Page 4 of Fate Fiction

I’d been anticipating it with a bitter-tasting apathy. A six year relationship could grow stale, I knew that. In a halfhearted attempt to keep us from barreling into the ground of mere coexistence, I had tried to force proximity and connection in hopes it would turn into love.

Our entire final season felt like a compilation of me draining everything I had into our relationship.

Why had I tried so hard to resuscitate something that had been dead for so long there were maggots boring holes into its skin?

On day three of separation, when I was fresh in my “not giving a fuck” phase, Nick reached out. He wrote a half-assed apology for his actions and begged to come back. It was satisfying to leave him on read for two more days while I changed the locks and texted the neighbors and landlord to tell me if he showed up.

Another text showed up from him. He apologized again, more desperate this time. After getting my continued cold shoulder he finally admitted over a lengthy block of text he had in fact been seeing someone else—a coworker who he hit it off with at a work happy hour two fucking years ago.

The news had sent a searing anger throughout every one of my nerve endings, coupled with a sick satisfaction that I was right all along. I filled the following two weeks by packing up his things neatly into boxes and stacking them by the door like a Jenga tower of a failed relationship.

I overestimated the number of boxes needed to scrape Nick’s existence from the apartment, a stack of unused boxes stood nearly as tall as the ones I used. It was painfully obvious that he was a guest, not only in the apartment, but in my entire life.

Today, he was set to make his less-than-triumphant return. I paced by my bay window, watching for his black Ford Bronco on the street.

A rumbling engine sliced through the quiet residential neighborhood, and I preemptively unlocked the front door. I watched him hop out of his driver seat and amble down the street, balancing a drink tray and bag from MokaMolé, our favorite coffee spot a few blocks over.

“Hi,” I said as I swung the door open. He stood stiffly on the front porch. “Come on in.” I invited him inside as if he was a dowdy vampire who needed permission to cross the threshold. He slumped inside and set down his modest peace offering.

“Uh, hey,” he said flatly. His eyes darted over at the packed and labeled boxes. Nick was sporting a two-day beard and rumpled pants. Something about his face looked pinched and weathered, akin to a Halloween mask that had been left in a basement for too long.

Was he always this ugly? I thought as I welcomed him inside.

He looked like he’d aged a decade in the few weeks we’d been apart. When we first met, I considered him handsome in a “I’d fall in love if I saw you singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ at karaoke,” sort of way. A perfect portrait of a stereotypical South Boston Italian man in his twenties.

Nick’s brown eyes softened when they met mine, and he stiffly cleared his throat. “Damn even when you hate me you still manage to pack and organize all my shit.” His voice was partygirl raspy, an aftereffect of what I could only assume was another night spent at the bar.

“Cleaned too,” I smirked, relishing in how pitiful he seemed. “I did whatever dirty laundry you still had here.”

And I don’t hate you, but I do think you’re a useless, spineless, cheating piece of shit.

He settled into a chair as though he’d never sat in one before. I crossed my legs on the couch. He looked around the living room like he was seeing it for the first time and hadn’t spent the last five years here. We sat silently across from one another, a standoff between two worn out cowboys. He kept glancing at my thighs on the cushions. I had decided to mark the occasion by looking as “Princess Diana in her revenge dress” as possible and wore his favorite vintage Levi’s of mine. They were working.

“Well, I guess it’s over for us, huh.” Nick swung his legs back and forth and stared at the floor. He was acting more like a kid at the principal’s office than a grown man crawling back to his ex’s house.

A laugh burst out of me. “You cheated on me for two years, it seems like it has been over for a while.”

These two weeks had flown past with little sadness. Even when my two best friends, Andrea and Caroline, came over to help pack and provide moral support, all I did was assign them tasks to make the work go faster.

Now, looking at Nick and how small and pathetic he appeared, I saw the six years fly between us in a montage.

Appropriately cinematic, he and I met by bumping into one another at a coffee shop after we grabbed each other’s orders accidentally. I was an intern at the Museum of Fine Arts and he was working part time at Fenway Park, so wonderfully Boston. We hit it off instantly and sat down at the coffee shop for hours. We both missed our shifts that day, but when you’re young and stupid, work takes a backseat to budding romance.

“Dani, I’m sorry. I know it means nothing now, but I regret it, truly.” Nick had been raised in a household of sons that seldom addressed their emotions, either due to the rampant masculinity or lingering Catholic guilt. Apologies were a foreign language to men like him. This much was obvious from the way he squirmed in the seat of the vintage rust-colored accent chair. He was looking at the ground, the wall, the couch, anything but me.

“Haven’t you been staying with her these two weeks?” The question didn’t need any real answer, I already knew he was. Caroline taught a yoga class in the Seaport neighborhood and saw him and the mystery woman walking into an overpriced luxury apartment building.

“Of course she lives in fucking Seaport,” Caroline had said when she called me immediately after the encounter.

Nick sat and slowly looked up, doe eyed. His sad brown eyes tugged at something that told my over-apologetic brain that I should be the one apologizing, but logic swooped in and stopped the sorry before it formed on my lips.

I’d done nothing but put up with Nick and all his accompanying nonsense for years on end, the cycle would finally end.

“Listen, Nick, I appreciate your gift of appeasement,” I rattled the ice in the latte, “and you apologizing, but what did you expect would happen here? You cheated on me for two years. You clearly never liked me⁠—”

“I loved you, Dani. A lot,” he cut in.

“Loved me so much you had a side piece? Or did you trip and fall into her bed over and over?”