I don’t know if it’s getting dumped or the popcorn kernel lodged between my teeth, but the sliding glass door has caught my attention. Behind it, a balcony. Beyond that, a ten story drop. But I don’t want to die; I feel like dying, but I don’t want to die.
The cat keeps staring at me. It’s her cat. We never liked each other, me and the cat. Now, she’s all I’ve got left. I jab at the popcorn kernel with my tongue. All it does is flap, like an elephant’s ear in the wind. I tickle the cat’s forehead, not to stimulate her, but to simulate the feeling of touching Lindy’s skin. A smooth wind blows outside the glass door. The popcorn kernel is from last night, still salty and reminding me of what it tasted like to be engaged to my best friend. She took the toothpaste with her.
“You know there’s no rules to breaking up,” she says. “We can act however we want to act.” We’re sitting outside of work smoking together. Still working together.
“I don’t want to be just friends.”
“Why does there always have to be titles?” She asks.
“If you’re breaking up with me, I don’t want to be anything.”
“Not even friends?”
“I don’t want to be friends.”
I fall asleep for 45 minutes on the couch. I wake up to 17 text messages. I’d told my mom back in Michigan what had happened just before passing out. During my nap, she’d notified the entire bloodline.
“Are you okay?”
“You better just be sleeping!”
“Do you have anywhere to go there so you’re not alone?”
I have a voicemail. I don’t think I could ever do it, jumping ten stories. It’s not the wreckage I think about, but the fear of regretting the decision immediately after jumping. The regret would ruin those liberating seconds just before my blood painted the cement.
“Hi…um…I know you probably don’t want to talk right now but I’m kind of calling just to check in…I’m really sorry that all of this is happening…I just really feel like this is probably the best thing to do right now…um…I think I need to get my priorities in order before I include somebody else in my life and I think now is a good time to try to separate our lives a little bit…um…to hopefully set up a more successful life in the future…”
I’ve been included in her life for three fucking years.
Our lease in downtown Tampa ends in eight days. We’d spent the last several weeks looking for apartments in Sarasota, eventually applying to one. We’d been accepted based on our accumulated incomes. She told me today she’s moving into the place next week. Alone. I have eight days to find an apartment on a part-time fry-cook, full-time student income. This lands me on Craigslist. The first ad I come across:
“Can you keep daddy happy——→ Sexy Sugar babe Gets her Bills Covered!”
Our apartment is a studio, about 750 square feet. In one corner, I sit on the couch looking at keeping daddy happy. In the other, my ex-fiance sleeps soundly. This was the space she wanted.
It all started last week. We’d been working fifty hour work weeks a piece to finance our new apartment, and it was our only day off together. I suggested golfing or gambling or drinking. We were still laying in bed far into the afternoon when she received a text from a coworker.
“Mel needs her shift covered tonight.”
“And you’re going to take it?”
“I think I have to.”
“But it’s our only day off together.”
“I have to, babe.”
I began pouting. She got ready for work.
“You’re really going to take that shift?”
“I already said I would.”
“You’re being selfish.”
“We need money and Mel needs help. How is that selfish?”
Nostalgia for the day off we were supposed to have but never would boiled over. I looked her in the face.
“I don’t want to be with you anymore.” I made direct eye contact the entire sentence, a rarity she had to notice. My hand cut across my throat for dramatic effect. I stormed out of the apartment. I was single by the time the door slammed shut.
Several days later, a coworker asks me at the bar, “Did you hear Mel’s sister is still in the hospital from that car accident?”
“Can we fix this?” I try to sound masculine, but it’s obvious I’m fighting tears.
“You’ve asked me this seven times already, Alex. I don’t know.”
“Do you even want to?”
“I don’t know.”
There’s a silence over the phone for several seconds before the line goes dead.
It’s been a week and nothing’s changed. Life inside me has withered away. Still, I truck on. “How are you feeling?” My mom texts me.
“Fine. Tired.”
“What are you going to do?”
I don’t respond. She was supposed to come back to the apartment tonight, but got drunk instead. The thought of chemically morphing my already unstable conscious makes me nauseous. This is the longest I’ve been sober in months.
“You loved her. She loved you. Maybe it’s just over.” I write on a sticky note to remind myself during the next panic attack. I wad the paper up before the ink dries.
“Friends?” She stretches her right hand out toward me. We’re smoking on the bench at work again.
“You want a handshake?”
“This is what friends do.”
I shake her hand unenthusiastically.
“That’s a limp grip.” Every time I see her now, instead of a kiss on the cheek, she sticks her hand out like a nervous intern at a business firm. I never thought I’d say it, but I’d prefer to just not touch her at all.
Deep breath. My heart doesn’t sink when I take deep breaths. Deep breath. I’m moving in with a friend from work while she takes the apartment. It was either that or Sugar Daddy. She’s keeping the furniture I bought on a credit card that I still can’t pay off.
Sometimes, I text myself just to hear the phone vibrate. I’m paying $120 a month for an alarm clock.
“I’ll take care of it,” she says, outside at work.
“How?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” She ashes her cigarette in the gravel. “I have to go back inside.” She reaches her hand out for a handshake.
She thinks she missed her period.
“Say anything if you still love me.” I text her.
“Anything.”
Back in February, for Valentine’s Day, she surprised me with a gift. It was a tattoo. On herself.
“This way you can’t get mad at me for forgetting to wear my ring,” She says, stretching her left hand out. On her ring finger is a capital A for Alex.
“What happens if we ever break up?” I ask her.
She tells me the same thing she will tell her next boyfriend. “Easy. It’s an A. A for Asshole.”
∞
Alex Taylor is a graduate student for Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. Alex obtained his BA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI where he was born and raised. Alex studied abroad in Florence, Italy for several months and is tragically a Detroit Lions fan for the rest of his life.
Follow him on Twitter: @ataylor244
And Instagram: @ataylor244
