Rise and Fall

15 - My scars run deeper than your scars.

Most days I managed to steer reasonably clear of him though, or at least exercised enough restraint in keeping my tongue relatively wit-free so as not to bait him into another argument or fight. Ruben's ever-present willingness to include my siblings and nephew in our days together made things so much easier at home, because I wasn't laden with guilt worrying about what was happening to them when I was with him, or otherwise punishing myself for something that had happened while I wasn't there to protect them.

Once both our bosses were back a few days after the start of the New Year, Ruben and I were back at work full-time, so it was harder to look after the kids and even harder to spend time with each other. If he was working nearby, sometimes he would actually encourage his Uncle Jack to take lunch at Greenies when I was working, which was always entertaining. Jack was mortified the first time they came in, learning only after he had eaten the full meal that it was all vegan and filled with mock meats. After that, I only ever saw him order the sweets, which I guess were the safer option for your typical meat-eating tradie.

Everything was as good as it could be, given the circumstances.

Then one night, half way through January, I got a call in the early hours of the morning from a very wasted Camden in Adelaide. I hadn't heard from him since his last message, which I still hadn't replied to because I just didn't feel any desire to try to mask my annoyance with him. When he called, it was to tell me he had seen a photo I had been tagged in online and asked if he—meaning Ruben—was who I was with when I cancelled our plans together before Christmas.

I knew the photo. It was one Tanner had taken of us at the beach the day beforehand. Ruben was shirtless, holding me from behind and kissing playfully into my neck. Camden claimed that he was so 'heartbroken' at seeing it that he had got drunk with his mates out on the beach in Port Adelaide, jumped off the pier and cracked his head open on a rock at the bottom of the shallow water where he fell. His idiot mates didn't think it was a good idea to stop him from doing this, nor did they think it would be a smart idea to take him to a hospital immediately considering they were all drunk and high too, despite him bleeding out on the sand.

So, he was just lying there on the beach, mourning his own pride and lack of effort with me, and resenting that I had chosen Ruben over him. He was so sure we would be together when he got back from his visit to his father's because 'we were the same' and had passions and desires that understood each other; that we could communicate with each other in ways other people couldn't ever understand; and that Ruben was 'just a random jock and that I could never actually be satisfied with someone like him.'

I was furious about what he said about Ruben, and if it weren't three o'clock in the morning and his alcohol-diluted blood not streaming forth from his stupid cut-open head, I would have told him to immediately fuck off. But my instincts in that moment were to talk him out of doing something even more stupid, and to get him to a doctor to fix his head before he passed out and his moronic friends left him there to bleed out or drown with the rising tide after he passed out. 

After practicing on my regular test subjects at home over the years, I had perfected the art of talking to drunk people who wouldn't listen to reason or logic by then, and whipped out my 'Dealing with Drunks in the Wee Hours of the Morning 101' playbook, and began reciting my memorised lines. "We'll talk about this more when you're feeling better, but we won't get that opportunity unless you get up and go to a hospital."

"No! Fuck that. I don't care anymore. You were the one, Sadie. You understood. We understood each other. What's the fucking point now? You've chosen him over me. And I won't ever be happy again. I may as well just kill myself now," he said slurring every word, his tone fluctuating between anger, jealousy and despair from one sentence to the next.