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I wasn’t planning on breaking up with her. Far from it. But when she started saying, “L.A., Chicago, New York,” a knife, with huge, jagged edges, stabbed me again and again and again in the deepest recesses of my chest. She was not including me,us, in her plans.
What was I to her? A speck in her perfect world?
I had that uneasy feeling that she was holding something back. I had felt it weeks before our confrontation. The way she touched me. The way she hugged me. The way she kissed me. They all felt different,off. She held something back. I racked my brains out, trying to figure out what was wrong, if I did anything wrong.
In the beginning, I thought it was because our schedules were jam-packed. She had her thesis, exams, and was trying to fulfill all of her double degree graduation requirements. I was traveling for football games, had final projects and finals due. ‘Brutal’ was a gentle description to what our schedules looked like. I figured that once we were free, everything would be better.
But, in the rare moments that we had with each other, she was not completely there. It was in the subtlest of ways that I started noticing that something was terribly wrong.
When she held my hands, she pulled away after holding mine for about a minute or two. Usually, I was the one who broke contact because mine got all sweaty from being near her. She still kissed me passionately but her eyes, her eyes looked at me with insecurity, or was it hesitation? I did ask her what was wrong at that particular time. She looked away and said that she was just tired. She was also on her phone a lot. For the holidays, one of the gifts that I bought her was an app for Physics or Chemistry calculations. She liked to de-stress by solving any type of Math-related problems. Go figure. She never did this when she and I were spending time together. The past few times, though, I caught her playing with the app when I went to the restroom or when I was talking to someone. I took that as a sign that she was stressed out while she was out with me.
I even talked to Kieran about this. I was not in the habit of talking to guys about my relationship but I was worried about her. He would have known if Sedona was truly acting out of the ordinary. They have only been friends for more than a decade. Kieran just listened. At the end of the conversation, he said, “Sedona has a different way of dealing with emotions. She either takes it all in or completely goes off the other way.”
Some help he was. His words did not sink in until a few days later.
I was grasping for some,any, thing that would give me an insight on what Sedona was actually thinking since it was so hard to read her the past weeks. Standing at the shower in my bathroom, I spotted a tiny pink hair clip. She was always leaving stuff at my place. Not that I minded one bit. It was nice to be reminded of her. Her stuff made me feel that one way or another, we were linked. She was a part of me. My life. My plans.
In the middle of the shower, it was as if a light bulb switched on inside my head. I wanted to make plans with her, for our future. Was she making plans for us too?
She was a planner. Heck, even her laundry day was penciled in her planner. I went to my phone and checked the e-mail that she sent me under the subject, ‘Schedule’. I had gotten used to her sending me her schedule for 2-3 months via e-mail. My heart beat wildly against my chest. I scanned through her planner. There it was. Plain as day.
The month after graduation, there were no entries in her planner. There was, however, a tiny little electronic note attached to it, “Chicago? L.A.? New York?” No mention of Minnesota. Not a smidge of information about me. About us.
Kieran’s words came back to haunt me, “She goes all in or completely goes off the other way.”
She was going the other way with me.
The proof was right there. In front of my fuckin’ face. Call it denial, stubbornness, or foolishness. Somehow, I knew it. She was not including me or us, in her future.
I was scared shitless to confront her about it.
When I finally found the guts to do it, I held on to the hope that she would prove me wrong.
But when she looked at me with those amazingly, piercingly, beautiful violet eyes, I saw the magnitude of what I had revealed. She was also finding out for herself what I had feared the most – that I was not a part of her plan.
I have taken all types of hits in football. The hits hurt like a motherfucker, especially, when 2, 3, 4 300-lb defensemen sacked you all at once. When Sedona stayed silent and didn’t contradict what I said, her silence hit me more than any of those sacks combined. The hit struck me straight, square, in the center of my heart. I had the strongest urge to shake her, scream at her, and tell me that I was wrong. That I also meant the world to her. That she couldn’t live without me. That she loved me. Even just a little. Her silence, however, spoke volumes.
If someone had told me that it was possible to feel the same amount of pain that I had experienced after learning of Chrissy’s death, I would have probably said, “No amount of pain is greater than losing your sister to a senseless crime.” It wasn’t the same pain as when I found out about Chrissy. Nothing would ever feel like that.
This was different but the degree of hurt that occupied my mind and body; this pain I felt after learning that the woman that I loved was completely extracting me out of her life, out of her future, it was also as numbing. Debilitating. Agonizing.
Loved? Was that what it was?! How ironic. The moment I realized that I loved her was the same, exact moment that I discovered that she was leaving me.
The weeks after our break-up took decades off of my life. I have no memory of crawling up in bed, going to school, eating, or doing anything. My friends were the ones who pushed me to eat, drink, get out of bed, put on my uniform, get on the field, and focus on our championship game then the NFA try-outs. I lived each day the same as the last – missing her, crazily missing her, fucking crazily missing her.
Kieran was my lifeline. For some reason, he had become my staunchest ally. The texts started coming three days after the big argument. He didn’t say anything in his texts. He just sent pictures.Pictures of her. A picture was really ‘worth a thousand words.’ I didn’t know how Kieran managed to take these pictures; secretly, I was glad that he did.
Even in misery, she was beautiful. Her eyes looked tired, puffy, and sad. She had a slight smile on her face, in one of the photos, but the smile was her I’m-just-smiling-because-I’m-being-polite smile. Her expressions were reserved, strained.
After losing the championship game to Baylor University, John and I traveled to Minnesota for the grueling NFA combine/try-outs. We have been here for a week. College graduation was just around the corner. My parents who were currently in Singapore were traveling back to the U.S. to attend my graduation. They were both excited to see me graduate. My mom asked me to send her regards to Sedona. I just nodded and changed the topic.
The last image that Kieran sent almost made me fly back to San Francisco and beg her to take me back. John had to restrain me from calling her or buying tickets. He just told me to give her time. How much time did she need to realize that she wanted to be with me? That we had a future together?
In the picture, she was sleeping on her bed. Her hair hung loosely over her face. I enlarged the image on my phone and traced the outline of her face and her body. I must have stared at it for a few minutes. There was something different about this picture. My heart lurched when I saw it. She was sleeping, on my side of the bed. Sedona always slept on one side of the bed. That girl had permanent habits. Whenever we slept together, I was the one who moved to her side to be closer to her. This 4-inch pixelated image showed that she was sleeping on the side where I always slept. Around her neck was the white-gold necklace, with a round, pink diamond pendant, that I had given her for Christmas. Sedona didn’t wear any jewelry. Here she was, sleeping on my side of bed, wearing my necklace, so close to her heart. Just like that, the tiny hope that I was holding on to, sparked to life inside of me.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Look for what you want. Find what you like. Keep what you love.”
