“Just say what you really are. What this all was. I need to hear you say it. I’m not answering what your perception was of what I was getting when we got together.”
He smirks, arrogantly.
“Oh, please. Like you don’t know. I’m exactly the same person I was when you met me last year.”
I yell. My arms folded over my chest because he’s lying.
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit?” He questions back at me.
I nod.
“Fine. You think that all you want, but the truth is you were just a fuck. I didn’t have time to go out and explore my options, so I thought you’d be a willing and able candidate. I mean really, how convenient, living next door to me.”
Self-righteous is the only description I can use to decipher his words. I don’t believe him, not a word. This can’t actually be how he’s thinking. Maybe he’s drunk, maybe he’s high. That’s not possible. It can’t be possible. I talk myself out of every scenario. I observe every part of his body language, and I know he’s neither one of those things.
I lean against the wall near the sofa, crossing my feet and arms. “I think you’re a liar.” I chuckle as the words come out.
He looks at me confused, dipping his head towards the side and bracing himself on the back of the sofa.
“Excuse me?” He asks.
“You heard me.” I uncross my feet and make my way towards him step by step.
“You. Heard. Me. There’s no way in hell that this was just some fling for you. I’m not just a fuck. We both know that.” As I keep up my movements, stepping towards him, he backs up, not meeting my eyes but his feet move backing up against my steps until he hits the counter of the kitchen.
“I love you and you’re scared because you love me. You’re just too afraid to admit it. I feel your love everywhere, even when we’re not together.” I grab his hand and place it over my heart. He hesitates and I can feel it warily. His hand shakes beneath mine but I don’t give up. My strength overpowers his for a change.
“That’s my heart. You feel it? It doesn’t belong to me anymore… It’s yours. You replaced all the sadness I’ve felt. You made me feel things again. You made me feel whole.”
His eyes finally meet mine, his mouth agape. I see a bit of the sparkle in his eyes and the tension in his hand subsides, and I think he’s coming back to me. He’s out of the trance, and now he won’t be afraid to love me, to tell me.
He closes his eyes, feeling my heartbeat beneath his hand.
I whisper to him, “I know you love me.”
His relaxation is temporary, because now I see the darkness return as his eyes open.
He winces and pulls his hand back.
“Woman, you are delusional. I don’t love you, Harlow. Fucking is not love. You must be confused with someone else. See that’s what I do. I fuck, then I leave.”
I shake my head. “No, you don’t mean that. I changed you. You changed me. There’s no way you mean what you say. You do love me. You don’t do the things you do to someone whom you don’t love. You don’t surprise them with visits, or Christmas winter wonderlands, or come to family weddings with them and say the things you said if you didn’t love them.” I wish I could step into his brain and permanently implant my words into his brain.
He goes to the refrigerator, pulls out a beer and flips off the cap, tossing it into the sink.
“No. I don’t. God damn it! What does it take or what do I have to do to convince you?” He steps into my line of sight, almost touching his nose to mine. My breathing falters. I inhale, taking in every scent of the man I love.
“You did change me in a way. See, I never go back for seconds. You were my first, but then I came to realize that your pussy isn’t golden and it sure ain’t worth a two and a half hour drive. If I want some, I can get it at any place, at any time, at my immediate disposal.” Stepping away, he chugs the rest of his beer, and Willow makes her way to him, fists clenched, and ready to strike.
“You no good ass. I warned her about you. Porter told me your deal and I warned her. Who the hell would even allow you to fuck them with that probably diseased dick of yours?” She turns to me. “Sorry, Har. I really didn’t mean you.”
Before he has a chance to answer her, I hear something come from his bedroom. Something dropped, and then I wait and hear it again.
He has someone here. He’s with someone else and they’re in his room. I caught him. This is what this is all about. When he realizes I heard what I heard, he shrugs. The look of total satisfaction on his face. But it’s not his face.
“What did I tell you, any place at any time.” He smugly smiles. “I’ll give you credit for a few things, Harlow. You are one fantastic lay. You’re hot, but way too damaged for me. The baggage you have well exceeds what I can handle. You told me yourself you’re crazy. I’ve had my share of nutty women, but oh… Man, you take the cake.”
I don’t even think the words leave his mouth fully before I lunge my body at his.
I punch. I slap, and claw at him, not giving him time to react because my movements are swift.
I scream at him not really hearing myself, but I know the words that invade my brain, my soul, crushing it. Breaking my heart.
“I can take you not wanting to be with me ‘cause you think I’m crazy, but I won’t allow myself to be cheated on again. I put up with it for years and years and I fought to be first when I wasn’t. I want to be first. I’m tired of being second choice. I don’t care who… who is in there. All I know is I’m second choice again and I hate you for it. I really ha… ha… hate you.”
There’s no more strength left in my body to fight anymore.
All I can get out is about a thousand more ‘I hate you’s’. He stands there taking it until Willow pulls me away. I fight her when she grabs my upper arms to get me away from him. I really can’t make out his face through my tears.
He pushes off the counter.
“That’s right. Solidify how crazy you are. Keep it up. Gives me all the more reason to be happy that this is over. You just love to be in love, don’t you? Well, I don’t do love and the quicker you get the fuck out of here and out of my life, the better.”
I can’t breathe.
No air.
There’s no air.
There’s nothing.
Oh, God help me. Please someone, help me.
Willow pulls me to the door, as sweat pours from my face. I will go. I’ll leave, but I have one last question for him as I feel my heart shatter like a glass globe crashing to the floor. I turn, looking at him for the last time. He seems unaffected, just standing there with his arms folded across his chest, feet spread apart in a defensive stance. I swallow my tears hard, tasting the salt.
“Why?” I question him barely getting the word out.
He pauses, looking at me, well really through me, through my soul and answers. Finally.
“Because I can.”
CHAPTER 18
Can’t Turn Back Time
Cruz~
“You know that I really wanted no part of this collaboration, right?”
I nod my head at Max, who exits my bedroom.
“And you know that as soon as Harlow and Willow go back home, Willow will tell Porter everything and he will kick you out of here?”
Again, I nod.
“And you know that everything you just said to her, you can never take back? She’s going to hate you.”
I exhale and look out the window to our dock, and I know that everything Max just said is true.
“Cruz? You gonna talk, or are we just going to stand here and wait for the apocalypse? “
Looking over at Max, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach returns.
“I’ve already packed most of my shit. I fully expect to hear from Porter first thing tomorrow. I’m surprised Craw didn’t call him in the first place after he left me that message that Harlow was on her way here and I…”
I pause, thinking of the words I said to her. How I just destroyed her. I destroyed the only thing in my life I ever loved, that I was ever sure of. The one thing that loved me back without thinking of the person I actually am.
“I want her to hate me. It’s the only way.”
Max sits next to me on the couch after grabbing the bottle of Jack out of the cabinet and a few shot glasses. I can’t stop shaking. It’s like I’m outside the door in the twenty degree weather, but I’m sitting here on this sofa not fully comprehending what I just did. My knees shake so bad I can hear the bones clang together.
“What did Craw’s message say?”
I lean back on the sofa and scratch my two day old unshaven face.
“Called me a mother fucker and that I better not be playing games with his sister or else he’ll kill me.”
Max shakes his head to agree.
“Craw’s pretty tough. Surprisingly, I wouldn’t put it past him. I heard what he did to that asshole Knox.”
That asshole Knox ruined her, then she found me, now she’s right back where she was and it’s going to kill me.
He pours two shots. “I’m pretty sure she bought the fact that there was a girl in your room.” We don’t clink glasses. We don’t cheer to the fact I just broke someone’s heart. We just chase down the amber liquid hoping it warms my body and stops it from shivering, but see I’m cold, everywhere. In my heart and in my fucking soul.
“I know you feel as though you had to do what you had to do, but she loved you, man, and I’m betting if you told her about her Wicked Witch of the West Grandmother, she would have put her foot down. I mean her mom went through something almost similar, right? That’s what you told me.”
I nod, throwing back another shot. It burns. It burns so bad.
“It’s better this way. I could never give her what she wants, what she needs. I’m poor. I’m a cop, and I have a record from when I was eighteen. I’m lucky I’m even a cop.”
Max looks at me confused and I remember he doesn’t know.
“Oh that’s right. You don’t know the story. Tony and I were busted when he was twenty and I was eighteen. Cops came looking for my mom, they found her stash of weed. We told them it was ours, so she wouldn’t get thrown in jail.”
“But you fucking hate your mom. Jail would’ve been the best place for her. She could’ve sobered up there.”
Max is naïve.
“No, man, she’d be worse off. Drugs are so easily accessible in there.” I’ve always felt the need to protect that woman, as much as I despise her.
“I still have it on my record. That’s why I went into the Marines.”
“I see.” He pours another shot. “So what now?”
I close my eyes and imagine a future without Harlow in it, and I hate it. It’s bleak and dark, like my heart.
I take a letter out of my pocket and hand it to Max.
He reads it, looks to me, then back to the letter.
“You were hired by the North Ridge Police Department? That’s like the next town over from Harlow. What the fuck, man. When did you find out?”
I take it back from him and crumple it, tossing it over my shoulder.
“I found out last week. I drove down there two weeks ago for the interview without letting Harlow know. Then I got the letter, which made me decide to do what I just did. We would never be happy. Her grandmother would’ve crushed me and made our lives miserable.”
“So your plan was to crush Harlow instead? You love her, dude.”
I do love her, with my whole fucked up self.
“She’s better off without me. She’ll be happier. I’m not good enough for her. I know it, and she’ll come to know it.”
Max stands up and grabs his coat from the hook in the hallway.
“I gotta go, man. I know you have your reasons but I wish you’d at least given her the chance to make the decision for herself. I think she would have understood the truth about the way you grew up, about your mom… About everything. Truth is a powerful thing, and you know what man, love… It’s the only truth. Truth is love.” He gives me a pat on the shoulder and makes his way out my door.
I can’t go back and change what I did. I’ll live my life without her. Yea, a piece of me died, true, but I’d rather live with the burden of my broken heart, than her having a lifetime of hers broken because I couldn’t give her the life she deserves. Our lives are so different, and mine would only wind up damaging hers in the end.
She’ll be ok. She’ll move on, and it will be the best thing for the both of us.
Yea, she’ll realize it. Maybe not tomorrow, but she’ll forget about me.
She’ll be ok.
She’ll be ok.
I’ll be ok.
I’ll be ok.
I’ll keep telling myself that because I have to. I’ll pound it into my head until I’ve brainwashed myself into thinking it for both of us.
Love is truth, truth is love.
CHAPTER 19
Cruz & Harlow
Harlow~
4 Months Later…
It’s not like I want to come back here, ever, but I know my friends will keep him away from me if I see him. If he sees me.
I’m doing ok. I’m only down to three sessions a week with Dr. Goldberg, and I’m only on the anti-depressant now. No more anxiety pills. Yoga helps. Therapy helps. Teaching helps, and knowing that to me, he no longer exists in my life, helps too. I’ve worked on it… Well, on myself.
So what has happened in the last four months of my life? Not a suicide attempt, that I’ll tell you. Locking myself in my condo for a week, wallowing in self-pity and calling out sick with the flu, yes, that happened. Craw, Willow and Thea bringing me food that I didn’t eat, yes, that happened too. The girls helping me bathe my disgusting body, yes, that happened as well. Then it came to me. My self-worth. I don’t need anyone to love me. I have to love myself first and take it from there.
Doing that doesn’t mend everything, obviously. That’s why I see Dr. Goldberg three days a week.
Teaching helps. My mind is consumed with those kids and their bright minds. It’s amazing what I can see from my point of view when I’m teaching them. It opens my mind up to the infinite possibilities that there’s more to life than depending on one person to make you happy. You have to be happy with yourself first and foremost.
A few weeks after we broke up, I started to keep a journal. I write down every single thought I have in my head. Dr. Goldberg said it’s a good outlet. I have to agree. I don’t hate him for what he’s done. I have come to forgive him. He was right. I couldn’t change him from what he was like before. A leopard doesn’t change his spots. When I heard that person in his room, I knew that we were done. Up until that point, I think I would have fought harder, but cheating and saying the things he said in the process… Well, it doesn’t fly with me. I put up with it from Chad for years. Sneaking around behind my back, smelling like a different girl all the time. I won’t allow myself to be made a fool of again. I’m stronger than that now. Why should I always fight to be someone’s first choice? I should automatically be theirs.