The Unsolvable Equation

Thirty-seven

“I-I’m sorry,” Alexia stuttered. “I don’t know what else I can say. I guess I just wasn’t thinking straight.” I was thinking rationally. Too rationally.

Caden shook his head. “You do know what to say. I don’t want you apology, Alexia. I want your explanation. You’ve always been so good at telling me why I was an asshole in the past, so why is it so hard to do the same now that the tables have turned and you’re the one acting like a total idiot?”

Alexia winced inwardly, stung by Caden’s uncharacteristically harsh words. “The truth is, Caden,” she began with a rough, edgy tension to her voice. “I thought that I’d end up with Almier. I thought that, as stupid as it sounds, Almier was the logical choice. I thought that he was better suited for me and that it’d be better for everyone if I ended up with him.” She paused for a while. “I thought that you’d appreciate someone a little more like you, and that with France coming up and me spending two whole weeks with him, this really seemed like the right thing to do,” She threw in for good measure.

Caden made a sound from the back of his throat that sounded like the inhumane cry of a tortured soul. “So you measured love using logic? So you rationalized friendship and feelings like an essay? You picked and chose and treated us like contestants in a beauty pageant! You weighed our flaws and strengths like a butcher weighs his best, most expensive meat! Alexia,” his eyes, now flaming with the unleashed demon of bottled up hurt and anger, bore into hers. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

When Alexia was five, her father slapped her for pasting stickers on his car windshield. You weren’t thinking rationally! he had shouted at her. What can’t you use your mind! Why can’t you use a little logic! Why can’t you determine that doing such a stupid, mindless thing is wrong!  Now, she was getting slapped for the exact opposite reason. This time, the logic that she needed so badly when she was a child had come back to haunt her. You’ve got an amazing brain, Alexia, she told herself.You’ve got incredible analytical skills. Too bad you don’t know how to use them.

“I’m so sorry,” Alexia begged, her voice unable to soar above a pathetic whisper. “I’m very, very sorry.”

Caden stared at her in disgust. “Is that really you talking? Because your ego is definitely too huge to allow you to drop to such a pathetic state as the one you are in now,” he spat.

“What was I supposed to do, Caden! I couldn’t have chosen both you and Almier!” Alexia cried, her heart felt as though it was being stretched to breaking point.

“No, Alexia you don’t understand! You don’t have to give up a friendship just because you want to be in a relationship! You never stopped being friends with K.H, so why did you stop being friends with me?” Caden yelled.

Because I felt guilty. Because I couldn’t look you in the eye without feeling like the worst human being on earth, for lapping up your advances and then leaving you hanging dry. Because I couldn’t stand looking at you and be reminded of what I had to give up. Because I didn’t deserve you.

Caden didn’t wait for her to reply. “Well?” he boomed. “Don’t you have anything to say? Or has your dear logic so kindly deserted you at a moment like this?”

“Caden, please don’t do this now,” Alexia begged, one straw away from sinking to her knees. “Almier just left today and I don’t think I could handle it if you left, too.”

Caden’s face screwed up in disgust and she could see the fire in his eyes freeze cold, hard and blue. “Oh,” he said with a tone too calm to be real. It sent shivers down Alexia’s spine and she wanted nothing more than to disappear right then and there. “So that’s why you’re finally paying attention to me. That’s why I’m finally deemed worthy of the great Alexia Lee’s words. That’s why the reserve finally gets out to have some fucking playing time!”

“Caden!”

“Well Alexia I always knew you were a heartless bitch, but I never expected you to stoop so low!” Caden sneered. “What does Almier have that I don’t? Brains? Is that it? Are you that shallow to only glance at surface level?” He staggered back, as if trying to escape the monster that she had become.

“Caden,” Alexia pleaded, tears rising up now, much to her mortification. “Don’t be like this!”

Caden ignored her. “Hmm, what could it be? Bravery? Does he run to save his delusional princess from the monster she has become?” He ran onto the road. “Does the way he tempt his fate make her fall in love with him? Does he have a gut that enchants her so?”

“Caden you’re overreacting!” Alexia cried. “Come back here!”

“Am I? You seem pretty distressed when Almier said he was leaving. Now, I wonder how you’ll react if I took a little journey of my own, too.”

“Caden!”

There was a honk.

A crash.

A scream.

Then silence.