Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) (27 page)

“Fine. Blame me. Whatever. But I’m tired of hearing
this. Can we just go home, go to bed, and start over
tomorrow?”

“You don’t even care. I could be out of school by
tomorrow.”

“I do. I’m sorry they hurt you. And I’m sorry it’s
because of me. But you can’t just keep throwing this in my face, Denise,” John said. Even in the scant light, the
n
earest streetlight being several yards away, I saw his jaw
clench.

“What am I supposed to do? Your parents hate me.
Your friends hate me—”

“I can’t control my parents. How they feel has
nothing to
do
with me. We’ve talked about the friend
thing and why that’s weak for you to say. And while we’re
talking about friends, how about that Astoria?”

“What about her? She was certainly right about you. You only care about what you can get out of me. If you
cared about me, you wouldn’t let those harpies do this.”

“
Get
out of you? We hardly ever had sex! We don’t
anymore at all now. Look at yourself for a minute. You are being so selfish. I can’t believe you are trying to put this all on me. I mean, I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job of taking your crap because I did feel like this
was all my fault, but that stops now, Denise. You haven’t
once asked how I feel. How this might be hard on me. I
haven’t spoken to my parents in five weeks.”

“Aha! I knew you cared more about them.”

“They’re my parents, Denise. Of course I miss them.
That doesn’t mean I agree with them. But you don’t even
care about anything going on in my life. About how I
might feel. It’s always gotta be about you.”

“Well, you don’t have—”

“What I don’t have is the patience for this nonsense
anymore!” John banged his hand down on the hood of his
car. He hit it so forcefully, I was surprised he didn’t leave
a dent. For a moment, I was chilled, thinking that was
how hard he wanted to hit me. But I quickly recovered.

“I’m doing the best I can here.” I said.

“Well, obviously your best isn’t good enough,” John
said. His tone had become dangerously low, his expres
sion impassive. That stung. He was becoming closed off to me. I could almost feel it.

I knew then what was happening. Suddenly, my
whole body went cold. And it had very little to do with
the February night air. “So this is it? This is how we end?”
I whispered. I could barely breathe.

John wouldn’t look at me. He was staring down the
street at nothing. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “This isn’t what
I wanted, Denise. I know you think it is, but it’s not.”

I had nothing else to say. I couldn’t even move. I
watched. All I could do was watch. I wanted to respond
to that asinine comment. Of course it was what he
wanted. He was the one breaking up with me. I wanted
to scream. I wanted to fight. I wanted to cry. But nothing
would happen. I was useless. Vapid. I could do nothing.
But watch.

John slowly shook his head. He looked at me one last
time. Anger. Disgust. Was that pain? Did he have the
nerve to have pain in his eyes? And then he turned his
back to me. He walked slowly around his car. And I stood
there, just watching. I didn’t know what else to do. And
even if I had, I’m not so sure I would have been capable
of doing it.

Pain. It started in my chest. Ice slowly spreading to my stomach, and down, down until I was completely
frozen. I heard the engine start. Saw John reversing out of
his spot. All I could do was watch him drive away. I
couldn’t even wipe away the tears. I could only stare at
the spot where John’s car had been moments before.

I gasped. A sharp intake of breath. I suddenly became
aware of the fact that I was still breathing. And then the
ice shattered. I wrenched my bottom lip free of my teeth.
I could taste the blood in my mouth as I filled my lungs
with cold, unforgiving February night air. And I
screamed with everything I had left inside of me.
Anybody who heard me probably thought someone was being murdered. In a way, someone was. At first, I was
surprised that no one called the cops. Then, I thought,
the bitter truth was that was proof of just how truly
inconsequential I was.

* * *

I knocked on Astoria’s door. She opened it and just stood there with her arms crossed over her chest.

“You were right,” I said, clutching a crumpled tissue
in my hand.

“I’m sorry I was,” she said, shaking her head. She
opened her arms and I ran into them. All I could do was
sob. Somehow, Astoria understood, and somehow, all the
way to her place, I’d known she would. There was no “I told you so.” Not even any berating John. Nothing. And
that was exactly what I needed.

Astoria led me over to the couch. She sat me down
and patted my back. I heard her walk away, and she came
back with a glass of wine. I accepted it gratefully and
gulped half of it down before she could even sit back
d
own on the couch. I was also grateful to see she had
thought to bring the rest of the bottle over with her.

I couldn’t believe it was still the same day. The same
day as the fight with those nasty Tau Gammas. It
shouldn’t have been the same day. I shouldn’t have still
been alive.

“Ugly little bastard. Inside and out. She can have
him,” I snapped. “ ’Cause you know that’s what’s gonna
happen. They’re probably on the phone right now. Hell,
she might be on the way to Virginia by now.”

“Now, you know that boy is too pretty. That’s the
problem. He got you all caught up with those looks.”
“Shut up, Stori. Let me have my moment.”

“I don’t get you sometimes, Denise. Are you crazy?”
Astoria sounded both perplexed and a little pissed off.

“Huh?” I looked up at her, equally confused. She was
supposed to be commiserating and comforting—not
mean and confrontational.

“Why would you even want to be with someone like
that? Why would you want to waste the talented, cul
tured, beautiful person you are on him?”

“Because I love him. I love him and it’s Valentine’s
Day Friday and he’s going to spend it with that skank. I
just know it.” I burst into fresh tears. Astoria sighed,
taking the empty wine glass from me and refilling it. “I
know I made one person happy tonight at least. That
wench, Sasha.”

“Don’t worry about that right now. We have plenty of
wine and all night. We’re gonna forget about all about
both of them. Okay?”

“Whatever,” I spat, taking the wine glass from her.
“You’re right. They belong together. What the hell was I
doing?”

“Being human. You loved him. In spite of everything,
I could see that. And as much as it kills me to admit it, I
think he did care about you.”

“Oh,
please
! Why are you saying these things? You
hate him.”

“No, I don’t,” she said quietly, sinking into the couch
next to me. “I think I hated that I was wrong more than
anything.”

“But you weren’t. Look at me. He made a fool of me.”
“Yes, I was, and no, he didn’t.”

“What? So I was wrong? You saying I was wrong?”

“No. Nobody was wrong. It was just a difficult situation. One neither of you should have been put in. And despite what you may think, I’m really sorry that both of
you were,” she said.

I just stared at her. It would be quite a while before I
realized how true Astoria’s words really were. I couldn’t
believe what I was hearing from her, though. Not ever
before, and not until much later after, would she ever say
anything so close to defending John. And so very close to the truth. That night, for once since the whole mess with
John started, Astoria was the one making sense. Of
course, I wanted none of it at the time.

“Whatever. Just give me more wine,” I grumbled, holding out my glass.

A
nd like magic, it was over. Not only my relationship with John, but the whole honor council debacle. The day
after John ripped the heart from my chest, the day I was
supposed to have the hearing, I was called in to talk to
the honor council chief justice and the dean. I was told
that it was all just a “terrible misunderstanding.” Some
miscreant, who—surprise, surprise—could not be found,
had tampered with my thumb drive. The chief justice
received an anonymous tip. Yeah, anonymous, alright.
The only person who seemed disappointed by this news
was Lindie.

So the sneaky bitches had kept their word. Big deal. I
still felt dead inside. And they hadn’t left me completely
unscathed. My real note still hadn’t shown up. All I had
to work with was a very old, very rough draft saved on
the school’s network from the past semester that, like a fool, I never updated. My updated file on my hard drive
had been corrupted. I had put too much stock in my
thumb drive. Much as I had my ex-boyfriend—such
empty, cruel, and cold words. So I practically had to start
from scratch.

But I tried to find a bright side. I hoped burying
myself in late nights of note writing would help dull the
pain at least a little.

BARRISTER’S BALL

I don’t think I was ever as mad at John as when I
found out he was taking Sasha to Barrister’s. Up until
that moment, I had been living in my own little world of denial. I pretended John wasn’t seeing anyone. That John
didn’t matter to me. Deep down, I knew that neither of these things was true. But that denial let me keep myself
from falling completely apart, from becoming nothing
more than shards of a broken heart.

Astoria stood in front of me, waiting for my reaction
after she dropped the bomb.

“What?” I dropped the garbage bag I’d been holding.

“Why are you surprised? He’s gone to Boston almost
every weekend since—well, for a while,” Astoria said.

“I know he goes out of town. How am I supposed to
know where he goes?” I picked the bag up and swiped a
bunch of take-out containers off the kitchen table and
into it. I was at the breaking point. I was actually
cleaning up Tia’s mess. Things were bad.

“You know he’s with her, Denise. It’s time to face that.”

“Hmph,” was my only reply as I furiously scrubbed at
the countertop near the kitchen sink.

“
So can I tell Erich we’re on for Barrister’s? You, me,
Blue, Erich, Suse and Charles?” Astoria asked. Blue was
yet another guy Astoria had picked up while clubbing. I
scrubbed harder.

“Whatever. I already have my ticket,” I said, trying
not to remember how Suse had given me the ticket John had given her to give to me. We were on that level. He
couldn’t even hand me a ticket. And the fact that he was still trying to be decent burned me up, too. He might as well have kept the ticket for Sasha. “I might as well go.”

“Great. Because I kinda already asked Erich to come
with us.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stormed out of the house
to take out the third bag of Tia’s trash I had collected. I
happened to look up as a red Mercedes sped by. Even
though it was obviously not John’s, that was it. I slumped down by the dumpsters and buried my face in my hands,
drawing my knees up to my chest. My entire body was
shaking.

He had gone right back to her. I would have been
better off if he had never said the first word to me. All I
had left was emptiness. Emptiness because he decided it
would be fun to play with me for a few months. It hadn’t
been worth it; those few moments of happiness. Hours
seemed like days. The few weeks since we had broken up
seemed much longer than the months since that first evening at Barnes & Noble.