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“Any way they want,” I say bitterly. “It’s out of my hands.”
“Our hands,” she corrects me.
“Right.”
She keeps looking at me like she’s waiting for me to do something. My frustration at the tabloid, at the day, at the entire situation spills over.
“What do you want me to do, Bailey? It’s out of my hands, all of it.”
This whole situation—hell, this relationship—has been out of my control since the start. I don’t know why I ever thought otherwise.
“Do you realize since we started this thing I’ve lost my reputation, my relationship with my family, and now I’ve damn near lost my job,” I say, running my hands through my hair in frustration. “Twice. I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“I want you to fight for us,” she says, visibly upset.
“That’s the thing, Bailey.” I turn my back to her, because I don’t know if I can say it while I look at her. “It seems like all I’ve done is fight for us. I’m tired of fighting.”
Worse, I’m tired of feeling like I’m the only one who’s had to fight. What has Cooper given up for us? Or Bailey? Neither of them have put half as much on the line as I have.
“What are you saying?” she asks. I don’t turn around at the question, but her tone makes it obvious: Bailey’s furious.
“I’m just saying I’m tired,” I say, equivocating.
“Then I guess you’ll be relieved to hear Cooper’s already ended things,” she says without inflection. I spin around to see her standing by the door.
“What are you talking about?”
“I went to his apartment,” she says, her chin rising. “He wouldn’t answer my calls. When I got there, he was drunk, but he made it very clear this… this thing between us is over.”
“That’s what he told all those people online, but I thought—”
“You thought wrong.” Bailey looks me dead in the eye. “We both did. I’m going home. Maybe it’s best if we don’t see each other for a while.”
“Bailey, no.”
She shakes her head when I head for the door to try to stop her.
“You’re not the only one who’s had to fight, Drew,” she says. I hear the tears in her voice, though her eyes stay dry. “Only difference is, I thought you two were worth it.”
Bailey steps out into the cold, pulling the door closed with a click.
I’ve had breakups before. Obviously. Even bad breakups, the kind where I mope around my place and don’t shower and get depressed and skip the gym and forget to eat.
That’s not what this is.
My entire life has been upended, and all I can think about is them.
It’s been eighteen days. Eighteen days of silence, eighteen mornings of waking up and wishing I hadn’t. Eighteen hangovers. Maybe nineteen. Drinking isn’t usually a vice for me, but I can’t think of anything better to do.
I can’t go out with my coworkers, not without constant jokes about the tabloid article or the newly-spread rumor about Cooper and me making out backstage. My parents have called a few times. Tired as I was of fighting their expectations, I’m not too keen on the idea of letting them know that they were right to expect my latest relationship to fail. Maybe I just don’t want to tell them the truth. It didn’t just fail on its own. I set it on fire and scattered the ashes.
Every now and then a wave of energy surfaces enough to remind me that I didn’t burn it down on my own. Cooper had a heavy hand in it, too. And Bailey, she’s the one who walked away.
I’m not sure which part hurts the most.
“Here,” says Kenna one morning at work. She pushes a bottle of water into my hands.
“Thanks.” I’ve been subsisting on mostly coffee during daylight hours. Kenna’s the only one who bothers me about that. Considering the look she’s giving me right now, I think she’s about to bother me about something else.
