Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟱𝟬 something borrowed

𝙇.
SOMETHING BORROWED

──────

NEW YORK

I COULD ALREADY picture what was going to be written on my gravestone:

Here lies Elizabeth Montgomery, a dumb bitch.

My gravestone would be in some shitty plot in a cemetery back in Connecticut. 

My funeral would be painfully long and awkward, a lot of Addison trying not to emote and my mother being unable to do anything but stare, due to the amount of botox in her cheeks. Maybe my plot would have flowers, maybe some pictures and maybe even a teardrop or two.

Maybe if they didn't like that option for my eulogy, they'd opt for a specific text message that Mark Sloan sent me.

It was short and snappy and occurred thirty minutes after I'd told him that I loved him for the first time. It had a certain ring to it and it seemed to have the Mark Sloan stamp of approval.

Out of everything, this was how he decided to end it. He typed out those words and thought, yes, this is how it's going to end. It was a nice message, very brief and curt and impersonal with it's own empty apology at the beginning:

I'm sorry, I think we should see other people.

I spent a lot of time pulling it apart, dissecting it as if I was back in an English classroom in high school. I spent a lot of time reading it over and over until it was burned into the back of my eyelids, ready to pop up on a short moments notice to get my blood pumping. 

It'd taken him half an hour to tap out that text message, half an hour to press send and make frown and squint as if I'd misread the tiny words on my screen.

What the fuck did that mean?

It meant: I don't want you to love me.

It meant: I'm bored now, go find someone else to get emotionally attached to.

Or at least, that's what I concluded. It was the argument of my essay that I'd compiled with the last of my sober brain cells. It was enough to make me falter completely and think 'what the fuck did that mean?' and hope that I was very, very wrong. 

I'd always been shit at English in high school and often, I overanalysed things until they were broken little syllables that didn't make sense to me anymore.

Was I wrong? I really wanted to be wrong. I was in the process of convincing myself that I was wrong, I was nearly at the breaking point, convincing myself that this was just a miscommunication—but then Mark wouldn't take any of my calls and I couldn't bring myself to leave him a voicemail and I just had to stare at the message over and over.

I'm sorry, I think we should see other people.

I don't think he meant it to be overanalysed. I don't think he intended it to be anything other than what it was. It took me a while to respond. 

It took me one hour more than it had taken him to send his. I tapped out various replies, some with expletives, some that were simply so over-the-top that I'd had to physically remove myself from my cell phone and remind myself who I was.

The response I came up with ticked all of the desirable boxes:

Okay.

It was to the point and impersonal, just as Mark's had. It was saying exactly what I needed it to say without letting him slip in between the lines.