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He might be a jerk, but he’s nice to look at. Also, since he’s a huge dick, I don’t feel even remotely bad for objectifying him.
Over the past several days I’ve started switching it up in the morning. I grab my paper five minutes earlier than usual on Tuesday, and half a second after I open my door, Jerkwad does too. The next day I’m seven minutes late, and still, there he is. Every single day I match his weird underwear with a different sports bra and running shorts. I even bought new ones so I could keep up with the ostentatious patterns he seems to favor. Like I said, it’s borderline obsessive.
I’m pretty sure this is his way of trying to make me feel like an ass for keeping tabs on the women coming and going from his place. But come on—there were at least five women in the first two weeks, not counting the housekeeper, if that’s even what she is.
I have a super-early morning on Friday. I’m helping out a client who desperately needs the PT but is going out of town for the weekend, so I schedule her in at five thirty. It means I’m out the door hours before the paper is even delivered.
Working at the clinic has been great. Pattie and Jules are becoming real friends I can rely on, and I’m generally able to avoid interacting with Joey because most of his clients are scheduled in the afternoons or evenings.
While I’m definitely getting over him, he seems to be having difficulty letting it go. Every time we’re in a room alone, which isn’t very often, thankfully, he makes nice with me. Once he tried to hug me, so I gave him a jab to the kidneys. That was the last time he attempted physical contact.
Today our appointments are opposite each other, so whenever he has a break, I’m with a client, and whenever I have a break, he’s training someone. I may have orchestrated this on purpose.
At the end of the day I change into street clothes and grab my bag from my locker, wondering if Jerkwad missed our underwear fashion show today. Tomorrow I’ll bring my A game to make up for it. I smile at the thought, but it quickly disappears when I turn to find Joey crowding me.
“Hey.” He does that weird, awkward, pretend-shy thing where he jams his hands in his pockets and kicks the end of my shoe. It’s very grade school. I used to think it was cute. Now all I want to do is kick him in the shin, hard, while wearing steel-toed boots. Unfortunately that’s workplace harassment.
I shoulder my backpack and try to step around him, but he mirrors the movement. I sidestep the other way, and he does too. It’s like a bad rendition of do-si-do. I fight the urge to maim him and sigh instead. “What do you want?”
He leans against the lockers, getting all up in my personal space, especially since mine is the last one in the row, which means I end up between him and the wall. “It feels like we haven’t talked in forever.”
I blink but don’t respond, because really, what can I even say to that?
“Can we go for coffee or something?”
“No. We can’t.” I wish I had a cool superpower that would allow me to scale walls or jump really high so I could get away from him without having to make physical contact. It’s been weeks, but I still don’t have the desire or energy to deal with him, so generally I don’t. I dislike confrontation, and I fear that I’ll lose it on him when we finally do talk, and work would not be the ideal location for that to happen.
“Why not?”
“Because you were warming your dick in a vagina that wasn’t mine.”
He makes a face like he doesn’t appreciate the image I’ve painted. I don’t particularly like it either, but it is accurate. “Come on, Stevie. You can’t be mad at me forever.”
I put a hand in front of his face, and he takes a step back, possibly because he thinks I’m going to hit him. It’s definitely something I’d consider if I wasn’t so opposed to domestic violence. Self-defense is a whole different beast, though. “First of all, you don’t get to tell me how to feel about any of this, particularly how long I’m allowed to be angry. As far as I’m concerned, I wasted a year of my life being your girlfriend, and I have zero plans to waste more time, emotion, or energy on anything related to you.”
“I made a mistake.” He’s whiny rather than remorseful.
“How many times did you happen to make that mistake?”
“I was alone out here for two months.”
Well, now I know it wasn’t an isolated incident. “A mistake becomes a choice when you make it more than once. Looks like maybe you should’ve thought about the consequences before you made yours.”
