More than two weeks passed and she still didn't call. I looked like an addict with the amount of times I checked for messages on my phone. It started to get bad. I got phantom vibrations I swore were real, but each time I checked there were no calls. Helen accused me of playing games on my phone. I had to show her every one of my apps to prove that I had no games to play. After that I left my phone in my car during my work day. After each shift, and on every break, I bolted outside to check it. Seeing a blank screen with no message icons broke my heart each time. Even worse was getting texts from someone else. It would raise my spirits for a brief moment before crushing them.
I spent a day pissed at my mom when she called me to ask when I would visit for dinner next. I brushed her off. There was no way I could stand family dinner with the way I felt. I didn't want to be around them. Or people, really. I didn't want to explain what was going on or how I felt. There was some sort of weird shame in telling people that you split up with someone. It was like admitting to failure. And this did feel like a failure. I had something great and now it was gone. I couldn't even adequately explain to myself how it happened.
I was sure that if told someone what happened they would tell me I was right, that Beth was being crazy. Maybe she was. That excuse seemed lame. That was how everybody described their ex when it didn't work out. Beth wasn't conventional. I'd be first in line to admit that. Except that was why I also loved her. I didn't want someone just like me. That would result in two old people sitting next to each watching television while our food got cold. Her being weird wasn't the point. We didn't break up because she wanted me to piss on her. We broke up because of her problems with me.
Which I still didn't understand.
Ever since that night I'd replayed the argument over and over. Nothing really made sense. All it did was make me doubt why we should be together. It made me fully turn it back on me. I was the problem. There was something defective in me which she didn't like. I wasn't interesting. I didn't know why she liked me. If I looked at myself objectively I didn't find myself interesting so I had no clue what she saw in me. Was I just a distraction? The other guys in her life brought a sense of adventure. I brought Friday nights of staying in, ordering pizza, and watching movies.
Maybe this break-up was for the best. Get it over with now rather than dragging it out. Now she was free to find someone more to her liking. Someone who would pick restaurants they wanted to eat at and who wasn't a complete loser like me.
These were the thoughts which repeated endlessly as I went through my daily routines. Down time at the bank was killing me. If I wasn't helping members then all I could do was stand at my drawer and dwell on the downturn my life had taken. I found out how boring I was, ironically, by her breaking up with me. You could chalk it up to depression, but in that time all I did was go to work and then go home to my apartment. I read some, played videogames occasionally, but otherwise I sat in my recliner. I had nothing else to do. There were no activities I was missing out on by sitting there. There was nobody at a book club wondering where Luke was since I didn't show up.
Maybe I should join a gym. That...would give me something to do.
My problem wasn't really that I had nothing to do. It was that I had no desire to do anything. I could see how that could be frustrating, especially to someone like Beth. She didn't wait for things to happen: she went out and made them happen. She saw me and, for whatever reason, wanted me so she made it happen. If roles had been reversed I know I wouldn't have ever spoken to her. I didn't have the courage.
Except I had to have some. She introduced herself to me, but I still made the choice to call her. I could have thrown her number away and forgotten her. Gone back to my normal life. Instead I decided to see how life would be like if I called the bank robber. There was something in me which gave me the courage to do that. I had to somehow find a way to tap into that more often.
I decided to do that right now. I would go over to Beth's condo and talk things out with her. I was wrong. Not that it meant I should apologize, but I was wrong to leave that night. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. By leaving I hoped to save us both from hurt feelings and heartache. Instead all I did was run away and end up feeling worse. I could've saved myself two weeks of misery if we'd taken the argument to some sort of conclusion. Then I acted like a child by deleting her messages and not calling her back.
She was probably super-pissed at me. That thought caused me to pause as I was putting on my jacket. I remembered how she broke up with her previous boyfriends. The odds were not in my favor. If I wasn't careful then I could look forward to even more penile trauma than what she had already inflicted on me. I also knew that being kicked in the dick was getting off light. She could always do worse to me.
I would have to risk it.
I opened my door and was immediately punched in the face. I didn't know that at first. All I saw was a burst of white as my nose lit up in pain. My head snapped back and I stumbled around. I saw my attacker come into my apartment. I couldn't see them clearly because my eyes were watering. They were saying something I couldn't seem to hear, blood roared in my ears.
My attacker grabbed a hold of me and pushed me to the floor. I punched out, not hitting anything. No power behind my swing anyway. The attacker didn't seem to be hitting me anymore. My vision cleared and I got a good look at my attacker. It was Beth. She was holding me in a bear hug so I couldn't hit her. When I saw her face I really started to panic. I struggled against her arms, but couldn't break her grip.
"I'm sorry, baby," she said.
"Please don't hit me anymore!" I practically sobbed.
"I ain't gonna' hit ya' again! It was an accident!"
"How is punching me in the face an accident?! That's what abusers always say!"
"Ya' opened the door right when I was about to knock."
That...did make more sense. Otherwise it meant she had stood patiently outside my door until I was leaving to hit me. She couldn't knock because then I would've used the peephole. It was funny because while I had been on my way over to her condo if she had knocked on my door I may have been too afraid to open it. That was my cowardice rising up again. I was all gung-ho, in theory, about having it out with her and resolving this fight one way or another. In reality I was still afraid. I didn't know what to say. What would be safe? I wanted to say the right things and go back to being happy. Except I wouldn't know what the right thing to say was until afterwards. Hopefully that would be revealed to me while reflecting back on it while we cuddled in bed. I didn't want to figure out what I should've said while sleeping in my empty apartment, re-playing the conversation in my head.
"Is it broken?" I whined. God, I sounded pathetic, but I couldn't help myself.
"Babe, it's not even bleeding. Ya'd know for damn sure if it were broke."
"Oh...good."
"It's not like I was gonna' pound on your door like the police arriving to bust ya.' Just regular knocking."
Beth grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet. She went into my kitchen to fill a baggie full of ice cubes. When she was done she walked over and pressed it to my face. I let her hold it there a moment before I reached up and held it myself. She went back to the fridge and got herself a beer then sat down at my kitchen table. I sat down opposite her. We sat in silence staring at each other, me over the bag of ice on my nose, her staring down the length of a beer bottle.
She drank it awfully fast. Already I saw her sucking down foam. She was nervous about something. That made me start to feel anxious. She got back up, grabbed another beer then sat back down to resume our staring contest.
"So..." she said.
"Sooo..." I added.
"Yeah..." she dragged out.
This wasn't like her. Something had her scared. She wasn't normally one for hesitant conversation. She said whatever she thought, just let fly, which always made my end of the conversation easier. She always filled the dead air with words while I figured out what to say.
"How have ya' been?" she asked.
"Mostly miserable. Made worse when someone punched me in the face," I smiled.
"That wasn't a punch. I hit ya' in the face is all. If I was looking to actually punch ya' then your nose would definitely be broken."
"I don't doubt that."
"I'm really sorry, Luke. I didn't mean to hit ya'. Or scare ya' like that. I think it surprised me as much as it did you. Ya' really need to work on your defensive skills. Hate to tell ya', but screaming and curling up inta' a ball like an armadilla' isn't gonna' save your life. We can take ya' to the Y and sign ya' up for one those self-defense classes."
"I think it'd be cheaper if we just bought me a rape whistle. Don't need any training for that."
We both laughed for a bit then lapsed back into silence.
"I guess collapsing into a heap at the first sign of danger isn't exactly manly, is it?" I asked.
"Aw, geez, Luke, I'm sorry about what I said. All of it. I was being a bitch for no good reason."
"Thanks, but still...it got me thinking. That's all I've been doing since...that night. Thinking. Anyway. I can't come up with a good reason why you're with me. I don't have anything to offer you. The guys you told me you dated before me had something going on."
"But those guys were assholes!" Beth said.
"I don't fit the mold of anyone else you've dated. It got me wondering if we've only been dating as a weird experiment. Like, all you had before were bad boys and tough guys so now you tried for someone normal. And, if so, that's got me scared. Because I really like you. And I don't want things to end between us. I don't know what to do. I mean, I could change for you, but that could be ironically harmful because I could change so much that you wouldn't like me anymore. I also thought it could be a trap because you were mad that I went along with whatever you wanted. So by changing myself all I would really be doing is following your orders."
"Luke...ya' over think things way too much sometimes."
"I know! It's frustrating and stupid and it's driving me insane!"
The bag of ice was mostly melted and my arm was tired from holding it to my face. I dumped the water in the sink and pitched the baggie into the garbage before I sat back down.
"Ya' gotta' give yourself more credit. I said some stupid shit. I was mad. It happened. Does it matter? Maybe. Probably not. I was angry at myself. I felt like an idiot and a bully. I feel really bad I made ya' miserable the last two weeks. I know you've been thinking too much. That's what ya' do: ya' ruminate. I shouldn't have put ya' through that.
"You're the best thing to happen to me in a long time, Luke. I love ya'." Tears spilled from her eyes as she said that.
"It took me two weeks to finally work up the courage to come here. Since ya' stopped answering your phone that night I was afraid to call again. I was so afraid that I ruined everything I went and hid at my ranch. I thought maybe if I was around my hoses I'd cheer up, but I couldn't. I was miserable. Even the horses noticed it and they started getting depressed by me being around.
"I hurt ya' and I never want to do it again. I know I've hurt a lot of people in my life, physically and emotionally, but you're the first person I ever felt bad about later. I didn't ever feel bad about leaving Wyatt. I made it so I could feel happy about it later. Or I replaced all my happy memories with him angry feelings. I made it so that when I thought about him all I felt was mad. I painted them as leading up to the explosion of our marriage.
"I don't want my memories of you to be bad. Ya' make me happy...you are my sunshine."
"You're not going to start singing, are you? That would be weird."
"It's one a' my favorite songs. I was on a roll there and went for it. Figured I'd try to lighten the dark mood I put us both in."
"I helped put us there," I said, "I could've been an adult. I shouldn't have deleted your number. I should've been the one to go to your place before you were forced to come here."
"There ya' go again, taking all the responsibility for something that wasn't your fault."
"Are you going to return the favor and storm out of my apartment?" I asked with a smirk.
"Oh, baby, that was a real storming out, all right. Woke up all my neighbors with that quiet closing of the door. I probably did more'n you. I swore up a storm for the better part of an hour."
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah. I also put my hand through a wall. Which pissed me off even more. Had to call maintenance the next day and have them patch it. I felt like an asshole. He knew how it happened. I couldn't come up with a believable lie to explain it."
"When I was younger," I said, "I thought adults had it all together. I don't remember ever seeing my parents fight. The only arguments I saw were minor, petty things. All my friends in high school were constantly fighting, breaking up and getting back together again. There were a lot more tears then, because everything seemed so monumental. Even Karen and I weren't immune to it. I couldn't wait to grow up and have a 'real' relationship. One where there weren't fights about stupid bullshit or jealousy or drama. It felt like I spent my entire high school career trying to avoid drama. I guess I had this stupid notion that once you graduated then it all just disappeared."
"That is probably one a' the stupidest ideas ever."
"I know. It was teenager thinking. There wasn't even a surprise revelation that I was wrong. No moment where I went 'No, people in love are stupid forever.' I think I grew to accept it. I kept waiting and it never happened. What shocked me the most was that fights are still caused by small, stupid things. Since Karen I've not been in a 'real' relationship. I expected that if I was close to someone and thinking about moving to the next level, like moving in together, obviously thinking about marriage in some way, then I could see fights because you'd have reasons. There would be real considerations. Maybe someone wanted a baby when it wasn't the right time, which car to buy, where to move to. If I wasn't in that situation I figured there would be no problems. What's there to argue about otherwise? There was nothing more serious than two people having fun."
"I gotta' say the way ya' describe things I wish the world was like that. Would make things a hell of a lot easier."
"I know, right? But people aren't simple. They're complicated. Everyone has this entire universe of thoughts and feelings inside them. And a lot of times that's different from what everyone else has going on."
"This kinda' talk is all fine and dandy, Luke, but the important question is: did I ruin everything for us?"
"Do you think you did?" I asked.
"Hell, yes!"
"I don't think so. We're both here, we're willing to talk about things. That's got to mean something."
"It means that we're the two biggest idiots on the planet, I bet."
