1.2 | Breakup Formula | ONGOING

08 | courage

0 8

c o u r a g e

That afternoon, on the bus ride back home with Joey, I watched the lines on the road blur and the trees on the sidewalk blur and felt this familiar, wonderful feeling of content that was blurred with a pesky emotion of bitterness. Why such sweet feelings were marred with bitterness confounded me at first, but when the bus came to an abrupt halt at a traffic light, it suddenly struck me that, perhaps, this was it.

This was the bit of the breakup formula that I had never attempted to do. And now I knew why I could never get over the past, why the monsters of the past continued to mess with my head and my emotions.

It was the acceptance of one's past. I had never quite come to terms with it. Joey had done it. He'd said it out loud that first day we met, got all those feelings of anger and bitterness out of him before he could even begin to move on.

Feeling a wave of courage surged through me, and I reached over to take the earpiece out of Joey's left ear, before taking the one out of my right ear.

Joey shot me a look of surprised but I quickly shook my head.

"Just listen," I told him, staring straight ahead. My heart was racing, my hands clammy and I felt like shutting up and never saying a word again. But I forced myself to begin. "His name was Lucas. And we dated for two years, and for the first year-and-a-half, it was lovely and wonderful. Everyone loved him - and by everyone, I do mean everyone. His friends, my friends, even Mikel. He was sweet and kind and intelligent and pretty much perfect in every way."

Joey's lips quirked in a brief, almost sardonic smile. "Sounds like quite a catch."

"Oh, he was. My friends kept on telling me how lucky I was to have someone like him. They kept telling me I needed to treat him better. I mean, you know how I am sometimes - I'm sarcastic and snarky and all-around prickly, I guess - so they truly believed he was the same sweet, kind and lovely person he was all the time."

I paused and Joey raised an eyebrow. "I sense a 'but' coming."

"I'm the one telling the story, so hush up."

"Wow, your friends were right. You are prickly." I shot him a very unamused look, and he hastily put up his hands in mock-surrender. "I'm sorry, please continue."

I glared at Joey, before continuing. "Only Lucas wasn't. Let's look at it this way - we are all made of different fragments of ourselves. And we're always different around different people. In front of girls, maybe, you act like some dashing prince, but in front of me, you act like a first-rate idiot - "

"Hey!"

Smiling, I ignored his indignant outburst. "But my point is, the Lucas around other people was vastly different from the Lucas he was around me. In the same way, I guess, I was snarky on the outside, but I swear I wasn't as bad when I was with him. He once told me I was adorable and lovely and asked me why I didn't show that bit of me in front of my friends."

"Well, it's not like you were dating them," Joey scoffed, and I smiled faintly. "You were dating him, obviously you'd act differently around a guy you're dating and around friends."

"That's exactly what I said. So, yeah, case in point - we all have our facades. And he had his mask too. Because when it was only the two of us and no one else, he was...different."

"Different - how?" Joey questioned, curiously, and I felt a faint blush appearing on my cheeks.

Now I had gotten to the most difficult part of my story, and I wasn't entirely sure how to put it in words. But I had made it through this far, and stopping abruptly would've been such a shame.

"He was really into the physical aspects of our relationship ­- if you know what I mean," I added, and Joey's eyes narrowed. "For about the first year, he listened to what I had to say, he told me many things about his life and just little bits about him. But then the second year came and he was just entirely focused on making out - no matter where we were and - "

"Hey, Glitter, I hate to cut you off," Joey said, abruptly, as he pulled me up from the seat. "But we're reaching your stop."

I blinked, confused for a moment before belatedly snapping out of my daze. "Oh, shoot," I muttered, noticing the familiar street through the window of the bus. "I'll tell you the rest another day then."

"No, it's fine, I'll just get off with you."

"What - "

I heard the faint, self-assured chuckle from Joey before he manoeuvred me to the exit. And we got off together at the same stop. We walked for awhile, until he nudged me to continue, and I did.

"Anyway, as I was saying," I started slowly, "Lucas eventually became less interested in the emotional aspects of our relationship and just focused on the physical. It got to a point where I felt really used, like I was nothing more but a person he needed to fulfil his sexual needs. Another thing was this constant feeling of inadequacy. He was terribly clever, and I wasn't - and it was just an added insecurity. I could never, ever match up. My friends would be envious because I had such a smart boyfriend and he could teach me - only he didn't, because he got terribly impatient and dismissive when I couldn't understand things quickly enough. And towards the end of the second year, I got so terribly tired of being with him I wanted to just end everything. I really did. And I tried, so many times, to tell him, but each time he'd stop me and promise he changed and I just believed because it was two years and we were used to be so happy together."

I paused to catch my breath. Joey was listening intently, but his gaze was down and he was busy kicking the leaves on the sidewalk. He made no move to say or do anything, so I continued.

"Eventually, it got to a point where I was just incredibly bitter and furious about the whole thing. About him, about him never letting me go. So I cut myself off from him. I screened his calls, ignored his texts. Except it backfired. Terribly. By then, he'd become indispensable to my friends and they all thought I was a bitch to leave him hanging. Which I was, I guess, but I couldn't help it. Just seeing his name on the screen of my phone made my blood boil, and I couldn't stand looking or even thinking about him."

A light of realisation dawned on Joey's face, and he glanced up quickly.

"That's why Mikel said I had 'non-existent friends'," I shrugged, knowing it was what Joey was going to clarify. "Because eventually most of them left me."

Joey's eyes narrowed, and he grabbed my wrist to stop me from walking. "You could've explained it to them. For fucks' sake, Kira, you not only gave up on a relationship, but you gave up on so many friendships too!"

Somehow, his words made a ball of frustration well up in me, and I yanked my wrist away angrily. "I didn't give up on anything! I said nothing, because I didn't want to ruin anything!"

My outburst was loud and jarring on the soft silence surrounding us. It was just that I had been suppressing all these emotions for so long. And they'd eventually erupted, like Mount Vesuvius upon the city of Pompeii. Feelings of frustration and anger and bitterness - these were feelings I hadn't ever let go of to begin with.

"I didn't want to change the way they saw him," I said quietly. "If leaving could help them maintain their untainted impressions of him, then it was for the best. And if there was anyone who needed to leave first, I wanted it to be me."

Joey didn't say anything. But he pulled me into a hug, reminiscent of the way I'd once hugged him when he was trying to get over his breakup with Fiona, and I closed my eyes, feeling the bitter pang in my chest slowly but surely ebb away.