Glacier

On Valentine's Day, the thought I'm sure she refrained from speaking as if conscious it would only make it worse. Valentine's Day. Love was in the air and it was strangling me.  

"I know," I managed to squeeze out before I fell apart, collapsing into fitful tears. Lizzy pulled me into her arms awkwardly (we were both pretty much squatting in a corner) and stroked my head. 

"You just go ahead and cry," she said. 

And that's what I did.    

                                                        __________

"Yes, his girlfriend caught us sleeping together, but that doesn't mean she has to be beyond malicious to me," Becca said.

I was pretty sure my expression hadn't changed. I'd been staring at Becca wide eyed for what felt like the past hour. It was probably more like ten minutes. I was trying to figure out if this was always what Becca was like and I'd just accepted that, or if her blatant disrespect for other's relationships was a recent development. 

I sucked in a deep breath. I hadn't breathed fresh air in almost a week. Technically, it was three days, but I wasn't sure whether I should be counting in days or tears, and I'd cried for what felt like years. After the requisite days of mourning, I managed to put on real pants and leave my apartment in search for something to pull me out of my Matt-induced funk. Becca was more than happy to oblige me with her current drama, which I normally liked about my roommate, but not today.

"Umm, no," I responded to her ridiculous statement. I was still raw from the events at the Coffee Shop, and her words were simply rubbing me the wrong way, for lack of a less cliché term. 

"No?" she asked genuinely unsure.

"No."

She shrugged as if it mattered little whether anyone approved or if it made her a shit person. A quality that had enthralled me previously, but kind of pissed me off now. Her indifference was really beginning to grate my nerves the past couple of days. She'd always been kind of flippant towards my dramas, which were much more realistic and much less scandalous than her own. She'd only responded with "So, you faux-slapped him? I didn't know you guys were that serious. You never brought him around," when I'd told her about Matt. And instead of pointing out that I didn't want him to meet her, I'd dropped it. Questions about what I was going to do with my next twenty-two years of life or how long was too long to live with your college roommate and subsist on the generosity of one's parents and the meager salary of a barista, usually elicited not much more than a shrug from her. It was almost like she was still living in the "college bubble", and I'd been unceremoniously kicked out. Or rather someone had popped my metaphorical bubble, and things were cold on the other side.  

I gave Becca the half-baked excuse that I had errands to run and she shrugged again as if she knew I was lying but didn't care to call me out on it. Not breaking character for a moment. There were no errands. I had no place to be. I'd called in for the rest of my work week, not that I had to considering that Lizzy, having watched my world shatter in real time, offered to cover my shifts. She called the day after "the faux-slap". 

"Oh my god, Matt just left the shop," she'd whisper-screamed into the receiver as if she was sneaking the call. When I didn't respond, she added, "he actually asked for you!"

Even though she couldn't see it, I raised my eyebrows up to my hairline. "What did he say?"

Lizzy cleared her throat as if readying herself to deliver a line she'd committed to memory. I appreciated the theatrics of it all. "'So, where's my tea rose today?' and when I said you weren't in, he literally pouted." Lizzy emphasized the final words as if she couldn't believe it.