The day we were supposed to meet I fussed over every aspect of my appearance with a fanatical intensity. Without realizing it I had become the stereotypical ex-girlfriend, trying to impress a lover I had already lost. I scowled at my reflection, even after nearly an hour of fiddling my shoulder length black-brown hair it was still nothing more than a frizzy out of curly mass and I hadn’t even begun with my makeup.
Why am I even bothering with all of this? I barely gave a crap how he liked me to wear my hair down when we were together why should I start now?
Frustrated, I threw the hairbrush and began to sort through my bathroom drawers for something to tie my hair with. After finally finding one I then shifted my focus back to the rest of my appearance. The more I looked the more I seemed to find fault in my features. My hazel eyes were too small and squinted in exasperation, my lips a shade too large, and on top of it all there was a pimple forming on my chin.
Of course it would come out today! Ugh! No amount of cover-up in the world could even make a dent in this thing! You know what? Screw it. Adam has seen me with worse.
At the very least I was satisfied with my outfit: a flowing black peasant skirt that hit just below my knees, a maroon V-neck top and a single draping gold feather necklace that I’d bought as part of my best friend Leslie’s retail therapy outing the week before. It was comfortable but different enough to make him wonder. I could hear Leslie’s voice telling me it would look cuter with my hair down and a bit of mascara and lip gloss but honestly I had spent enough time worrying over aesthetics as it was.
When I finally made it out of my house all I could do was replay the image of my sister’s knowing glance when I had told her where I was going. I didn’t even have to finish explaining for her to know who I was meeting. Mel had always been able to read me, there was no use trying to lie. She cut me off midsentence shaking her head as she walked into the kitchen and away from the sudden disappointment I had become.
“Don’t bother locking up Diana. Jess is coming down to pick me up in a few minutes.”
The disgust in her voice was almost enough to get me to turn around, almost. With each stepped I carried myself further and further from the memory of my sister’s disapproving glare and one step closer to the slim and murky promise of resolution.
The park was empty when I arrived. There weren’t even any of the usual dog walkers or mother’s pushing strollers, just a plot of yellowing grass and a couple of late blooming oranges lying rotting in the unusual December heat. It was just another California winter. Without the distraction of company the meeting was becoming ever more imposing. My chest and stomach began to fall into themselves as I struggled to keep breathing through the nausea. You are not supposed to meet up with your ex in the exact place he broke your heart.
My curiosity and desire for closure beckoned me forward. That damned meaningless cliché was too powerful for me to walk away from and as much as I hated to admit it I still missed him. So I made the decision to stay and made my way to our bench and waited for him to arrive.
It was ten minutes before he actually showed up. As usual I had arrived five minutes early and he ended up showing up five minutes late. I heard him before I even saw him. It was in the shuffle of his feet as he walked along the gravel and in the sigh of excursion that escaped him.
“Hello there.”
Adam’s eyes bore into mine. He was unapologetically weary as he shifted the weight of his backpack on to the ground. If I were standing he would have been almost a head taller than me with lanky limbs and facial features that were just a shade too large for him to be considered anything other than awkwardly ordinary.
But he was still my type. I’d always been as sucker for nerdy boys. They could always make me melt with their techno talk and cyber combat skills that I could no more understand than I could read Latin. Adam was that kind of guy.
“Hey,” I replied forcing amiability.
I smiled up at him. For a second it felt as if time had folded back on itself, as if this was the way it was supposed to be all along. But the fact was our breakup was irrevocably real and I could feel it hanging in the air between us as he sat down next to me.
The bench tottered under his weight and I immediately scooted down as far as I could be from him, afraid of even the smallest touch. It struck me this fear, this newly erected barrier between two people that had been each other’s everything not even two months prior.
“How have you been?” he asked with a sense of chagrin.
“Ya know, same old same old,” I muttered.
It was almost deplorably easy to suppress my resentment. I let him ask me about school, my family, and all the things that would have normally passed between us without provocation. With each new detail I shared, it became clearer to us both how much he had become separate from my life.
When the subject of my friends finally was brought up he started, “I guess this means pretty much everyone hates me now right?”
“Not everyone no,” He gave me a disbelieving glance as I averted my eyes, “Well the pets don’t.”
Indulgently he chuckled, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
Truth was everyone pretty much did hate him. After three years together my friends became our friends, my family became an extension of his family and every other aspect of our lives grew together. By breaking up with me he had ripped both our lives apart at the seams.
Who knew it would be so hard to be resentful toward such a jerk?
“Fine, let’s put it this way, if you ever run into Leslie don’t walk but run away as fast as you possibly can in the opposite direction.”
As he laughed he moved toward me, almost touching but not quite.
“Nah, I think I can handle myself,” Adam stated sarcastically.
“Don’t underestimate the damage a protective best friend can do with a vehicle once you have crossed them.”
“Oh believe me I am not. But I am sure I will be OK Di. We have never ran into each other before. I don’t think it’s going to change now.”
I missed the sound of it, my special name formed from his lips.
I had almost forgotten how natural it was to feel Adam’s presence, to hear the drumming of his fingers on a hard surface and the comforting feel of his attentive silence. What was unnatural was to have him orbiting around me but not actually touching me.
My skin began to ache. Each laugh that escaped him fell short without the feel of its rumble vibrating through me, and each subject changed seemed to be forced without the transition of a kiss. We were strangers now. And this was the true agony. Not the knowledge, cerebral and cold but rather the actual physical space between two people who had once been so in tune that the lines of their bodies once blurred into one.
To distract myself I asked, “So how about you? I feel like I have been talking, talking, and talking about me. What’s up with you?”
“Ah everyone is trying to keep me busy, you know how it is. Work is kicking my ass and school is boring as hell.”
“Nice to see you are keeping up that positive attitude of yours.” I said with a scoff.
His chocolate brown eyes shone with mischief, “Isn’t that one of the things you like about me?”
After he said this single question a silence fell. We were not supposed to talk about our attraction anymore. It wasn’t supposed to exist. But it did.
Tension radiating between us, it was something dangerous and alluring almost as much as it was unnerving. It transformed Adam’s once ordinary existence in my life into something forbidden. Every piece of logic, every single person in both our lives told us that this was not supposed to be. This desire was twice as taboo.
By the cautious hunger that slipped into his smile I knew the initial move would have to be made by me. This realization gave me the power. It was OK to push the rules, to bend them, break them, or stomp on them until they crumbled away because now this was my game, not his. I was the one who could say when. So I said it. When.
From the moment his lips touched mine, he closed the rest of the space between us with his body. Adam pressed me to him, his arms encasing me, preventing me from pulling away. The anger and hurt I had been holding back I transformed itself into this kiss. We stood that way forcefully locked for what seemed like an eternity until I finally decided to push him away.
His face was flushed. The look of surprise and yearning that swirled in Adam’s eyes bathed me with a sense of victory. I had him hooked.
“God I really miss those kisses,” he groaned.
I smirked, “I know you did,” I stood up and started walking knowing he would follow before I threw back over my shoulder, “My house is empty if you want to come over.”
*************
When we were together I always hated undressing in front of him. With each article of clothing I’d look away in shame waiting for him to disapprove of my protruding stomach and plentiful curves. That day though, I did not look away. I faced him. I dared him to voice any disapproval but the protests never came. Only greedy hands.
For the first time I realized I didn’t need to love him to feel pleasure. All I needed was a physical relief from a psychological problem and that’s what this was. Adam smelled like campfire mixed with fresh cut grass and immediately the feeling of familiar, one dimensional, lust started to course through me.
We were both nothing more than masochists, the sting of betrayal and loss fueling a passion that no longer belonged to love. I buried my shame and anger the way I always had, in thoughtless yearning. I fought to keep myself from pulling away almost as hard as I fought to bring him in.
“Diana I love…”
I cut him off with a brutal kiss.
If he loved me, he never would have discarded me in the first place. He never would have come back in my life just as I started to heal. If he loved me, he would have never allowed this twisted encounter to go on as far as it had. But the hard truth was that he didn’t. His own physical absolution was more important than my emotional wellbeing.
As his hands moved down my body I felt what little progress I had made shatter. I was truly broken beyond any and all repair. I would never be what I once was. He had made sure of that as he crushed me into himself.
Even as a part of me rejected his advances, the greater part was moved by them. They promised to give me what I really needed. The yearning promised to desecrate everything we had ever been together. It promised to burn everything away with its unruly flames, every lie we told to each other, every mind game we ever played, it would all be set to ashes by this one final moment of misguided lust.
*************
We soaked in awkward silence afterward as we caught our breath. We watched the ceiling fan spin lazily our arms touching but nothing more. Minutes passed until Adam finally built up enough courage to break the stifling silence.
“I am sorry, Diana.”
I laughed to keep from screaming. “Well that was a hell of a way to show it champ.”
He shook his head in protest, “No, I know. Nothing I could say could ever make up for the way I handled things. What I want to apologize for is something more specific.” Possibilities ran through my head. All the less than perfect moments that had been bundled up in our relationship that I had once wished he would apologize for, but came up with nothing that fit.
After a pause he continued, “Remember when you asked about the notebook?”
“Of course I do.” It was the only thing Adam had of mine that I wanted back. But after the breakup he somehow managed to conveniently misplace it.
As if right on cue he whispered, “I didn’t really lose it.”
“I know...”
Adam continued staring up at the ceiling, hesitant to reveal whatever truth he was about to confess.
“I burned it.”
Oh that is too perfect! I thought with wounded distain.
I was on the verge of hysterics but settled for heavy sarcasm, “Always one for the dramatics aren’t we? I would have expected you to throw it away. At most maybe tear it up and discard the pieces in a dumpster but to burn it Adam? That’s intense. Didn’t know you hated my writing that much.”
His voice strained, “Please don’t….I loved everything you ever wrote me…”
I patted his arm absentmindedly, “I know, I know, you just needed to distance yourself from it. I get it.”
Truth was I never really wanted it back in the first place. Love letters and romantic poetry mean nothing after a break up. I just didn’t want him to have it. I wanted it erased, maybe even more than he did, but it still stung to hear what he’d done.
As he turned to face me Adam caught a strand of my hair in his fingers, twirled it gently and tucked it behind my ear.
“I am still sorry. It was not mine to burn.”
I nodded. This was the closest I had come all day to losing control. I quickly averted my eyes hoping to hide the sudden wateriness that had suddenly began to form in them. Despite how much he hurt me Adam still understood.
“Thank you…” The words came out garbled but he heard me.
I could at least take this, was all I can remember thinking before he was kissing me again.
*************
I waited for him so he could get ready and as I stood against the door frame, hand resting silently on the knob, I felt the weight of all had just transpired. A few months ago I would have sat behind him as he laced up his boots, my arms clasped tightly around his waist, dead set on holding onto every last second of time we had together. But no more.
Staring at him then was almost anticlimactic. His eyes lacked luster, his curly brown hair gnarled and knotted, even his voice that once sounded deep and rich to me was now hollow. Adam was just a guy, not a demon or a savior, just a dorky ordinary guy.
As I watched him gather his belongings I had the passing notion that maybe Adam would feel the same about me, but his expression put a rest to that. There wasn’t love. Or even fondness exactly but, a deep admiration radiated across his face as he looked at me. It was too much.
“Hurry up before my parents get home,” I reached for his hand and dragged him downstairs to the door. When I turned around again, I could feel he was already starting to pull away.
“I’ll call you.”
Sure you will.
I just nodded feeding into his delusion of self-righteousness. What was the harm in it when I knew I was never going to see him again?
There was no way for him to come out of this looking like the honest man he’d always wanted to be. He was an asshole. I was a self-destructive psychopath. These were just the things we would now have to live with. Adam could fight it to the end but we’d both always know the truth of what we were.
“In case I don’t see you in time,” Adam reached into his back pack and pulled out a neatly wrapped package decorated with chubby chipper elves, “Merry Christmas Di.”
My mouth dropped for a second, “You really shouldn’t have Adam.”
“But I wanted to.” He smiled at me, a smile filled with years of inside jokes and secret moments. Before I could object he tilted my chin and kissed me so sweetly I almost forgot to hate him. When it was over he simply turned around and walked away.
I waited to see if he’d wave when he got to the end of the driveway. I smiled to think of what he would see if he turned around. This would be the last image he would have of me, me sporting sex tousled hair and heat flushed cheeks holding a ridiculously colored Christmas present. I only waited for him to wave. Truth was I had already said my goodbye the moment he said it was over.
*************
On Christmas Day I finally opened his present: It was a blank composition notebook and a pack of my favorite kind of pens. Even after everything…Adam still understood exactly what I needed, a clean slate.
Gender:
Points: 1000
Reviews: 50