01
I hadn’t thought about him in a while. Actually, that’s a blatant lie. But I tell it to myself to feel a little less pathetic than I actually am—I mean, it’s not every day we get dumped after confessing our love, right? Right. So, even though I had thought about him almost every hour (and every minute and every second) of every day, I pretended I hadn’t. Because that made things easier. Right?
Right.
I went on with my days as much as I could. So when my mom suggested (forced, really) I go buy some salt from the supermarket, I did so. Because I was trying to get back to normal.
Carrying a bag of Diamond Salt, I began the trek back home. It was only a few blocks, but the summer heat made it seem like I was crossing the desert. I was already a sweating mess by the time I turned on my street corner, the underarm part of my shirt sticky and wet, my face beaded with tiny droplets that let everyone know I was hot and most probably extremely out of shape. I didn’t really care, though. No one to impress anymore.
As I neared my building, I felt my heart stop. In fact, it fell straight down into my stomach and burned in the acid that collects there. I slowed my steps, I felt my fingers threaten to let go of the plastic bag, I felt my knees quake before they locked and refused to let me move.
There was someone standing by my apartment. He wasn’t very tall but he was thin and wore tight pants that made everyone looking at him aware that he was, if you hadn’t noticed, thin. A murse hung off his shoulder. A murse I could recognize anywhere.
He turned, possibly because he felt my eyes were drilling holes into the back of his skull. Secretly, I had hoped he’d burst into flames from the intensity of my glare, but behind that, I hoped even more so that he’d turn around and run towards me, pick me up, and twirl me around.
I reached him. I dropped my bag. I wiped the sweat off my brow and glared at him. And then, as instinct has always been a great friend of mine, I slapped him.
He reared back a little from the impact, his hand reaching up to touch his cheek. He stared at me with wide eyes (at least, as wide as his eyes could get considering how small they were) and an open mouth that spelled disbelief.
“What are you doing here?” My voice, of course, didn’t sound nearly as calm and angry as I wanted it to sound. Instead, it sounded more like a desperate plea with a tiny sob at the end. Damn you, emotions. Damn you.
“Sorry.”
“Didn’t answer my question.”
He looked sheepish, standing there, probably boiling under the sun in his button down shirt and expensive shoes. If I were a good person, I would have asked him to accompany me upstairs, into the air conditioned room, serve him a glass of water.
But I wasn’t a nice person. I was a bitter, bitchy, broken hearted girl who wanted nothing more to stab him in the eye.
“I’m here to say sorry.”
I’d been preparing a rant. Those angry, crazy-ex-girlfriend rants that usually end with high pitched squealing and tears. So at those words, all the words died on my lips and I just stood there like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I know how hard it’s been for you… and it hasn’t been easy for me. I thought it would be. But… It’s not. I…” He stopped. He looked at his hands (how I missed those hands) for a moment before looking at me, his eyes staring straight into mine, and I once again forgot what it was like to breathe. “I miss you. I love you. I just… I want to try again. I’ll keep trying again and again, as many times as I have to so we can work out.”
Like the proper mess I was, I began to cry. And as I stood there, sweating, hot, stinky, far from attractive, and bawling like I had never cried before, he wrapped his arms around me, held me close, and said, “I love you.”
