The Long Road There

Three Minute Apology

**2010**
I walked through my cheap, one bedroom apartment in Louisiana. I threw my purse on the couch and put my coat on the coat rack.

"Trevor?" I yelled.

"Oh there you are," I smiled when he walked down the hall.

"Hi buddy," I scratched behind his ear, his orange cat fur flying all over the place.

I stood back up and walked to the table where I left my phone this morning. Seven text messages from him. I left them unopened and locked my phone back, shoved it in my pocket, and walked down the hall to my room.

I threw myself on my bed and pulled my laptop onto my lap. I opened it up and skype was going off. I ignored it of course.

But it kept going off. It wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop. So I answered it.

"What do you want?" my voice was cold and bitter.

"To talk to you."

"You have three minutes," I folded my arms across my chest.

"Babe."

"Don't call me that," I snapped.

"Sorry. It's a habit. Piper, I just want to talk to you. I feel horrible for everything I did. For leaving you. For crushing you. For stepping on your dreams. For stepping on you. You're not the same Piper anymore. And I'm the reason for that. And I have to live with that. I'm not asking you to forgive me or to accept my apology. But I just want to make myself feel better and tell you that I'm truly sorry."

"So you're only apologizing for yourself? To make you feel better? God you're so selfish," I lifted my hand up to close the computer screen.

"No Piper wait."

"What?"

"I love you. And I don't want to hurt you anymore."

"You can't hurt me if you never talk to me again. So let's try that," his face fell as soon as I said that but I closed my computer anyways.

And then I cried some more. The rest of the night actually. I'm nineteen years old and my room mate is a cat. Most nineteen year olds are beautiful college girls with hot boyfriends. Some of their boyfriends were their high schools boyfriends and they just planned to go to college together. And just be together. That should've been us.

But here I am, in my dark apartment that I can barely afford because I scoop ice cream for a living.