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Only a spark of a reminder of how fragile life really was.
“Jonah!”
My eyes shut and I took in a deep breath.
“Jonnnah,” she rang out again. “I need to use the bathroom. Are you done in there?”
I opened the door and was almost pushed into the sink from how fast Wendy burst in.
“Ow, shit!” I instantly felt the quick and intense burn that came from the bottom of a door almost skinning your entire toe.
“Sorry, Jonah, but you were in the way.”
Part of me wanted to snap back. Part of me wanted to say something smart and witty and sharp. Something that would tell her how hurt I was, not just by the fucking toe scalping she had given me, but by the fact that I had felt zero goddamn support from my girlfriend during one of the hardest times of my life.
Instead, I hobbled out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me with a barely audible sigh. I was surprised to see the door hadn’t been thrown off its hinges from Wendy’s intrusion.
No, I wasn’t going to say anything. No need to start something right before an important interview. My headspace was already all kinds of fucked up. Seriously, it was worse than the final episode of Lost up there, and that shit was a huge mess.
So you can imagine.
On the bed, I saw a flash of blue. For a split second I thought Wendy had gone out of her way to find my phone under the dresser and had set it on the bed, screen down.
On closer inspection, it was just the Apple TV remote. My phone was still under the dresser and was it… yup, it was currently blaring out with the alarm I had set to wake me up.
I sighed again, this one more audible. Instead of dropping to my knees, I grabbed the two sides of the dresser and shoved. The dresser slid on the cheap faux-wood floors. My phone was vibrating up against the wall. I reached down and grabbed it, turning off the alarm, then setting it down on the dresser.
The toilet flushed and a few moments later the door opened. Wendy stood there, eyes darting up from her phone for a second before dropping back down.
“You got your phone,” she noted, walking around me and getting back into bed.
“I did.” There was a dark red bottle of Polo cologne. I spritzed a few sprays around my vital areas.
“Kiki’s planning a girls’ trip for the end of this month, Jonah. She wants to make it a two-week Cabo thing. So…”
“So you’re going to be gone for two weeks?”
“It’s a girls’ trip, Jonah. I can’t miss it.”
I walked over to my bedside and grabbed my watch off the nightstand. Part of me wanted to laugh, the other part wanted to shout. She had totally forgotten about my mother’s birthday dinner, one I’d been planning for weeks and one that my mom was excited to have her at.
“I’m sure you can’t miss it, Wendy. I’m sure there’s absolutely zero reason why you should even miss it.”
“See, I knew you’d get it. This is why I’m with you.”
She was as oblivious to my sarcasm as she was to the growing chasm between us.
“I’m heading out,” I said. There was still some time before I had to be at Stonewall for the interview, but I really didn’t want to be inside with Wendy much longer. I figured I’d go and grab a Cuban coffee and some fresh air, along with some much-needed space away from my girlfriend. If only she could go to Cabo now, maybe that would fix us. Maybe her being gone for two weeks was the kind of reset our relationship needed.
Because there was one thing that was a certainty: our relationship needed something. Whether it was a reset or an entire reconstruction, something had to happen, because this wasn’t working. It just wasn’t, and it hadn’t been for a long time now.
“Okay, remember you have to be home today at like four. We have Sandra’s dinner party tonight, and you know everyone’s going to judge us if we get there late.”
“Right.”
A dinner party. Exactly what I wanted to do. Sit around with some other stuffy assholes chatting about the weather or the most recent trending topic on Twitter. Conversation bound to be so vapid and void I would rather talk to Chibby, my pet iguana, than to the group of people Wendy was forcing me to sit down with.
“Don’t be late!” she emphasized as I left the bedroom. In the living room was the stand holding the glass tank that Chibby called home. He was currently sitting on a big gray rock, his head held high toward the light, his eyes trailing me as I crossed the living room and went into the kitchen. There, I quickly chopped him up a bowl of fresh greens and vegetables and went back to his terrarium. His eyes locked on even harder when he realized what I was carrying, and he quickly climbed off the rock and went toward the bowl I had placed down next to the hollow rock holding his water. With a head scratch, I left the little guy to chomp away on his breakfast.
