Polaroid

“I don’t care, Tyler, I honestly don’t anymore!”

I’m charging up the stairs of the apartment complex, leaving a storm of angry dust trailing behind me. My new heels, the ones I’d bought especially for this night, are being forced to methods of torture as I stomp up, making sure each step resonates into the once-serene nighttime scenery.

“Come on, Kylie, don’t be like that,” he calls out, hopping up the stairs two at a time so that he’s by my side in a dash. I don’t stop, so he grabs my arm. Startled, I let loose a shriek and grab the pinkie of the hand that’s touching me.

“I swear to God, let go of me or I’ll break your pinkie with a flick of my wrist.”

He backs up immediately. Like magic, I think.

My previous routine of stomping continues, and I’m sure to get complaints of noise pollution tomorrow. It doesn’t really matter to me, though. As long as I’m pissing off Tyler, nothing can faze me.

“Kylie, Ky-bear, you know I love you, just tell me what's wrong,” Tyler yells up the stairs. He’s stopped trying to catch up with me, and maintains a steady five feet distance. He’s smart.

I scoff, stopping midway up level four. I start laughing, but only the oh-god-I-can’t-believe-you type. “You really are something, you know that? But you wanna know something, Tyler? Hmm? This time, I’ve had enough.”

We stand there in silence for a few minutes, though it seems like days, until I look up the same time as he does and we catch each other’s eyes. I furrow my brows, squeeze my eyes shut, and demand, “Leave.”

Stomping continues immediately after. I reach my room, 502, and shove the key into the lock. I just want to get inside before Tyler makes it up the stairs.

But I don’t have to worry, because when I turn around, there’s no one there. I glance down the spiral staircase.

Nope.

Desperately, I stumble into the apartment and rush over to the window, not bothering with lights, and there he is—still dressed in that fancy black tux, walking across the grassy field with the moon on his back. He reaches his Lexus and with a chirp it comes alive. I stay there, at the window, watching him drive away in the vehicle I had convinced him to buy, until I can’t even see the lights in the distance anymore.

When I leave the window and turn on the lights, I realize how big of a mess I’ve made in the room. The basket of laundry I’d put near the door, meaning to take it downstairs earlier this morning, has been overturned in my desperate flee to the window. I clean that up, then put my heels in the shoe organizer, and go to the bathroom to wash up.

To my amazement, I see a solitary tear slip down my cheek just as I look in the mirror. My eyes look red and my nose the same shade, if not deeper. I suddenly notice the hiccups and sniffles I’m experiencing, which have probably been occurring for the last half hour.

“I hate him,” I say to myself.

But I know that’s not true.

~*~

At 3 a.m., the phone rings. I jolt awake from my half-sleep on the living room sofa and fumble around in the darkness for the handset. “Goddamnit,” I mumble as the fourth ring sounds.

“Hullo?” I mumble into the receiver.

“Oh, Kylie, come on, we need to talk—”

I hang up on him.

Five seconds pass before it starts ringing again. I check the number.

It’s him.

What’s more pathetic? The fact that he’s calling again even though I literally just hung up on him, or the fact that I’ve memorized his number in a time and age where phones have such contraptions as caller ID?