COMMON ROOM: A Short Story Anthology

Losing Violet by Anne Lutz (Wattpad username: AnneLutz)

LOSING VIOLET

by Anne Lutz (Wattpad username: AnneLutz)

Mentor: Jen Brooks, author of IN A WORLD JUST RIGHT, releasing April 28, 2015, Simon & Schuster for Young Readers

 ***

        Violet started dating again a year and a half after I left her. She spent most of those eighteen months locked away in her room, crying and screaming to be left alone. At least, that’s what my best friend Alex said. He was angry with me too, but I didn’t know what to tell him. Even if I did, it wouldn’t have lessened Violet’s pain or his anger.

        After I broke Violet’s heart, Alex came over every day after his job at the local supermarket. He caught me up with Violet’s college life, seeing as I couldn’t call her and ask. Apparently, she ended up an hour and a half from our hometown, going to some crappy community college. That’s where she met Clay Thexton. I wanted to know exactly how it happened—did they sit next to each other by chance or did Violet strike up a conversation on purpose? Alex never said, and I didn’t know how to ask.

        “I don’t care what her mom says,”Alex said, leaning toward me. “This Clay guy sounds like a complete tool.”

        I stared at him.

        “I just don’t know what you were thinking.”He looked down toward his feet. “You really messed up.”

        “I know,”I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

        He didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. Everyone knew I messed up. I never should have left Violet. I sent her one stupid text message, and it ruined everything. I wasn’t allowed to be angry that she was moving on to a different guy. This was my doing, not hers. She made me into a better person, and I ruined our relationship anyway.

            Violet was the one to transform me from a cynic to an optimist, starting from the moment I met her. Two weeks into our relationship, Violet made me celebrate the first day of October. I didn’t understand her vibrant enthusiasm over the tenth month, but I was too deep into the honeymoon phase to care either way. All I knew was that Violet smiled brighter during October, especially on Halloween. We dressed up as Batman and Robin that first year, and Violet spent the entire night introducing me as “the sidekick”to everyone we met. I was too charmed to feel embarrassed.

            That was just the beginning. For the next four years, Violet made me love October, inch by inch. It started with October 1, then it was Halloween, then it was every day of the month. There was no escaping October with Violet, and eventually, I preferred it that way. On the last September of our relationship, I actually found myself ticking down the days to October, and unknowingly, our breakup.

            I sent the text the night before Halloween. I knew it was a mistake even as I wrote it, but by that time, it didn’t matter. The damage was done, and now here I am, scowling at the brown leaves and glaring at the distant pumpkins, dark with rot.

A jalopy of a car—the type that was poorly restored—screams down the road, its engine moments from detonation. My heart recognizes the sound before I do, and suddenly, I’m on my feet, stretching my neck toward the partially concealed road. The sound grows louder and louder, squealing with protest as the car rounds a final corner.

            It’s her.

My heart thumps to the beat of the stalling car as it rattles into the parking lot. The chipped blue-green of my failed paint job, the dented bumper from a fender bender, the busted headlight that’s been broken for years. For a moment I feel as though I’m in the past, watching Violet pull up like she did a million times when we were together. But this time, my stomach contorts uneasily beneath my skin.