"Oh fucking god." Erin shouted in frustration the next day in the morning as I cried on the couch in her room. "He's such a fucking stubborn idiot, how's he gonna just sit there and tell you he won't wanna see you?" She came around and brought me a bottle of some fancy organic wine. Her dad was home and he told her not to take it because we were underage, but she snapped at him that it was boy troubles. Boy troubles. Hell, that's exactly what he was acting like, a fucking boy, a child.
I kept asking myself, how the hell was he going to just ignore me like that? I was seriously convinced he would like the idea of I-miss-you-sex, it sounded great to me.
"Here, want me to ask them to make some of those french macarons?"
I cried harder as Andy's face popped into my mind. "Andy used to buy me macarons every Saturday. And on his trips from France." I groaned, feeling her watchful eyes on me.
"Dye... who are we crying over?" She asked in confusion.
I was crying over Charlie and how damn difficult and selfish he was, but also I was crying about how I have no choice but to pretend Andy no longer meant anything to me, to pretend I no longer love him, and it was so painful. This restricting the truth, I felt a physical restriction in my chest as I breathed just thinking about it. And then I felt terrible remembering how Charlie was angry at me for leaving. It would just be so easy if he was happy for me.
I told Erin that, why I was crying.
"I'm fine. No macarons, I should just go home. Thanks, though, I love you."
"Well- at least take the bottle with you, you can drink the entire bottle and not get a headache, because it's organic." She said energetically. I smiled, still crying and she led me out the door, and even though I didn't believe her I was still going to take that entire bottle down.
Opening the gate to her front door stood Toby, with a hand full of roses. He looked at me face and his eyes widened in worry. "Are you alright, Diana?"
I wiped my face and looked at him as he stood before my best friend's house with flowers and a flushed face. I actually smiled. "What are you-"
"What the hell?" Erin's voice came from behind me, coming out to see Toby, and his face flushed darker. I bit my lip to hold in a laugh.
I knew it.
"Erin! Hey." He said casually, but he seemed every least bit of casual as he stood there.
"Hold on," She told him and pulled me toward her, me holding the bottle of wine. "Do you want me to talk to him?" She meant Charlie.
I shook my head. "It'll only make him even more angry."
"Then I'll knock some sense into that asshole, don't cry over him now, do it in front of his face. You know how he gets when he makes you sad." She chuckled, and I rolled my eyes, thanking her again and before walking out, Toby grabbed my arm.
"Wait, who?" He demanded.
I smiled at him again. "See ya, Toby." And walked off.
"Diana, are you seeing someone?" His demand echoed into Erin's house, but I ignored him and drove to my house.
Walking through the door and sobbing again. No one was home, so I just invited Connor over and got drunk that afternoon, having him get drunk with me. I cried a lot, but only because my emotions were a fucking mess.
"He'll go crazy when you're gone, Dye. He'll miss you like crazy and he'll beg to see you when you're back."
My drunk self replied, "No he won't. He'll miss me but he's too stubborn to give in. He'll be too angry to really want to see me."
The front door to my house opened up and in came Austin and Bailey, seeing me and Connor on the couch, miserable and sad. Well, me miserable and sad.
"What the hell, Diana, are you drunk?" Austin could tell immediately.
I expected him to be pissed again, yell as me and tell me to grow up, but instead he came over and took the wine from me and the liquor from Connor and said, "I guess Chance was really upset, huh."
I cried some more, not being able to answer. Austin, looking angry, released a breath, but he was not angry at me. He leaned over and picked me up, carrying me up the stairs as I cried on his shoulder. "He said he wont wanna see me, Audie. Or hear from me. He's so angry." I cried, and he Austin shushed me while Bailey got blankets for Connor to pass out on the couch, and I faintly hears Bailey's voice tell him, "Go to sleep, fuckface." Then he went to my room with Austin.
Bailey pulled back the comforters as Austin laid me on my bed and Bailey tucked me in. "He's an idiot, Diana. He doesn't realize what he's doing." Bailey said.
"Yes he does. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's gonna be miserable, so he wants me to be miserable. I already will be miserable without him, but with him being like this it just makes things harder." I cried onto my pillow. "And now I can't stop missing that fucking man. I see him once and it bothers me every second." I cried harder, and Austin stood confused, but Bailey knew.
"What is she-"
"Andy Carl was at the graduation. They saw each other and it was like neither of them could move. It was hard watching something like that." He admitted, rubbing my arm.
"What did they say to each other?"
"They didn't talk. They didn't have time, his brother took him away because of the photographers."
I calmed my crying and rubbed my eyes. I was so drunk and emotional, but Austin wasn't angry at me.
"Go to sleep, Diana." He told me, and I obeyed.
"Goodnight." Bailey pat my head as I dozed off.
...
Three weeks.
That's how long until I left for New Jersey, how long I had to pack, to see my friends, to spend time with my brothers, and that's how long it had been since I'd seen Charlie. He ignored my every call, he removed the key to his apartment from under the mat, and he never answered the door for me. I was hurting so much. I kept wondering why he was doing this.
I left him voicemails for godsake, voicemails! I texted him a ton of times, begging him, insulting him, joking with him- not once did I get a reply.
Finally, on the day I was leaving I decided to make one more stop at his house. I breathed deeply, hoping this would work.
I knocked. "Charlie?" I said. Silence. "Charlie, I'm-" I sighed. "I'm leaving today. I'm going to college. Please just let me see your face before I leave." He said nothing. "I love you," I began to cry. "I can't leave things like this between us, please open the door." I waited a few minutes, hoping he would open it up, but nothing happened. So I continued talking. "I'm coming back next break, and I'll stay with you." I tried to speak eagerly, but tears were beginning to fill my every breath, I sounded like a sobbing child. "Charlie please don't make this so hard. This hurts, it really does." I leaned onto the door, pressing my forehead against it and crying, but when I got no answer and checked the time, I knew I had to get going, so I waited another ten minutes, then told him I loved him, and I left.
I left Texas.
And Charlie.
...
He never tried to reach me for the next almost three years. I was miserable, for a only a while.
I made so many friends, and they were all incredibly different and unique. I met a freaking chess maniac and learned out to play. For a good two months he and I played everyday and he beat me in less than thirty seconds each time, then he began teaching me strategy- how to play in attack mode instead of defensive.
My roommate there was a cellist, and when I told her I played as well she tried to teach me a couple of songs she wrote. She was a genius. A prodigy, but originally went there for fashion design, and loved to use me as a model for her clothes. I liked it too, aside from all the poking and accidental needle pricking. She made me most of my clothes.
Her boyfriend, Kyle, was some kind of engineer, and he often stayed with us, since our dorm was huge, though he lived in a dorm on the other side of us. Them along with a few others and I would always take trips over to New York and they'd teach me about the area, because all of them either had lived there or had been long enough at Drew to know it.
I loved it. Drew was a dream to be at, and my classes were so open when it came to discussion. Everybody welcomed each other's opinion. At least, in my classes they did.
All three of my brothers called a lot, Austin the most, and Erin came to visit all the time, from WashU. Cole got to go to Stanford, though I have no idea how he was able to pull that off so last minute. Connor went to Brown, because he was incredibly smart as well.
I met a lot of new people. A lot of nice guys, but I couldn't agree to any of them. They'd be so kind to casually want to go out as friends, but even as friends I knew I couldn't begin to think about anybody the way I thought about Charlie.
My roommate, Sarah, often asked about my boyfriend. I told her he was old. And grumpy, and angry at me for leaving. She said he couldn't be that old, and that he should get over it. She knew because she heard as I called him every week.
One week... I stopped. Three months in and I realized it was hopeless to want him to call me back. He was never going to do it. Something in me knew this didn't mean our relationship was over. Sure, it meant that I needed to scare the hell out of him when I got back and tell him I hated him, but I wasn't sure how I'd be able to do that.
I was at a bookstore with my friend one day, and looking around the classic fiction section I saw a book that stood out to me more than anything. Lolita. I bought it, read it, laughed because somehow, even though he was strangely creepy man, I still pitied Humbert Humbert. His heartbreak, his affection, his willingness to die for his Dolores. I cried in that book, and then Sarah made fun of me because she said Humbert was a fucked up pedophile. I believed he was just crazy in love. Even if it was with a child.
I sent that book to Charlie one Christmas, with a handwritten note that said,
To prove our relationship isn't as fucked up as we thought
- your girl ♥
I didn't sign my name, but he would know who it was.
When Thanksgiving break came, I earned an internship as a journalist's assistant, and I couldn't go home. I told myself it wasn't like Charlie would see me anyway.
Christmas break came, and I didn't find it in me to look for a flight, so I spent Christmas and New Years with my roommate and her boyfriend in New York. We watched the ball drop, and I snuggled with my chess friend, Robby, for warmth. He was one of my closest friends at Drew. He knew how being away from Charlie hurt, and he comforted me in a way that made me have hope.
Summer break came, and my internship turned into a job.
I never left that first year, and I made money.
My second year of college repeated the first, and when I had one week to go back home, I took three days in Texas. I saw my brothers again, spent lots of time with them, asked to see Charlie, they said he left to Seattle the previous week with Savannah and her family because they wanted to take his gloomy self on vacation. He heard I was home and took the first plane back, but it wasn't soon enough, and I couldn't afford to get another flight.
I never saw him then.
Third year- I never called him. I never went home, but I never stopped asking about him. I was making money as a journalists assistant. I was technically an editor, I just wasn't paid like one.
He called one day, but under a number I didn't recognize, so I wasn't able to answer. My job had me busier than ever, because I was balancing that and my studies, so I never got any sleep. He left a voice message, saying, "Hi, Diana, it's- it's me. I never thanked you for the book.... I kinda hated it. It only made me feel really fucking creepy.... I miss you. I'm sorry I'm an asshole. I'm waiting for you."
Seeing that it was his first time calling me in all of my college life, I didn't call him back. Hell, how I wanted to... but I didn't.
Then, I graduated. I got my degree and majored in English. At twenty-two, I was on my way home for good after parting with my friends in the two year old house we all shared in New Jersey after moving from our dorm. Sarah was a fashion designer, and told me she would invite me to all of her shows, and if she had tickets to Marc Jacobs, I'd be the first to get them. She made me leave with half her wardrobe. Robby went to medical school, and made me promise to invite him over for my 'wedding.' I told him I wasn't planning on getting married.
I was to finish out the year in New York working for Jessie Thomson, a famous journalist, and then finished aiding her for good.
That Christmas I went home.