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“I just assumed,” he said quickly, without missing a beat. “Your two best friends are away on vacation. And you know, with Charlotte at her sister’s bridal party, I just figured…”
Whatever else he said fell on entirely deaf ears. I was too far gone, too numb to the same kinds of control freak bullshit he’d been pulling ever since we broke up. And especially, while we were still together.
“What time were you at my apartment?”
The question was met with another pause, this time so he could figure out the ‘right answer’. There was no right answer of course, but that never stopped someone like Chris.
“Semi-early,” was all he said. “Wee hours of the morning, maybe.”
“But late enough to know I didn’t come home…”
More silence. For some reason, this time, the silence was really bothering me.
“Chris, I… I just don’t know what to say.”
“Then say thanks,” he declared merrily. “Saving that rose, all this time? That was thoughtful. Sweet.”
“It’s not sweet Chris. It’s scary.”
He laughed again, this time more dismissively. “Yeah, okay.”
“No really, it’s totally fucking frightening.”
I heard it through the phone; the tiny gasp he gave when he was usually offended. Most times he was pretending. This time, I wasn’t so sure.
“Stay away from my apartment,” I warned. “It’s not your place anymore. You’re not welcome here.”
The entire conversation had taken place with me standing in my kitchen. I stared down at the garbage, where the dried rose sat on top of a pile of old magazines I’d thrown out. Very much like our relationship.
“Did you hear me?”
He still didn’t answer. I could hear him breathing though. Sitting quietly, on the other end of the line.
“Chris? Chris, I—”
“I’m just looking out for you, Brooke,” he said, in wounded tones. “Making sure you don’t get hurt.”
In the span of the last minute, his whole voice had changed. It was more tense now, more strained. Like a bad cross between manic and nervous.
“Someone sure has to,” he said, before abruptly hanging up.
Twelve
BROOKE
I slept until well into the afternoon. It was something I never did, but somehow it happened. I woke up refreshed and recharged and totally guilt-free. Both from the events of last night, and for shirking the note-taking duties I’d been sorely neglecting.
The first thing I did was grab my marbled notebook and start writing. A stream of thoughts, notes, memories and feelings poured out randomly across the paper. I let them go, jotting down everything I could remember about last night. Every gut instinct, every high and low. All the physical and emotional aspects of what I’d done, including how much I’d loved it, how I just couldn’t seem to get enough.
For a good twenty minutes my brain flowed like a faucet, splashing onto the thread-bound, standard-ruled pages. When it was finally empty I sat back and read it over. First once, then twice, before I started piecing things together.
It wasn’t the fastest way to outline an article, but it was how my mind worked. I called it the ‘vomit’ method, because I generally threw everything up at once. Once I could look down and see everything, I went back and picked out the bits and pieces I wanted, then transferred them to my computer.
An hour and a half later, I came to two realizations. One, that I’d be writing a good portion of the article from the not-so-fictitious perspective of “Hannah”, a single girl involved with three amazing men. I’d share her feelings and her experiences. Her deepest and darkest secrets, as well as those of her simultaneous boyfriends, and their poly lifestyle.
The other thing I realized, was that I knew virtually nothing about Hannah’s boyfriends.
At all.
