I can see the anger building up in her. “No.” The word is harsh and commanding.
“Wow,” she says as she stands. “You really are an asshole.”
She storms off into my room and I don’t follow her. I just stare down into the sink where my broken plate sits. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did. But thoughts of Tiffany still hurt. The things I had planned for our future. The way she left me. The way she moved on so quickly. While I am still over here heartbroken, unable to understand what I did wrong. What I did to make her leave.
Grace comes walking out of my bedroom dressed in yesterday’s clothes. “I don’t know what your problem is, Carson. I don’t know why someone who walked away from you nearly eight months ago can make you act like such an asshole. But I think the girls are right. You still aren’t over her. And you are using me. Do you think about her when you are fucking me? Do you wish I was her?”
She pauses but I don’t answer. Because the realization hits me that I don’t know the answer. Am I really using Grace to pretend I am still with Tiffany? I know it’s not true. She makes me feel a way I have never felt with anyone else. But deep down, her words hit me. Like maybe there is a truth behind them.
“Wow. You are unbelievable, Carson.” She throws her hands up in the air as she walks to the front door. “You really haven’t moved on. I can tell by the way the closet is half-empty. The drawers in the bathroom by the sink you don’t use. The empty bedside table. The mugs in the cabinet that still have a lipstick stain. You are just waiting for her to come back. Waiting for her to show up on your doorstep. Newsflash, it isn’t happening. Not after this long. And I can’t do this with you. I can’t be the girl you are fucking when the whole time you are imagining her.”
She walks out, the door slamming behind her.
I don’t move. I just stand there with my jaw clenched. Letting every single one of her words sink in. She’s wrong. Wrong about everything. Mostly. Maybe I haven’t gotten rid of some things or filled Tiffany’s side of the bedroom because I thought she would come back but that was just after she left. I knew she was never coming back after she started dating Michael. I just never had the energy to erase her from my life. I’m sure Grace would have one hell of an argument with me if she knew Tiff’s ring still sits in my nightstand drawer. That I still look at it some nights and wonder where I went wrong.
But she is wrong about one thing. I don’t think about Tiffany when I am fucking her. The only thing I can think about is Grace. Even when I’m not touching her or inside of her. Grace has flooded my mind in ways I never would have allowed anyone else in. And that is why I’m upset. Angry. Pissed off. Because what Grace and I have isn’t what I want. I want more. I know that. But I also know that in a few months’ time, Grace will be gone, and she will walk out of my life just like Tiffany did.
I crack my knuckles and yell at the top of my lungs. Then I pull the whiskey out of the cupboard.I drink a third of the bottle as I stare at the seat Grace was eating in. Her unfinished dinner on the plate. A half-drunk glass of water. I stumble up the stairs to a guest bedroom. I can’t go into my own. Not with the smell of Grace on my sheets. I sit in a chair and stare out the window, drinking the whiskey until I pass out in the stale-smelling bed.