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I slam the door behind me, my heart racing. My mom comes out of the kitchen, towel in hand, with a questioning expression across her face.
“Becca, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I turn toward her and the nausea hits me instantly. I put my hand over my mouth and begin to rush to the restroom, barely making it before my dinner rises back up. I feel my mom behind me at some point, pulling my hair back.
I don’t know how long I kneel there, emptying the contents of my stomach until I’m dry heaving. I reach for tissues, but my mom is there, using the washcloth she was carrying, to wipe the sweat and tears that are covering my face. Luckily Grant is in bed or else he would be in here asking me twenty questions. And I am still processing the answers to them myself.
Shane just broke up with me. He just walked away from us and our plans. He took the coward’s way out, and the only thing I have to fire back with iswhy? What happened from the moment we stood as graduates to when he drove up to my porch that made him do this one-eighty?
He looked broken when he was out there. He looked devastated, and the reason why he’d do this to us still makes no sense. I feel the nausea come back to me, but this time I try to control myself by taking some deep breaths.
Soon I look up at my mom and tell her, “Shane just left me. He threw us away like what we built means nothing to him.”
The tears begin again, this time a sob breaks free, and I crumble all over again. I feel devastated and lost all at once. Everything I was looking forward to in my future, in our future, has vanished. What just happened?
My mom kneels down at my level and pulls me into her arms. She rubs circles around my back, giving me that space to cry and feel the pain that’s drowning me. She whispers that she loves me and that she’s not going anywhere. She strokes my hair and kisses the top of my head. She comforts me and, yet, all I feel is empty.
I feel like my heart will never be whole again. He took a piece of me with him, if not my entire heart, with the way I feel like an empty shell of myself. I’m replaying everything he said to me, and I start to feel my tears lessen and my anger sink in. How can my emotions swing like a pendulum in such a way? I am furious and devastated all in one breath. His words are on repeat in my mind.
“Becs, you know this is best. I’m starting on a new path with the Navy, and you’re going to do amazing things with your life. Pursuing medicine has always been your dream. So now you can do so, without anything holding you back.”
What the actual fuck is happening in my life right now? I need to get out of this nightmare right now.
I pull myself out of my mother’s embrace, getting up to stand. She does the same and simply looks into my eyes. The love she has for me is palpable at this moment. I see my pain in her eyes. And Shane put that there. He did this to me. He did this to our future. I begin to move, my hands balling into fists. He pursued me all those years ago. He was my first love. He was my first everything. And now he’s my first ex-boyfriend. My ex-partner.
He was always the reason for my happiness, and now he’s the reason for my pain. He shares all my highs, and now he holds my biggest low since my dad passed away. I’m not just angry, I’m lost in a way I never expected to be. I feel like a knife is cutting into my chest. I feel physical pain at the way he has gone from what awaits me in my future to the pain in my present.
My mom puts her arm around my shoulders and steers me upstairs. She walks with me, helping me get ready for bed, pulling back the covers so I lay down. She tucks me in, leaves my room for some time, and returns with a cup of tea for the two of us. She then walks out my door and comes back with her own pillow.
She takes it upon herself to lay next to me and lets me cry until there are no more tears left for me to shed. She lies with me and simply says she’s going to help me through this and that she loves me. My eyes grow heavy and soon I’m asleep. I have a restless night, dreaming of Shane’s words, and the vision of him turning his back on me and leaving me stranded on my porch.
* * *
I wake up the next morning with what I can only imagine feels like a hangover. I have never been a drinker, even at high school parties we frequented. Shane was never into that either, so we simply found our high with one another. I blink my eyes ever so slowly, their weight feeling like two sandbags on my eyes due to all my crying last night. With that thought, the realization dawns on me that last night did, in fact, happen, and Shane has walked away from me.
I’m lying on my side facing my window where my mother was lying last night. It’s empty now and I know she’s caring for Grant. She had taken today off to be with me on my first day as a high school graduate. I envisioned today as one where we’d have lunch together and maybe get our nails done.
At some point, I had planned to be at the lake with my friends, soaking up the sun and loving on my boyfriend. I had seen so many of those days ahead as we tried to bottle up the last bits of summer before we all left to pursue our futures. But all that was wiped from the agenda last night when Shane obliterated everything we had planned. I feel the tears filling my eyes again and the beginnings of the headache that’s most likely to stay with me today.
I’m about to move toward the bathroom to grab some headache medication when my bedroom door begins to slowly open. I expect to see my mom, but it’s Ellie’s head that pops in. From the look on her face, I don’t have to rehash last night’s events.
The sympathy in her eyes causes me to break again, and I let the tears fall freely now. She comes rushing toward me, pulling me into a hug. We sit there and like the best friend I know she is, she cries with me because my pain is hers too now. We were all a unit and losing Shane feels like our puzzle will never be complete again.
Once I stop this session of my emotional downfall, I pull back. Both of us grab tissues to wipe away the mess we’ve made from our faces.
I can’t help but ask, “How did you find out? Did Shane go see you?”
She shakes her head.
“No, he swung by Beau’s house last night and I happened to be there. We thought he was swinging by so all of us could drive to grad night together, but when he pulled Beau aside to speak to him, that’s when I knew something was wrong. I saw the expression on Beau’s face go from calm to confused. Then he was furious as Shane walked away. He kept yelling about what a mistake he was making and that he couldn’t do this to all of us, saying he’d regret this decision the moment he was out of Nebraska and without you in his life. But Shane just kept walking. Gone was the Shane we know so well. He was rigid, like he was moving on the accord of someone else’s orders. He was on a mission to let go of you and all of us as well.”
Ellie shakes her head. She looked devastated and I couldn’t blame her. We were all so close, and any plans Shane and I had made always included eventually being around Beau and Ellie in some way.
Ellie continues, “Beau tried to call his house afterward, but no one picked up.”
I begin to get out of bed. I start to move around my room, looking in my drawers, looking for clothes to change into.
Ellie notices my actions and asks, “What are you doing, Becca? Where are you going?”
