She // l.p.

3

I don’t lie to the boys when I reenter my apartment. “She left.” I announce. “I started talking faster than I was thinking and shit almost got real bad, real fast. But she just said “I hope you’ll try” and then she walked off.” They all stand from their seats occupied on my couch. None of them give encouraging words because I don’t deserve them. “I know you guys were only here for that show – you can go now.” Most likely that came out rude but I don’t have the energy to apologize.

Each of them nods understandingly before gathering up the trash on my floor, dumping it in the bin, and then exiting. All I want to do is sleep, just for a little while and in peace but I know that’s not likely to happen. My best bet is to only wake out of my sleep twice tonight, but I’m hoping jet lag will set in and I won’t wake up until three in the afternoon tomorrow.

After showering I throw myself into the bed in a thermal, a pair of joggers slung low on my hips and my damp hair soaking the pillow underneath my head. When I wake up I hope my slumber will have turned me into the man she wants me to – the man she deserves me to be. If you wouldn’t have lied you would still be him, my conscience reminds me. I don’t know how I even managed to think that would’ve been the solution, forcing someone else out of her life to make more room for myself. She had already circled her entire life around me and it still wasn’t enough for me. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew she would find out, but I hoped that by then we’d be old and grey and she would thank me for removing that asshole, that is still very much in love with her, out of her life. But who could blame him, there’s too much to let go of and at the rate I’m going, she’ll have a new boyfriend kicking me out of her life in no time.

The alarm clock reads 2:55 a.m. and there still hasn’t been another thought on my mind but her. All I want to do is undo the conversation we had in the back of this apartment building. Maybe she’d still be sitting in the middle of my living room floor, making everyone laugh and breaking my heart at the same time. But I can’t undo any of the things I’ve done to her. Not a single one and an ‘I’m sorry’ will never make up for any of them.

Yet, I can see in her eyes she’s forgiven me for my wrongs because she knows what she could be right now if she hadn’t whenever she did. Selfish me, I wish she hadn’t. I wish she would still be angry at me because along with that anger, there’s the love she used to have for me. When I say I’d give up everything to get that love back, I mean it. My mind, body, and soul need her.

Maybe I’m being dramatic but she was the only woman I’ve been with that ever felt like mine. There never was a waver in her eyes that I was the only thing she was focused on. Whenever I told her about my day she wasn’t pretending to listen, whenever I called her from a different time zone she was completely awake within a matter of seconds. I mattered to her. And when I looked in her eyes hours ago, I was just another guy in the room to her. She wasn’t treating me like the greatest thing to happen to the world since television anymore and it ripped me to shreds when she didn’t smile that crooked smile to me. I got a small and painfully ordinary grin.

My phone taunts me from the bedside table, the home screen still illuminating with the last picture I took of her. Without thinking I do it, I scroll through my contacts and click her name, pressing the phone to my ear and sitting upright in the bed at the same time. Why am I doing this? She won’t pick up and when she sees that I called her at three in the morning she’s going to slice my hands off.

The line picks up unexpectedly and my knee bobs up and down underneath my elbow. There’s rustling on the other end of the line before her soft yawn. “Liam?” A rasp is hidden in her tired voice.

“Uh, um… uh,” my mouth has gone completely dry.

“Liam you’re breathing pretty hard, what’s wrong?” She yawns again before trying to cough away the sound of her tired voice. She must hate me right now. I can almost imagine the sleep in the corner of her eyes and a scowl on her face as he rakes her fingers through the thick, tangled, blonde waves of her hair even though she sound of her voice is concerned. “Talk to me, what’s wrong?”