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My hands remained on the wheel until, with a deep sigh, I engaged the parking break and turned the car off. The radio died and, with it, the Nirvana that had been playing. For a moment, I sat in silence at the steering wheel, trying to muster up the energy to get up and go inside, where I feared the reaction that I’d receive.
Eventually, I managed to get out of the car and once I did that, I could use the forward momentum of swinging one leg in front of the other to go into the house.
"Hey, Hannah," I said as I walked inside. I didn't have to greet her anymore. We weren’t a thing. We were just roommates. Roommates who used to share a bed, but were now pretending that there wasn’t anything between us. Sure, the conversation would be awkward, but it was preferable to silence, and at least I could tell myself that I was trying to remain nice to her.
My dog, Bagel, ran down the hall and jumped up on me, licking my face. “Hello, Bagel!” I said, rubbing behind her ears and looking into her eyes. She was a pit bull that I rescued from the local shelter. They told me that she had been covered with fleas and was emaciated when she arrived, though they helped put more meat on her bones. When I first met her, I could still see her rib cage, but her tail immediately wagged back and forth, completely out of control. You could say it was love at first sight and, though she was a demanding dog who refused to leave my side when I was at home, there hadn’t been one day that I regretted having her in my life since I adopted her.
Hannah reacted entirely differently. She hadn’t responded to my greeting; instead, she just looked at me from the kitchen island, a glare as if I'd forgotten something. Our anniversary wouldn't have been for another two months, but as we were broken up, it was hard to imagine she’d be mad at me about that. And her birthday wasn’t for another eight months.
"Is everything okay?"
“She never gets excited when I come home,” she told me. She was referring to Bagel. Bagel loved everybody. She just happened to love me a bit more. Maybe it was because I fed her, took her on walks and played with her. Or maybe it’s because it had been ten hours since she’d last seen me. Or maybe we just had a special connection. Bagel knew that I’d saved her life.
Either way, Hannah did not like that the dog obviously favored me.
“It’s just because I’ve been gone all day,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing personal.”
That was a lie. I knew it was a lie and so did she, but it didn’t matter. No one could truly know exactly what a dog was thinking.
“You’re home late. Where have you been?" she asked.
Sometimes I didn’t have an answer to her questions, or at least one she’d be comfortable with. But today I had a good excuse for coming home late.
"I was at work," I said, petting Bagel and listening to the chime of her tags as I did so. "I had to fit in a few more patients today.”
"Mmm-hmm," she said, a bit of skepticism in her voice, as if I was being cross-examined by a prosecutor. This was not off to a rolling start. I didn't do anything wrong. I was confident in that. And yet, the way she looked at me filled me with guilt as my brain racked itself, trying to figure out if there was anything I hadn’t told her. Any secret I’d been sitting on that, if she found out, I’d be in deep trouble. A betrayal of a relationship that we weren’t even in anymore.
It was crazy that I was on pins and needles with her. I’d never cheated on her. Not once. She hooked up with a college buddy of mine at one point when we were together, but she was drunk, and I forgave her. I was less forgiving of him, but our friendship was on the way out anyway.
"Late at work?" she asked.
"Yeah, I had a last minute patient that I had to work into the schedule and it pushed me behind. Then I stuck around to handle the notes and record-keeping."
She was an extremely jealous woman and, when we were together, much of the time within the relationship was spent trying to ease that jealous side of her. Eventually, I learned that nothing would fill that hole of insecurity she had. No matter what I did or how much I insisted that she was the one woman in my life, it would never be enough for her. And so we broke up. It was a mutual decision. Or at least we agreed to call it a mutual decision. It was my decision. I just got her to agree that it was what was best for us.
I thought it would get easier once we were broken up and just roommates, but, in fact, it made the jealousy even worse.
Bagel ran off and came back with a tug toy. I pulled on it and she pulled back, playfully growling at me, her tail flapping back and forth like a metronome for “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
“I’m trying to talk to you, Leo!” Hannah yelled. “You’re ignoring me!”
There was nothing I could do. If I ignored Bagel, then Bagel would nudge me to play. If I ignored Hannah, she would scream at me until I paid attention to her. I was only one person, and both of them were demanding my full and undivided attention. But the reward for one was playtime and a happy tail whereas the other one just wanted to scream at me.
“Bagel needs a walk,” I said. “Let me take care of her and get her dinner. Give me fifteen minutes, and then we can talk.”
Hannah looked at me in disbelief. “Fine,” she said, “at least I know where I stand in this house.”
“Fifteen minutes,” I repeated. “Set a timer. I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed the leash and put it on Bagel, then walked out of the house before Hannah could reply. Part of me wanted to just call Hannah out for how ridiculous she was being.
It was remarkable how when I walked out of the house, it was suddenly like I could breathe again. Work had been back to back patients all day and yet, it wasn’t half as stressful as coming home. That was a problem and it all came from me stupidly thinking that this would work out. Granted, when things got started with Hannah, they were exciting, but the honeymoon ended a long time ago and, for the longest time, we had been clinging to a sinking ship.
As I walked Bagel around the neighborhood, I realized that I was still on board and I needed to bail with or without a life raft.
By the time we made it back to the house, I knew that I wasn’t going to be spending the night there. The question was, how was I going to go in there and pack up without facing Hannah?
Maybe I didn’t have to.
