It was an email a little over a month later from my old roommate, Maddie, saying it must be so great having Connor back home again, that caught me off guard. I’d replied telling her that he wasn’t back yet. Her response was even odder when she said she’d heard he was back. But when pressed, she would never tell me from whom she’d heard that story.
At first, I thought it was a mistake. I’d certainly know if Connor was back. Heck, I’d be the person picking him up at the airport, or at the very least, there with his parents.
When are you coming home? I’ll come get you at the airport. I’d emailed several hours after first hearing from Maddie. There was no response, but also no reason to panic, knowing Connor’s travels might have taken him to a place with limited accessibility to communications, and most certainly, no wi-fi signal.
I checked my phone and my email incessantly. And obsessively. Over the next few days, I sent several more messages telling him that I missed him and couldn’t wait for him to get home.
But, still, there was no response.
When a week had passed, I called his parents and got his mom on the phone. There was dead silence on the other end when I asked when Connor was coming home.
His mother finally responded, “He’s been home for some time, dear.”
Again, there was silence, but this time it was because I’d had the wind knocked out of me, and the pain that was making my chest feel like it had collapsed, had slapped my voice clear out of my vocal cords. Her words had been beyond a stinging blow.
“Is he there?” I struggled to keep the emotion out of my voice.
Again, she paused before answering. “No. He’s gone away for the weekend. He went to Biloxi.”
Biloxi? Biloxi, Mississippi? Not exactly your normal weekend getaway spot.
Piper lived in Biloxi.
Piper, who had been all over him our senior year in college. Everywhere I turned Piper Raines was there. She switched classes the first week of both fall and spring semesters to make sure she could be in classes with Connor. She begged him to tutor her. She touched him constantly. The girl was barely civil to me and often spoke as if were not even in the room with them.
Piper Raines was a woman who had no female friends. If you asked another woman about Piper, the invariable description would always be either ‘nasty bitch’ or ‘black heart’.
And yes, Piper lived in Biloxi, Mississippi.
As if that wasn’t enough of a shock, his mother’s next sentence was the killing blow. “I know he’s in the process of getting a new cell phone, but the apartment he’s living in actually has a landline. Let me give you the number.”
Quickly, I scratched out the digits, my hands shaking, I wasn’t sure if that was from anger or pain.
He’s been home long enough to get an apartment and plan a weekend to go see Piper. Unfuckingbelievable.
I wondered how the hell Maddie knew he was back, and I didn’t. But more importantly, how could he come back to the States and not tell me, not let me know he was home? Anger eclipsed hurt that he wasn’t man enough to let me know, that he didn’t have the balls to properly break up with me because he was now involved with Piper.
The pain was too much to process. The betrayal and lack of closure became a disease that I let molest my self-worth and denigrate my self-confidence for way too long. He ghosted me, and yet somehow, I was the one that became less than. That was until one morning, when I woke up and sat up in bed, and, for the first time, it all seemed so clear.
It wasn’t me. I had not done a damn thing wrong. He was the asshole for the way he’d handled, or not handled, things.
And with that realization, I could finally let go of the hurt, self-doubt, and most of all, the anger. My balance was back, and the universe had actually already delivered karma —ahead of schedule. There was nothing worse I could have wished upon him than Piper Raine. He got exactly what he deserved.
Thank you, Universe.
A year later, I moved to Los Angeles and began a new life. Letting down my guard and finding the right one that I felt I could just be myself with, was another story. My dating luck had been spotty at best.
“You’re so pretty and smart, why don’t you have a boyfriend?” was the question I was asked way too often for my liking. It was also a question to which I did not have an answer.
And now, standing on the balcony of my hotel room, all dressed for my high school reunion, my spirit is drowning in the flood of emotion, as the scent on the breeze unveils itself as a haunting apparition. I can feel an unease and I’m not sure why. No one has heard from Connor in years. The last gossip I’d gotten was that he and Piper were living together somewhere down south.
And while Des sold me on the fact that she needed a wing-woman for when she ran into Josh for the first time, it hadn’t crossed my mind that I might need my own reinforcements if my ex made an appearance. I had not even considered Connor showing up for this and I’m pretty certain Des would have mentioned it when she checked with Gina and found out that Josh and his plus one were attending.
Yet, somehow the heavy scent lingering in the wake of the rushing tide brings back memories, and with them, both hurt and fear.
My last thought as I flip off the light switch and leave my hotel room to meet Des downstairs is, it really smells fishy tonight.
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