Ben helped him up and helped Mina load him into the backseat of the cab. Mina hesitated as she went to climb in after him, reaching out for one final hug from her now ex-boyfriend. He gave it to her, a brief hug full of all the things they never said to one another. Then, with a slam of the yellow door, she was gone. The cab pulled away, leaving Ben alone in a city of millions of people.
He made his way back into the apartment. The silence hit him. Life was going to change in a big way now. After years and years of living together, Ben was going to lose the first girl he ever slept with, his long term girlfriend, his partner in crime. When he went back to Bellen for his grandfather’s funeral, he could have never fathomed how much it would alter the course of his path in life.
It was time for a beer or maybe six. He grabbed his bottle opener from the drawer next to the sink and his six-pack of Michelob Ultra from the fridge. Collapsing onto the couch, he popped open a beer. The familiar bitter burn swam around in his mouth and then down his throat, settling uneasily into his stomach. He sucked the liquid as fast as he could, finishing the first bottle in less than a minute. With a flick of his wrist he had the second bottle open.
Ben turned the television on and hoped for something good that would distract him from his current state of unrest. Flipping through the channels, he passed
Tosh.O
and a
Cops
marathon. Disney Channel and Nickelodeon held no appeal for him. He settled on
Bones
. Even though he was nearly positive that he had watched almost every episode of
Bones
, it never failed to fascinate him. The same episode could probably play on repeat on the television and Ben would still sit and watch it.
A
Bones
marathon would probably keep him occupied all day. It was for the best, really. If he was entranced with a television show then there was less of a chance that he’d think of Mina leaving or the giant fight he had with Starla. How would he be able to go back to her now? Would it even be possible to tell her that he loved her anymore after he had ruined everything on the drive home? Ben always considered himself to be a loyal man so he didn’t understand the way he had been acting lately. Love-induced psychosis, he’d like to say. Love makes people do crazy things. Ending things with Starla, trying to be just friends, was his way of trying to preserve her emotions. He had done a pretty terrible job of it.
In his pocket, his phone vibrated. Assuming it was just a text message – maybe even a message from Mina – he ignored it. He wasn’t in the mood to try and deal with anybody or anything that day. With the remote, he turned the volume up a bit louder on the television.
“Emily Deschanel could get it,” he announced to the empty apartment. As if to commemorate that statement, the second beer was lifted and poured straight down the gullet.
As a third beer was being opened, the phone vibrated again. This time it didn’t stop, meaning someone was calling. Ben refused to acknowledge it. But then it vibrated again. It was déjà vu, his phone ringing just like it had when he found out his Grandpa Cole had died. If someone else in his family had passed on he didn’t think he could handle it.
When he removed the phone from the front pocket of his jeans and checked the text messages, all of the blood drained from his face. He went as pale as a ghost. Quickly he turned the television off and stood. Rushing around the apartment, Ben grabbed his gray pea coat, his wallet, and car keys. Then he ran from the apartment, the door smashing shut behind him.
2014 –Starla
It was summertime in New York City. Sun radiated off the windows of every tall building, basking the city in heat. The sidewalks were clogged with people in various states of undress. Guys wore khaki shorts and tank tops, while girls preferred short shorts and tube tops. Tattoos abounded on thighs, arms, legs, ribs, chests. Multiple smells of roasted nuts, hotdogs, and hot sewer air wafted through the city streets.
In Times Square, the Naked Cowboy stood, strumming his guitar and taking pictures with tourists. Bright lights exploded over everybody. Words, news, and pictures streamed across various electronic screens.
Starla could see movement from inside of the Toys ‘R Us, where a giant Ferris wheel spun. She wanted to ride it all the way to the top. It wasn’t like she could see New York City from the pinnacle; rather, she could experience every single one of the four floors in the Toys ‘R Us. It would be like going back to her childhood, reminding her of the times she had spent riding the Ferris wheel at the fair as she clutched Ben’s hand on her lap.
But Ben was next to her now and he gently led her away, his voice full of other promises. They walked briskly down the street, hand in hand. When the crowd got too condensed, Ben pulled Starla to him, holding her close. He wasn’t going to lose her. For the first time in a long time, she finally felt safe. She knew that she wasn’t going to get hurt here.
He brought her to the TKTS Steps in Times Square. Tourists could climb the steps and look out over a few blocks, over thousands of people all rushing together. Together they climbed, higher and higher, until they were on the top row of the steps. Then they sat down. Ben extracted his hand from her grip but then flung his arm around her shoulder.
“Can we take a picture together?” Ben asked. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a black digital camera. “We haven’t taken a picture together in so long.”
Starla nodded, scooting as close to him as possible. They were magnetic. They were Romeo and Juliet if the story had ended happily. They were the conclusion of every sappy romance movie ever shown in theaters, but it didn’t matter. Because right then, on those steps, life was perfect.
Ben held the camera out in front of them to take the picture. Both of their smiles glowed like shooting stars. There was a click and a flash, and then the two of them were forever memorialized on film.
Then Starla turned to kiss him and he disappeared from before her eyes. There was no puff of light or flash of smoke. He just vanished. She sat with her lips puckered towards empty air. When she reached out, she touched nothing. It was as though she had been alone the entire time.
“Ben?” she called out, her voice wavering. But there was no reply.
A dull beeping noise filled her entire existence. She figured it was a side effect from the terrible blow of loneliness. How could this happen? Was she going crazy? How could he be there one minute and then be gone the next? The feeling of safety she had felt drained out of her, creating a puddle beneath her feet.
As her anxiety grew louder, so did the sound of the beeps. She called out for Ben over and over again, ignoring the uptight looks from others sitting on the steps. She struggled to her feet and tried to walk down the steps, but fell, rolling like a snowball until she collapsed at the bottom. Onlookers rushed forward to help. The beeping intensified and when she looked up, Blair was standing above her. There was murder in his eyes. In his hand he held a shining 9mm gun.
“I told you that you belonged to me,” he said. The rest of the onlookers, spotting the gun, began to back away slowly. “I told you never to leave me, Star. I love you too much. You can’t do this. If I can’t have you, nobody can.”
Face-to-face with her demise, she begged for forgiveness. Blair just shook his head. He raised the gun and pointed it at her forehead.
“I never wanted to do this. This is all your fault.” With that, Blair pulled the trigger. The sound of the beeping drowned out the bullet’s explosion.
She wondered if she was dead or in limbo. It had to be limbo, she figured, because her body wouldn’t ache so terribly if she was dead. The beeping noise was still there but much lighter. Whispers creeped through the air around her.
“Is she waking up?”
“Starla, can you hear me?”
“I definitely saw her moving. Right? Did you see it too?”
She wanted to tell them all to be quiet. The noises were exacerbating the pain that was ripping through her skull. If she wasn’t dead, she wanted to be, if only to rid herself of how absolutely awful she felt.
Trying to open up her eyes was like trying to pry open an ancient set of windows that had been painted shut. Slowly but surely she forced them open, peeling the crusty lids apart. A rush of brilliant white light flooded her tender corneas and she slammed her eyelids shut again. If it was so bright, maybe she was in Heaven. But if she was dead, why were so many people talking?
“You’re not dead,” a voice informed her. “You’re in the hospital.”
She had to be dead. How else could these mysterious voices be reading her thoughts?
Someone snorted. The same voice said, “You’re speaking out loud, Star. Wow. You must really be out of it.”
Starla opened her eyes again, bit by bit, so that they could adjust to the incoming light. Looking around the room she realized that she was indeed in the hospital. Around her bed stood her parents, Katie, and, most surprisingly of all, Ben. He looked wretched. He had big purple bags under his eyes that made it look like he hadn’t slept in days. Concern twitched across his lips.
Everything on her body felt sore. Besides the awful headache, her arms, legs, and chest felt like they had been run over repeatedly by a pick-up truck carrying a load of bricks. She lazily twisted her head to the right and was shocked to see the deep purple color of her skin. Spinning her head to the left, she noted that her left arm was colored in the same fashion.
When she looked up with questions burning in her eyes, Katie just had to say one word, “Blair,” to make her understand what had happened. The memories came flooding back to her.
Upon her arrival back from New York City, Starla had opened the door to an incensed Blair, screaming and asking her where she had been. When she told him that she had been working at the diner all day, he had punched her full-force in the nose, knocking her to her knees. He told her that, suspicious of her story, he had gone to the diner to see her. But obviously she hadn’t been there.
As Starla tried to create some sort of explanation as to where she had been, Blair punched her again and kicked out her legs. For the next hour he enacted the most savage beating of their relationship onto his girlfriend. At the end of it, Starla lay unconscious and bleeding on the floor. It had taken Blair an hour and a half to call 9-1-1 and ask for an ambulance.
The doctors and nurses at the hospital were fed up with seeing Starla come in all of the time with cracked bones and bloody noses. She could deny the abuse all she wanted while she was awake. But with three cracked ribs, bruises over most of her body, and her unconscious status, there was no questioning what had gone on. The staff of the emergency room called in Mr. and Mrs. Bluff. The news, however, quickly spread throughout the entire town. Katie had left work and rushed to the hospital as soon as she heard.