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Ten
Sean
Rarely in my life have I led with blind fury, but what Becca did has a fire smoldering within me, embers glowing and ready to ignite at the slightest provocation. I thought the physical act of separating my living space farther away from hers would ease the strain, but it doesn’t. I feel her absence no matter where I am and wish things could’ve been different.
But Becca doesn’t give a damn about me.
If she had, she wouldn’t have thoughtlessly shared something so private and personal as though it were an announcement for a garage sale. I maintain my pissy attitude continually, regularly reminded of what she’s done by seeing random people in town or due to visiting the Public Works building, the first place we met.
When I receive the first dinner from The Blue Heron, a restaurant notoriously upscale and spendy, I believe it must be because of some delivery error. Yet when I read the note with it and see who it’s from…I throw it out. I don’t care how expensive that meal must’ve been. Anything from Becca just feels like a bribe, a method for her to find some in with me that she doesn’t deserve.
But then she sends another the following night. And another after that. I make the mistake of opening the second one when I’m starving after working overtime, and the flavors of fresh salmon, fresh and buttery green beans with twice-baked potato wedges—I can’t bear to toss it. As I eat, I read this evening’s note, a clone of the first one.
From then on, I can’t ignore them, can’t merely trash them. They keep coming, night after night after night to the point that I wonder how much this has to be costing her. Christmas comes and goes, and I spend it alone, as I have for the past several years. My parents live on the West Coast, and my schedule won’t allow for the time off. Yet this year, unlike others in recent memory, seems somehow emptier. More depressing than usual.
I toss and turn every night without fail as if missing Becca, but that makes no sense. We never slept together after getting sweaty with each other. Yet when I wake from a vibrant sex dream—one where I’m buried in her up to the hilt, her screaming out “Hottie,” over and over—I wake remembering that was real, a true memory of one of our evenings together. I’m hard as rebar as I flip onto my back but don’t have it in me to either get up and take an icy shower or take care of the problem with my hand.
I’m just so exhausted, drained by what has transpired.
Because despite everything she’s done and said, I fell for her. Craved her. But just like with Karena, I felt more than she did. And worse, in Becca’s case, I can’t trust her.
Three days after Christmas, I’m lying sleeplessly on my mattress, once again restless. I jump out of bed and pass my hobby room where I’ve constructed another dollhouse.
“My favorite color is blue, so I always dreamed that my dolls would live with those colors: powder blue, turquoise, navy, royal blue, all of it. But it would have lace and frills, too. It’d be a home of blue clouds, and my dolls would be so happy.” Beccahad confessed all this to me one night when we’d made slow love together, our perspiring bodies pressed nakedly up against one another, and we had regained our breath.
I haven’t been capable of forgetting that night. Can’t forget that I constructed that very dollhouse for her, so I could give it to her as a Christmas present. But of course, then everything went to hell, and by that point we were no longer together. If we ever really were to start with.
I’ve considered smashing that damn thing many times. Even picked up a sledgehammer and carried it into my backyard. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. So I brought it back inside.
Haven’t managed to go back into my hobby room since. Until now.
I study the sturdy construction with all the details she described, and with my brain still spinning like a self-propelled top, I know I can’t stay here.
At midnight, I take a wayward drive around town. I need movement and activity, and frankly, I’m too tired to conduct my normal jog.
I don’t know what makes me do it. Whether I’m a masochist or too pathetic to avoid that particular street, but I wind up in front of the duplex. Maybe it’s because she’s been continuing to call or text me at least once a day without me ever responding, or because those meals are such an obvious ploy to make things up with me, but I park. And after sitting there for twenty minutes, I step out.
I’m a fool, no doubt, but I have to know if there’s any kind of remedy for the pain this is causing. She’s been offering these olive branches to me, after all. What if we can at least salvage a tiny remnant of our friendship?
I knock on her door, despite the late hour, for her to open up in seconds. But then I see that her cheeks are tear-stained and eyes bloodshot. I reach for her automatically.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
But rather than answer me, she dissolves into sobs.
My consciousness jumps to several possibilities at once. Maybe something happened at work, or maybe it’s her gram. The lady is elderly and not in the best of health.
Regardless, I can’t resist holding her and stroking platonically up and down her freezing cold arms.
“I’m a terrible human being,” she murmurs, sounding highly un-Becca-like.
“What are you talking about?”
“I betrayed you. And for no good reason. I’ve stopped it, I’ve changed my habits ever since, but I chucked what we had in the garbage disposal despite how much I care about you. And I wish I could go back and undo it, but I can’t.” She starts sobbing again, this time even harder. “I just can’t.”
I hold her in silence for quite a while after that, pondering her words and the intent behind them.
“I believe you,” I tell her. “And…and I forgive you.”
