LUNA
Nateand I had been broken up for a week.
No. That wasn’t right. In order to break up, two people had to consent to forming a relationship, that they were a couple in a way they both agreed on. That hadn’t been the case for Nate and me. We weren’t broken up since we had never been a couple. Because I’d been too stubborn and scared and cowardly to accept the truth, what was already very real, and agree that we were more than a no-strings, casual hookup.
He'd told me he loved me. He told me he wanted to make me happy, that he knew what we had was the real deal. He’d asked me to trust him, to take that leap and trust he’d be there to catch me. And I ruined it. The happiest I’d ever been, and I fucking ruined it.
The look on his face when I’d asked him why we couldn’t just keep things simple haunted me. I saw it every time I closed my eyes. Heartbreak and disappointment. I couldn’t think of a worse combination. I’d never had my heart broken before because I’d never let anyone in enough to have that kind of power. Until Nate.
I’d ruined us because I was so scared of getting my heart broken that I wasn’t smart enough to realize it had already happened, and that I’d done it to myself. How was that for irony?
It had been a week since Nate told me it was all or nothing before walking away, and I wasn’t sure there’d ever been a time in my life when I’d been more miserable. I thought working with him would be awkward once things between us ran their course, but that didn’t begin to cover it. Seeing him day after day, wanting him, missing him like I’d lost a part of me, only to be met head-on with chilly indifference was absolute torture.
He never met my eyes for more than two seconds, had taken to sending his requests to me through email when I was only a wall away, and otherwise pretended I didn’t exist unless there was no choice, in which case he was so polished and professional, you’d have thought he was a fucking robot.
Each morning I woke up to the sun shining through my bedroom curtains was another day of misery. I couldn’t stand the stunning, happy view outside my bedroom windows so I’d begun keeping the blinds drawn at all times. That bright, cheery sun and those playful lapping waves felt like a slap in the face. What right did the sun have to shine when I felt like warmed-over shit?
By Friday, I was so broken I decided to use one of those vacation days I’d bargained for. I sent Nate an email telling him I would be out of the office for the day, then shut everything down, crawled back into bed, and pulled the covers over my head. I stayed like that for most of the day, only coming out of my little cocoon to use the bathroom or when the need for food grew too strong.
For the next couple days, I lived in that bed, eating boxes of crackers and cookies, entire bags of chips or pints of ice cream beneath my cozy blanket fortress and watching Hallmark movies simply because the love stories made me cry and I deserved it.
Sure, they weren’t as good as my audio books, but I refused to allow myself that luxury. I derived pleasure from those romance novels, and I didn’t deserve anything that made me feel good at the moment.
By the time Sunday rolled around, I started to think my life would be a hell of a lot simpler if I just stayed in that bed forever. That was how my friends found me on a bright, lovely, blasphemous Sunday afternoon.
“Oh, God,” I heard from the doorway of my bedroom. I might have moved, or at least turned my head, but I recognized the voice and knew it was only a matter of seconds before she came in. And of course she’d let herself in with the key I gave her for emergencies. “What’s that smell?”
“It smells like B.O. and chocolate.”
A third voice declared, “Are we sure she’s not dead in there? I really don’t want to pull the covers back and find a dead body. I don’t have the stomach for that sort of thing.”
I flipped the covers down and twisted my head to see Cheyanne, Georgia, Monica, and Evan standing in my bedroom doorway.
“Oh. Hello,” I said in a voice devoid of all emotion.
“Oh, thank God.” Monica let out a breath and placed a hand over her heart. “She’s alive.”
“She doesn’t look it.” Evan’s top lip curled up as she covered her nose with the collar of her shirt. “Doesn’t smell like it either.”
Cheyanne started toward me, the smile on her face one you might expect to see on a person trying to talk someone off the ledge... literally. “Hi,” she said in a soft, cheery voice. “Hey, it’s good to see you. How about we get you out of bed, huh?”
“I live here now,” I informed her, patting the Egyptian cotton sheet that was now covered in chip crumbs and melted chocolate.
“Yeah, I can see that. But it might be a good idea to get you in the shower and these sheets in the washer.”
“Those sheets are toast,” Monica noted. “Best to just take them out back and burn them.”
I ignored her heartless suggestion and answered Cheyanne. “Oh, no thank you. I’m just fine here. You don’t happen to have a pizza with you, do you? I ordered one a while ago and haven’t heard the doorbell. It usually doesn’t take this long. Then again, I’m not sure when I ordered it. I’ve stopped looking at the clock. Did you come across the delivery guy?”
“Nope, no delivery guy, sunshine.” Monica came at me, her demeanor a lot less soothing than Cheyanne’s. “Now, up you go.” She grabbed hold of the covers and threw them off the bed.
I let out a pained groan.
“You’re going to bathe that stink off you while we fumigate this room. Then we’re going to talk.”
Snatching one of my pillows, I held it over my face to block everything out and declared, “I don’t wanna!”
“Too damn bad.”