by H. L. Logan
She wiped tears from her eyes. “I know. I know I was shitty, and I didn’t stick up for you, and I acted like you weren’t good enough… but you were. You always were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t know how I lost sight of that. Dating has reminded me of that. No girl comes even close to you. I don’t care about the money anymore or that you don’t have a serious job, that’s fine, it’s all fine with me.”
Ahh, so she was only coming to me after she’d failed in dating other people… romantic.
“You’ll find someone eventually,” I told her coldly.
“I don’t want someone, I want you.”
I was already so sick of this. I’d been filled with disappointment the second I’d realized it wasn’t Emily, and now I just wanted to be alone to deal with those feelings. How the hell was I going to get Julia off my porch?
“Look, it’s seriously inappropriate for you to be here. You abused the information I gave you. You knew I never intended for you to come here, and you didn’t even bother calling before you did? Why? Because you knew I wouldn’t let you come?”
“…I feared that you wouldn’t, yes,” she admitted.
“Julia, that’s so freaking creepy. It’s been two months, and we’ve hardly spoken! Good God, girl, get a grip! Move on with your life! This was just as much your decision as it was mine.”
She reached out for my hand. “One more chance, please. I know you can’t possibly be happy here. I know that you can’t possibly be happy without me. I haven’t had a second of happiness since we ended things. We could be together again.”
I jerked my hand away. “Well, I have had happiness! Like, a lot of fucking happiness without you in my life.”
Her jaw dropped. “You… you have?”
“Yes,” I said definitively.
She took a second to take this in. “You’re lying.”
“No.”
Her eyes were full of hurt as she suddenly realized what I meant. “You met someone.”
“Yeah, I met someone.”
“But… but we’ve only been apart for a couple months,” she said sadly.
“And that’s a long time,” I told her, not bothering to add that I’d met Emily mere days after our break-up.
I also wasn’t going to add that how I felt for Emily was so much different than how I had ever felt for Julia. That she did something for me that Julia never could, and I felt I’d finally found my soul mate. No, I was livid at Julia for showing up this way, but I didn’t feel the need to hurt her any more than I’d already had. I just wanted her to go. Right now, that was all I needed… for her to just leave.
“I’m sorry, Julia, but you’ve got to go,” I told her, a little less coldly but still very seriously.
“No!” she snapped. “No, I can’t! I can’t just leave you! We need to work this out, we absolutely have to work this out… if we can’t, then…”
“We can’t,” I told her. “I just told you, I’ve moved on. I’m in a different place in my life. You need to move on, too.”
“I won’t!” she bit back. “Whoever you think you’ve moved on to, they’re just a rebound from me! You can’t truly love them. They’re not going to make you feel the way I made you feel.”
She was so wrong. Again, though, she was just hurting. I wasn’t going to make it any worse by pointing out the flaws in her argument.
“If you don’t leave, Julia, I’m calling the cops. You can’t harass me at my house like this. I’m asking you to leave.”
She looked taken aback that I would even make that threat.
“You’re serious? You’d call the cops on me?”
“If you won’t leave, yes, absolutely,” I answered.
“…So, you’re seriously over us?”
“Yes,” I said again.
She nodded slowly. She looked completely dejected, but she seemed to finally be starting to get it.
“Okay… alright, fine. I guess I won’t bother you anymore,” she said. She put my box of stuff on the ground and turned away from me.
She walked slowly and, oddly, I knew what she was thinking. She was expecting I might chase after her, the same way I’d thought Emily would chase after me. I guess that was a disappointment we’d both experience.
As she turned the corner down the hall, something caught my eye. Ryan’s apartment was the very last one in this hall, and on the wall adjacent to our door was a window that showed outside the front of the apartment building. I saw a car pull up which normally wouldn’t catch my attention, but it was a brightly colored yellow one which I recognized as the pizza delivery.
I was about to call out to Ryan to let him know food was here, and then something else caught my eye.
Next to the pizza delivery was a car I knew all too well. It was the same car that Emily had, and it immediately made me reminisce about her.
But no, it wasn’t just the same car Emily had… it was her actual car. And she was inside it!
I stood there, stunned, unsure of what I’d seen at first. Was it really her? Was she really here? But… why would she come here?
There was only one possible reason. She wanted to see me again. She came to talk to me…
She wasn’t coming up, though. She wasn’t leaving her car. I waited for a few minutes. Her head was buried in her hands, so I could only assume she was stressed about coming to talk to me, but even minutes later, she hadn’t lifted her head.
My heart was pounding. I absolutely had to know what she was here for. And I couldn’t wait any longer for her to come to me.
I ran inside to the apartment for just a second to yell to Ryan, “I’ll be right back!”
“Wait, where are you going?” he asked. “What’s going on? Was that your ex?”
But I was already out the door, and I had no time to answer him. I had one focus and one focus only… to get to Emily.
I felt pathetic running to her like this. She was the one who’d dumped me, and again, I really didn’t want to seem this desperate. But this was what I had wanted, for her to come to me. How could I not run to her now?
I didn’t even think about running into Julia again until I was already in the elevator. I was rushing down the hall, and if she continued walking as slowly as she had, there was a good chance I was going to run into her. So, when the elevator doors opened, I was sure to peek through the corners to see if Julia was walking down them. To my relief, I didn’t see her in the building at all.
I got outside and started running to the parking space where I knew Emily had been. But I was stopped in my tracks when it came into view and she wasn’t there any longer.
But how could that be? She was just here. I had just seen her… she’d driven all the way to my apartment and had just left without talking to me? Why would she have done that?
She must have had regrets. She must have felt torn about it and doubted whether it was a good decision to come see me.
And once again, she had me heartbroken. That girl knew how to break me without even talking to me, wonderful…
I didn’t know what to do here. I was standing in the middle of the parking lot to my own apartment, having just seen the ex I didn’t want to see and missing the ex I did want to see.
I had to rectify the situation. Emily may have driven off, but she couldn’t pretend like she hadn’t come here. She had. And, after everything that had happened, the least she could do was tell me why.
As quickly as I’d run downstairs, I ran upstairs, seeing Ryan holding a pizza as I passed into the living room.
“Kait, what's going on?” she asked.
God, how could I sum this up even relatively quickly?
“Uh, well, my ex Julia just showed up at our door for no damn reason, and I had to tell her to screw off. Then, as I was telling her to screw off, I saw that my ex Emily was sitting in our parking lot. And I don’t want Emily to screw off, so I had to run downstairs to see what she wanted. But by the time I got there, she was gone. So now I’m grabbing my
keys to drive over to her place and ask why she was here and hope that it was a good reason, because I really, really miss her.” I spit all that out at the speed of light as I scooped my keys from the coffee table.
Ryan just blinked at me for a moment.
“So… yeah, I’m gonna go chase her now.”
Ryan laughed. “Yeah, okay, you do that. Please let me know how this dramatic saga ends, I’ve got to know.”
I laughed back. “Yeah, not sure what my life has turned into, but pretty sure it belongs on television. I’ll keep you posted.”
I shut the front door behind me, took a deep breath, and forced myself to walk more slowly downstairs this time. I needed a breather, needed a moment to think things through. I’d just experienced the biggest rollercoaster of emotions. But I was sure of one thing…
I wanted to know how this would end, too.
18
Emily
I wiped the tears from my face before I went inside. At least, to the best of my ability. My eyes were puffy, and it was very obvious that I’d been crying, which I didn’t want Abby to know.
If she saw me, there’d be no avoiding it. I decided I’d just walk in and hope she was in her room or something rather than the living room.
To my dismay, she wasn’t. She was still sitting on the couch eating pizza. I tried to walk straight to my room, but she wasn’t having it.
“Oh my god, Em, what happened?” she asked, easily reading my face.
“Nothing. I’ve got to go,” I told her as I started walking to my room.
“Emily!” she called out after me, but I didn’t answer, nor did I give her time to say anything else. I shut my bedroom door and started to cry some more.
She didn’t come in after me, either. I was grateful for it. I wasn’t surprised, though. She was good at reading people. She knew the right time to stay close and the right time to stay away. Now was the time to stay away, at least for a bit, and let me be sad on my own.
Although sad didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling at the moment. Devastated was more like it. As well as guilty, ashamed, unable to cope with my actions… really, the vast expanse of negative emotions that existed in the human psyche all could have been used to describe me right now.
I just felt awful.
But I couldn’t blame Kaitlyn, not really. What had she done? Moved on? She’d told me full well if I was breaking up with her she wasn’t going to be able to wait for me. I knew that going in. And I’d still left her. That hardly seemed like her fault.
The real question was, what was wrong with me? What was my problem that I constantly needed to get in my own way? Why did I have to destroy my own happiness? For someone who strove for perfection, I was pretty self-destructive.
I wanted to collapse onto my bed and wallow in everything that was making me upset, but I didn’t do that. I refused. I was going to handle this pain the same way I’d been handling all of my pain so far, by studying. Admittedly, the pain I felt now was much worse than anything I’d felt in the past few weeks. I supposed that was because, in the past few weeks, I’d avoided thinking about things. Maybe in a small way, I’d even convinced myself there was a chance that things could still work out with us.
Now, I knew they never would.
I buried myself in a textbook, even though I was completely caught up on all my chapters and had been reading ahead these past few weeks. For this textbook in particular, I only had a few more chapters left. I might as well finish them. Nothing else was going to distract me.
Unfortunately, compared to the last few weeks, reading did little to help me. I still felt all my pain, all my misery, welling up inside my chest. It was like all the pain was physically building up inside me and threatening to burst out. I understood why it was called heartbreak now… it felt like my heart really had broken.
When I’d gotten a few pages into this chapter, I heard the doorbell ring. I decided not to get up and get it, since I knew that Abby was already in the living room. And I had no energy to get up, nor did I want some stranger to see my puffy, streaky face.
I was mildly curious who it could be, though. The only people that ever came to our door were Abby’s friends and people delivering food. Obviously she already had a pizza, so it wasn’t food. And when her friends were dropping by, she usually told me. Although, I guessed she’d expected I’d be out of the house going to talk to Kaitlyn, so it made some sense that she wouldn’t mention it.
I heard the mumbling of voices and then footsteps coming down the hall. Okay, so it probably was one of her friends, I thought to myself. Then, unexpectedly, my door opened, and Abby stood before me.
“Uh, hey, someone is here to see you…”
What the hell? Who could possibly be here to see me? I didn’t have any friends, didn’t have anyone I knew who knew where I lived… there was nobody.
“I don’t want to see anyone,” I told her.
“Not even Kaitlyn?” she asked.
My head shot up to her. “What?’
“Uh…” She looked incredibly awkward. “Kaitlyn is here to see you? Do you want to see her, or should I tell her to go away?”
My head was spinning. Why would she be here right now? Right after I’d gone to her house? The timing was too weird to be a coincidence.
Had she seen me? And even if she had seen me, why would she be here?
“Yeah… yeah, I’ll see her,” I told her, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But I had too many questions on my mind. I had to have them answered.
“I’ll send her your way, then,” she said. She shut the door and went back out to grab Kaitlyn.
My heart was pounding in my chest. I still couldn’t understand why she’d come here to me if she had already moved on to someone else. Why embarrass me further if she’d seen me run away?
Just seconds later, my door creaked open again, and Kaitlyn was standing in the hall.
“Hello,” she said softly.
“Hi,” I said back, equally as quietly.
We stared at each other in silence for a moment, taking in one another’s presence. At least, I was taking in her presence. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, so seeing her now felt so odd.
“Uh, come in.” I motioned to the bed as I stood up to shut the door behind her. I wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but I knew I didn’t want Abby hearing it. Not before I got to explain things. She took in a deep breath but didn’t say much.
“So… you should probably be the first to talk,” I began for her.
“I should?” she questioned. “Why?”
“Uh… because you’re the one who came here?”
“Yeah… right,” she said, nodding. “I, uh, just…. were you at my apartment?”
Great, so she had seen me. And for some reason, she’d decided to rub that in my face.
“Is that all you came here for?” I asked. “To ask me what I was doing at your apartment complex?”
“Uh, yes,” she said coolly. “I see you at my place, and I’m not allowed to ask you why you were there?”
No, of course she wasn’t allowed to ask! If she’d moved on, the last thing she should be doing was asking me about my business. Wasn’t it hard enough for me to see her kiss a new girl? And she saw me run away, and she didn’t think that was a clear sign I was hurt?
“You can if you want to be a bitch,” I answered equally as coolly.
Her expression turned sour. “A bitch? Really? I’m a bitch just because I want to know why you were at my place?”
“Yeah, if I made it obvious that I regretted going, maybe you should have left it at that. Maybe coming over here and rubbing my nose in my mistakes isn’t the best idea.”
“Right, and I’m the mistake, right?” she asked, looking a little hurt.
“This time, yeah! You are! Like I said, it was obvious that I didn’t want to see you anymore so—”
“How was that obvious?” she cut me off. “Look, clearly coming here was a mistake. Almost as big
of a mistake as I am to you, apparently.”
God, why was she being so bitter to me?! She’d moved on with her life, she was happy again, and I was obviously not. Why couldn’t she just show me some kindness? This was so unlike the Kaitlyn I used to know. The Kaitlyn I used to know had been so compassionate, caring, sweet… maybe she was still bitter about how I’d broken up with her. But if she was with someone she cared about, I didn’t see why that shouldn’t even matter anymore.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her.
She furrowed her brow. “Doing what, Emily? You act like I’m torturing you just by coming here. And, fine, maybe to you, I am. So, I guess I’ll go,” she said as she stood off the bed, “but that was not my intention. And had I known you didn’t want to see me, I wouldn’t have come. I don’t know how you think I was supposed to read your expression through a car window, but clearly it’s been some giant grievance on my part.”
“Through a car window?” I asked, not processing that part.
She looked confused. “Yes… obviously? How else would I have been able to see you?”
So that explained all of it. She didn’t even know what I’d seen. She didn’t know that I knew she was now in a relationship with her ex. She’d seen me in my car….
That still didn’t completely explain why she’d come, if she was with someone new. But it did make the visit a little less cruel.
“Sorry…” I said quietly. “That’s not how I thought you saw me. I wouldn’t expect you to know I didn’t want to see you through a car.”
“So how did you think I saw you?” she asked. “What other way was there to see you?”
I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Had I not said anything, I would have been able to save myself the grief of explaining what I knew. But there was certainly no going back now.
“You would have seen me… in the hallway.”
“In the hallway?” she asked. “No… I couldn’t have. I saw you in your car, and I waited for you to come upstairs, but you never did, you just sat there for minutes. And, when I was looking through every hallway when I went downstairs to talk to you, you were nowhere.”