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My Barrett.
Made up. Fiction. Gone.
The man I loved doesn’t exist.
He didn’t love me. He felt sorry for me.
How pathetic did he think I was? The way his guilt mixed in with empathy and sorrow. Not to mention loneliness.
I was his atonement, I think. Or rather, I wonder. I heard people talking the day after: New Year’s Day. Something about how he didn’t mean to. Didn’t mean to lose his dick inside of my vagina, I guess. Didn’t mean to lie, to go to Christmas with me, didn’t mean to tell me all about his life.
What happened between us was an accident. The second tragic accident featuring the us as co-stars.
Oh, how much I hate him.
Want to hate him.
I don’t even know I nodded off until I wake under a hotel awning dreaming something strange, in which I’m saying, “Can’t.”
* * *
Barrett
January 5, 2016
“Hold on now.” The woman holds one finger up. “Say that again?” She’s almost smiling. It’s this weird half smile that’s not a smile. Her head is tilted sideways. I keep waiting for my heart to pound, but I’m steady as a stone as I say it again.
“I’m guilty of a hit and run. On New Year’s Eve, 2012.”
Her lips roll themselves together. I watch her grayish eyebrows tighten and her brown eyes sharpen. I can see her thinking.
“Twelve…” Her cheek indents from where her molars bite down on it, but her gaze is shrewd on mine. “I think I might remember something. Tell me more, mister…?”
“Sergeant Drake.” I blink. “Sorry. My name is Barrett Drake. Retired Army.”
I tell the woman everything I can, omitting every detail that involves my friends. Two hours later, I’m booked into the Breckenridge County Jail.
TWENTY-SIX
Gwenna
January 10, 2016
Gatlinburg
I look funny in the bathroom mirror. Not sexy. Not pretty. Strange. I half-expect to see him standing just behind me. But Barrett is a ghost. He might have been made-up, for how real he turned out to be.
He isn’t here.
He hasn’t called.
He doesn’t care.
Because he never really loved me.
He used me.
He was hurt, and I was here. My heart stings to even think it. I can feel my blood thrum with the want of him. It’s like a drug. An awful drug. The kind of thing that you can never free yourself from once you’ve tasted it.
