by Cee, DW
“Can’t you drive any faster?” I was in such a state of anxiety. I had never felt so distraught in my life.
“Look, Jane. We’re getting off the freeway. You’ll get your chance with Max. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.” My brother Nick was sweet to try and reassure me that everything would be all right. But I knew better. I knew this was the last straw for Max. I had done this too many times. I had one too many toes leaning towards Donovan for Max to forgive me easily this time.
“Will you just drop me off out front and come meet me later? If I can’t find Max in the baggage area, I’ll need to buy a ticket so I can get over to the proper gate.”
“No problem, Jane. You do whatever you need to do.”
At this point, my nerves gave out and I just started bawling in the car. “What if he doesn’t want to see me? I fucked up so badly. What if he tells me he never wants to see me again? What am I going to do if he breaks up with me?”
“Once he hears your side of the story, I think everything will be okay, Jane. He’s not going to break up with you. He’s sick in love with you. I know for a fact that he was thinking you were his forever. That’s what Josh and Garett kept telling me.”
Nick was babbling on and on to try and comfort me. He was beyond freaked out watching me go ballistic on him.
“But you don’t know about all the things that I’ve done to him. I’ve been such a bitch, and you were right—I am a two timer!”
“Did you actually do anything with Donovan?”
“No, but I’ve been tempted so many times and Max knows about all these times.”
“I saw Max right after he found the house and he was pumped to start the next chapter of his life with you. He couldn’t wait to show you the house and get your approval .A guy like that isn’t going to leave you over a misunderstanding.”
“I hope you’re right, but I think it’s too late, Nick. I’ve done this to him too many times. He’s not going to forgive me.”
“Here we are. Go in. Grovel, beg, grab him by the leg and don’t let him leave...do what you must! Jake is right when he preaches that Max is the right guy for you. And plus, I really like the whole Davis clan, so don’t mess this up for me!” Nick said with a smile.
When this nightmare was over, I’d take the time to think about the kindness both brothers have shown me throughout my seven-month relationship with Max, but for this immediate moment, I needed to ‘beg, plead, grovel’ like my little brother instructed me to do.
Looking around the Delta counter, I didn’t see anyone who looked like Max. I looked for groups that were traveling together, but only found families and couples. Jake had told me this was where they were going to be, so I got in line thinking I’d have to buy a ticket in order to pass security and get my chance with my boyfriend at the departure gate.
The sick feeling inside the pit of my stomach was not a feeling I’d wish upon anyone—even Psycho or Hannah the Bitch. This was so many times worse than those out of control butterflies that showed up in the middle of a bombed speech in front of your entire class, or when your parents caught you in a serious lie and were about to ream you till dawn. This dread spread through my entire body. It was that sense you got when you knew something was horribly wrong, and there was absolutely no recourse and no hope.
No hope—this was what made me sick, frantic, manic, and angry all at the same time. I was insanely angry with myself for letting the situation get to this point. When we got into the last argument after apartment hunting, I knew I couldn’t live without this man anymore, and yet when Donovan dangled his apple, I couldn’t say no. I was tempted again.
“Jane,” Nick called me back to reality. “I see Max over there.” He pointed to the international line rather than the domestic line I was standing in.
I saw my boyfriend, but was deathly afraid to go to him. I didn’t want to face him, be rejected by him, and lose him.
“Go.” Nick encouraged. “It’ll be fine. He doesn’t look like an angry man.”
He may not look angry, but I knew better.
“Will you walk over there with me?” I sounded like a little girl, so unsure of where she was going.
“Let’s go.” Nick practically held my hand and led me to my end.
“Hey, everyone!” With a cheerful voice, Nick called attention to us. It was then that I saw the blank look on Max. His eyes didn’t light up to see me, he didn’t smile, he didn’t even bother to say hello. Every cell in my body shut down like a huge factory losing power. The big question was, did the circuit breaker trip—something easily fixed with the flip of a switch, or did the power lines go down—to be discarded and never repaired.
“Hi,” I whispered. As soon as I spoke, the entire group gave us a wide berth and walked far away from us. “Will you please let me explain?” Perhaps the way I started was an admission of guilt, but I didn’t care. I just needed my boyfriend back.
“Go ahead, but make it quick. I don’t want to keep my teammates waiting.”
The way he said those two sentences cut me like a dagger, ripping through my heart. They were void of any emotion.
“I don’t know what you heard when you came over, but it’s not what you think.”
“Really, Jane? Tell me, what am I thinking?” He almost laughed at me in disbelief while asking me these questions. They were filled with doubt and distrust, but I preferred this to apathy.
“Donovan came over to drop off a gift—a couple of plane tickets as a birthday present—and he asked me to go away with him. He told me I could tell you whatever I wanted, but he wanted a weekend away so we could see if it would lead to anything. He didn’t let me answer, but I’m going to return the tickets. I don’t want to go away with him. I only want to be with you. I don’t know what you heard and saw, but I promise, that’s all that happened. NOTHING happened between us, I promise, Max. I promise!” I rushed all these words out in hopes that the quicker I pleaded my case, the sooner Max would believe me, and the sooner this nightmare would be resolved.
Max kinda laughed in disbelief again. “You don’t even know what you did wrong, do you?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m telling you the truth when I say, nothing happened. The explanation I gave you was it.”
“Yeah? Well, I came by in the morning to be the first one to wish my girlfriend a happy birthday and what do I find?” He asks, cynically and rhetorically. “I find her complacently listening to another man telling her that she could lie to her boyfriend and go away with him. She waited patiently and listened to all that was offered in front of her so she could make an informed decision. She never once stopped him, she never once told him that she didn’t want to go away with this man. She just listened. And from where I was standing, it almost seemed as though she was wondering if she should take this man up on his offer.”
“But I didn’t take him up on the offer and Donovan never gave me a chance to say no. He’s out of town but as soon as he’s back, I’m going to tell him to stop bothering me. I’ll tell him all about us, all about our love, and how much I love you.” I was desperate. It felt like Max was using all his strength to loosen our tie with each and every accusation. His once strong fingers that held tight our love, were relaxing, and the hold was quickly coming loose. Our bond was unraveling and I had no idea how to latch myself back onto him.
Then he went in for the kill. “What hurt me most was your contemplation. I might have even preferred you being your spitfire self saying, ‘What the hell. I’ll go!’ over your silent vacillation. You don’t have faith in our relationship. You doubt us.”
“I don’t, Max. I really, really don’t!”
“Go with Donovan. I’ll give you your freedom,” he said sadly. It was at this point, I wrapped my arms around him and glued myself to him.
“I don’t want to go,” I said, tears finally falling.
He pushed me away slightly and gave me a sad smile. “I’m letting you go. Do what
you want to do, be with whomever you want to be. Figure out what you want, and with whom you want it.”
This statement almost gave me hope that maybe we were taking a respite from one another for the month that he was away. It was almost too good to be true. He was giving me my freedom for a month to get Donovan out of my system, and all would be back to normal when Max returned in July.
“Max,” I whispered with some hope.
My boyfriend’s next statement destroyed this hope. “As I don’t expect you to come back to me when I get into town, don’t expect me to come back to you, either. Take care, Jane...”
“Max. It’s time to go in,” a girl called out to him.
Max gently unwrapped my arms that were glued to his waist, and looked at me one last time. He gave me a weak smile and walked toward the girl who called his name.
Max left—without a glance back, without a word—with Hannah, onto the next chapter of his life.
June 20, 2013 Twenty-Four Hours, Give and Take
I slowly backed into one of those plastic chairs after Max left me, and thought through what Max accused me of, what I had done wrong, and where I would go without Max. All day long, I dreaded this scene between us, and I knew everything was going to be different. I knew he was angry, I knew he wouldn’t forgive me, and I knew I blew it.
At this moment, I felt so numb. It didn’t seem real. This couldn’t be happening to me, to us, when less than twenty-four hours ago, we were moving the last of our furniture into our new home. Less than twenty-four hours ago, we had made love on the rug of our new living room, ordered pizza, and messed around some more till we absolutely had to leave, because I had to prepare for my trial today. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Max told me how much he loved me, how much he wanted us to be together forever, and how much he wanted to see what an offspring would look like between the two of us. How could things go so wrong in less than twenty-four hours?
“Jane.”
“MAX!” He was back. He came back to see me, to make up with me, to love me.
I stood up from the seat and practically mowed him down with my enthusiasm. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge him, nor our situation. He gave it some time, he understood that what had happened this morning was nothing serious, and we’d move on with our lives.
“I couldn’t decide what to do with your birthday present, so I held onto it, but I decided I don’t want to hold onto this gift like I did the last time. I want a clean break.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a sky blue Tiffany box. “Happy Birthday. Do what you like with this. I already have one too many of these in my possession.” He plopped it in my hand and walked away.
Max’s action just now was the meanest thing he’s ever done to me. If Max’s break-up speech was a knife to my heart, then him raising my hope by making me think that possibly he had forgiven me, and given me another chance, was stabbing me repeatedly with the knife just to insure that I was dead.
Whatever this gift was that I held, I didn’t want to know. I almost threw it in the trashcan, but I wanted the satisfaction of throwing it back in his face. I was pissed. I was royally pissed that he came back only to rub it into my face that he dumped me, and was giving me my gift so there would be no more reminders of me. After seven months of building a relationship, if he was going to throw me away for a misunderstanding (okay, I know it was a bit more than a misunderstanding), I wasn’t going to mourn him.
“You want to go home?” Nick appeared out of nowhere.
I ignored him, went to the departure screen next to me, made a phone call, and made plans of my own to move on!
“Can you make my excuses to everyone for me and tell them I needed to leave for a few days? I’ll call Gimpy and let him know I’m taking a few days off from work.”
“Where are you going?”
Instead of answering my brother, I took out my cell phone and purchased a very expensive last minute plane ticket. What the hell, I decided to go for the gusto and booked myself a first class seat (in all cash—no free upgrade, no points used) to be on a red-eye flight in comfort.
“What the hell are you doing? You don’t even have a change of clothes. Where are you going last minute?”
“I need a few days away and there’s something I need to do and it can only be done on the other side of this airport. Thanks for the ride. I’ll text when I land.” I gave my brother a quick hug and ran to catch my flight that was leaving in forty minutes.
Why were there so many freakin’ people flying on a Thursday at midnight? Didn’t these people have to work the next day? I was so annoyed with how slowly the check-in process was going. We moved like cattle in this Autopia-at-Disneyland line, when I realized my check-in line was separate from this one. Once I switched, I breezed through the line and went straight for Gate 48A. My gate was 58B, but I had a bit of unfinished business with one Max Davis!
I ran to 48A, scanned the room and found the large group of volunteers all in high spirits, even Max. That pissed me off even more. I walked straight up to the group who saw me coming. They all stared and wondered what the hell I was doing on this side of the airport. They probably thought I was here to beg Max to come back to me. Hannah, the bitch, sat right next to Max—I do not care anymore, I do not care anymore—and her mouth was wide open from the shock of seeing me. Max actually had a chuckle in his eyes as soon as the surprise wore off. He, too, probably thought I was coming over to plead my case one more time. Well, buddy, you’re in for the shock of your life if you think I’m groveling to you.
Max didn’t even show the courtesy of standing up to greet me. He stayed seated, with that bitch next to him, so I decided that if he wanted a public showdown, I’d give him one. I threw the Tiffany box at him and it bounced off his chest and into his hands.
“Keep it for your collection!” I said firmly, but calmly, and walked away.
Even though curiosity was killing this cat, I didn’t turn around to see Max’s reaction to what I’d just done. I kept walking down the airport looking for my gate, hoping that Max would run over and stop me. I didn’t feel that tap on my shoulder as I’d hoped, and no one grabbed me from behind to tell me he loved me. All I was left with were uncontrollable tears. That split second of anger towards Max made me feel even worse. I now knew for sure that we were over, and that Max was done with me.
With my (very expensive) ticket in hand, I sat in my seat headed for Chicago to see my best friend, Becky. She was the one I called earlier, and though timing-wise everything worked out so I could throw the gift back at Max and get on a plane right before take-off, life-wise, nothing worked out. A few days with Becky would hopefully put my perspective back in order, so I could move on to the next phase of my life.
June 24, 2013 7 Stages of a Break-up
Murphy’s law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Case in point, an ugly break-up leads to a hideously expensive plane ticket, which leads to insomnia and thus, no need for this flat bed. This case of insomnia led me to read every magazine available in the front cabin of the plane, and I came across some woman’s magazine that had an article written just for me. The author described the 7 stages of a break-up and just to push myself into an even deeper depression, I had to read it.
Stage 1—Deep Shock: “What the hell just happened?”
Um...yeah...! What the hell did just happen? I lost the man I considered to be my happily ever after. I threw back a Tiffany box which probably contained some form of jewelry, in his face, in front of a gaggle of people, which probably pissed him off even more. Plus, he went off with his ex who was just waiting for us to break-up so she could take my place. Was I really the star of my own life? If someone was scripting this for me, could she go back to her Word document and rewrite this scene, or just delete the last few altogether?
“You look like hell!” Becky was waiting for me with a sign that read—“The girl who just broke up with Max Davis!” as I got off the plane.
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br /> “What the hell, Beck? Is this sign necessary?”
She laughed. I laughed. We both started howling in the middle of the airport.
“Yeah, it was necessary. Look at how it made you laugh.” Becky was the ultimate best friend. “You do understand that I had to get up awfully early to make this sign and get my ass over here to pick you up. O’Hare is not an easy place to get to, nor to navigate. So be grateful I’m here!”
“I am grateful you’re here, but it’s all your brother’s fault that I’m in this mess, so you need to clean it up for him.”
“It’s always his fault. Growing up, we used to blame everything on Donovan, because my parents never got mad at him. Just like your brother Jake, Donovan was the golden child.”