Under the Cornerstone (21 page)

“No!”

“You have to,” he says and tries to walk away again.

I fall to pieces as I drop to my knees, “Please don’t leave me.”

He comes back to me and drops to his own knees in front of me, “This isn’t you. Look at yourself. Look at what I do to you. How fucked up is this love? I do everything in my power to get you to love me and then I tear you apart. You fight me every inch of the way when I try to make you mine and now you’re falling apart. Nothing good is ever going to come from this shit between us. Is that what you want? Because we’ll end up hating each other.”

“I couldn’t hate you.”

“Let me go, Noely.”

I grab his shirt as he pushes up from his knees and stands.

Ryan drops to his knees behind me.

“Noles,” Ryan whispers in my ear and holds me from behind.

“Don’t leave me!” I howl.

“I have to,” Johnny says.

“I love you,” I tell him. “I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you, Noely. It’s why I’m leaving.”

Jimmy tells Johnny, “Just fucking go.”

“Don’t tell him to go. Please don’t go.”

Ryan holds me to his chest and tries to soothe me. My tears blur my vision, but I can see him walk away for good. I can see him leave me, and then the door closes behind him. The hysteria reaches its pinnacle when the sound of a wood door echoes in finality.

I scream. I cry. I lose my shit. He didn’t even try to stay in my life as my friend. He just left me. His reasons are bullshit. He’s not fucking noble. He’s scared and he’s running just like I did. This is my fault. If I had just kept my mouth shut until the heaviness of my love for him hit me, I’d be in his arms right now. He wouldn’t have left me for good. He wouldn’t be a ghost in my life.

Ryan and Jimmy hold me for hours while I cry. They try to tell me it will all work out, but it won’t. Life won’t work out and it won’t be okay.

The next day, Jimmy arranges our trip back to Brooklyn. Alex asks to stop by and see me before I leave, but I decline his company with a shake of my head. Sabrina and Roxy offer to meet us at the airport, but I decline their offer as well.

Chapter Twenty-Two

For three months, I merely exist. I don’t work. I barely eat. I either sleep too much or can’t sleep for days at a time. I don’t open my apartment door for anyone. I don’t answer texts or calls from anyone either. Sabrina and Roxy have made many attempts to beat my door down, but I just crawl into the shower to drown them out along with my screams and tears. Their presence is a reminder of why I hurt so fucking much.

I dream of him. I dream of dancing in the rain and him holding me tightly while he whispers his love to me. Visions of us tangled in sheets haunt my reveries in both the night and day. When I’m not sleeping, I usually lay in bed and stare into the distance. I can’t find the energy or will to do much else.

I watch television sometimes and sob like a child when characters like Elijah and Hayley or Olivia and Fitz are torn apart. But the worst times are when they willingly walk away from each other in some grand gesture of nobility or altruism. I scream at the characters to stop doing that to each other.

I scream because they found the person they can’t live without and they’re making the wrong decision to walk away. It’s always the wrong decision, because that burning passion and flame of love doesn’t just go away. It doesn’t evaporate into thin air or grow less intense with time. It gnaws at the insides and just when you think you’ve concealed the immense pain for a few moments, that love finds a way to burst from the marrow of your bones to remind you that you’ve lost part of yourself.

Part of you is gone. You are not whole without the other person. The entire planet should stop rotating on its axis because everything is fucked. Everything isn’t aligned anymore. I ask myself on a daily basis how the world keeps spinning. I stare out of my window sometimes and wonder how these people can continue on with their lives when I’m up here like this. How do they get up each morning, go to work, and continue on with their daily tasks while I’m up here so broken?

I wait for an eviction notice and for the lights to go out for months, but they never do. I haven’t paid rent since I returned to New York. I haven’t paid any bills since then. Maybe I’m hoping my landlord will call my emergency contact and he’ll come back to me. If he saw what this separation was doing to me, he’d come back and put the pieces back together. He could put my heart back together.

Jimmy flies to New York twice and attempts to break my door down. He shows on my twenty-seventh birthday. I spent the day alone, but it made me feel a little better to know Jimmy was on the other side of the door. I even hear him argue with my landlord in the hallway both times. I remain silent on my side of the door. He isn’t the one I need to rescue me. He isn’t the one who needs to see me like this. He can’t put me back together. On both visits, Jimmy spends hours out in my hallways, telling me how worried he is about me. I sit with my back against the front door while he resorts to retelling funny stories from the road, but I can’t even muster the energy to laugh. Normally, I’d be in stitches, but I can’t find the spark inside me. He also retells some of my favorite stories from our childhood. Those only make me even more sorrowful. Before he leaves, he tells me how much he and the guys love me, and that they’re waiting for my phone call. I touch the door and whisper back that I love them too.

Sabrina and Roxy stop by both separately and together now, but they’ve long since stopped being dramatic. They knock lightly as they hang around for an hour or so, and then they leave. I open the door to bring in the food and other items they leave for me. I haven’t eaten much since half the time I want to vomit, but I do eat enough to stay alive.

In the middle of month four, Johnny comes. I look out of my peephole as he runs a hand through his hair. I almost open the door a million times, but I can’t seem to put my hand on the door knob. I reach for it, but never wrap my hand around the knob.

“Noely, open the door,” he requests.

I never reply to him. I don’t say a word as the tears stream down my face. A month before, weeks before, maybe even days before, I would’ve opened the door and thrown myself into his arms. Instead, my body shakes as I silently sob on the other side of the door from the one person I wanted to come rescue me because it took him four and a half months to do it. It took over four months to give a fuck about me. I was like a ball of yarn rapidly unwinding into an unrecognizable and jumbled wreck. While I was here crumbling from what was once a human being, he was out playing rock star. He didn’t find the time to come save me. He didn’t find the time to come tell me he loved me.

“Noely, please open the door,” his voice is laced with concern.

I stare at the door and the urge to scream bubbles below the surface.

“Noe, nobody has seen you in four months. Let me in. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

It’s been over four months, Johnny.

“Um… uh… Sabrina said she’s been leaving food. Have you been eating?”

My face twists in disgust at his delayed concern. Delayed might be an understatement.

“This isn’t what I wanted, Noe. You weren’t supposed to fall apart.”

But I did.

“You were supposed to come back to New York and live your life.”

But I didn’t.

“You’re supposed to be happy,” his voice breaks on the last word.

But I’m not.

“I was saving you from me.”

But you didn’t.

“Noe, let me see your face. I’m begging you.”

Like I begged you not to leave me in L.A.?

“I just need to see that you’re okay.”

I’m not.

“I’ll leave you alone once I see your face if you want me to.”

You already did that.

“Noe, please.”

Please don’t leave me.

“Let me help you, Noely.”

Let me go, Noe

“You know I’ve always been here to help you.”

I wish I could be who you need me to be.

I tune him out as my mind goes back to L.A. all those months ago. I remember every single second of me begging him to stay with me. I remember every single tear as I pleaded with him not to leave me, but he pulled away from me repeatedly. I remember every single scream that scratched my throat raw while I screamed for the man I loved to love me back. I remember the arms of my friends that encircled me when he walked out of that door, leaving me as though I was a cat and would land on my feet.

I’m not a cat and I didn’t land on my feet. I shattered into a million tiny pieces when I hit the ground. The shards lie all around me, but I’m not sure which pieces fit where. They cut and dig into my skin each time I try to pick them up, and so they fall to the ground once again.

I leave him at that door and turn on the television as loud as it will go. I watch two episodes of Elijah and Hayley before I check the door again.

Through the peephole, I see him leaning against the wall across from my door. One leg is bent with a foot propped onto the wall. He looks up at the ceiling. I wonder what he’s looking for.

I watch another two episodes before I check the door again, and I’m surprised that he’s still there. This time he’s staring at my door as though he’ll will me to appear.

I turn the television off and turn The Doors on. I let it blast through my speakers as I sort through the disarray in my apartment. Failing to clean for over four months is gross. I realize that now. I clean and look through the peephole to find he’s still there. I clean some more and every single fucking time I look through the door he’s still fucking there. It pisses me off.

Did he think he could show up for a few hours after four months and I’d be miraculously fixed? I’d be okay now? I’d be kissing his fucking feet?

Fuck that.

I let The Doors play until the apartment is clean and I’ve had my own shower. I look out at him one last time before I turn in at two in the morning. He’ll be gone in the morning, and then I’m getting myself out of this funk. I’m taking control back over my life. The best thing he ever did for me was waiting four and a half months to show up. It showed me how much I really mean to him. Fuck his love. It was never real. I wish I could say that my love wasn’t either, but you don’t fall apart for four months over lust.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Shattering glass wakes me. I sit straight up in the bed and look around as I try to gather my bearings. The sounds of glass breaking continues and then I hear a string of profanity from my fire escape. I lunge from the bed and grab my bat. I use it to push the curtains aside.

“I’ve got a gun!” I scream at the robber.

“Goddammit, Noely. It’s me,” Johnny says.

“Even fucking better,” I retort.

“Open the window!” he orders.

“No! You can find your way back down.”

“I swear to God, Noely, if you don’t open this fucking window…”

“You’re going to what?” I ask with my hand on my hip.

I wish I could see the look on his face, but it’s covered by the darkness of the night.

He shatters more glass and then I hear the lock turn.

I shout at him, “If you come through that window, I’m hitting you with this bat!”

“You’ll just have to fucking hit me then,” he says and slides the window open before his body appears in my room.

I swing the bat at him, but he’s quick. Johnny lunges behind a free standing cherry mirror, causing my bat to connect with the mirror instead of the asshole in my apartment.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks.

“You! You’re what the fuck is wrong with me, you fucking asshole!”

“You wouldn’t let me in the door! How else was I supposed to make sure you were okay?!!” he shouts.

“It only took you four goddamn months,” I say.

He steps around the mirror and looks at me with those blue eyes. I hate his eyes. Fucking hate them.

“Noe, I… You’ve lost a lot of weight,” he says with watery eyes.

“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Apartment.”

“You’re not okay,” he whispers.

“It took you four months to realize that? Some fucking love you had. Get the fuck out,” I tell him again.

“I was trying… fuck, I don’t know what I was trying to do.”

I roll my eyes and point the bat at him, “Great. Glad we had this chat, now can you leave?”

“Noely…”

“No! I swear on my mother’s grave if you don’t leave I’m calling the cops. You broke in. I don’t want you here!”

He sighs and takes a step towards me.

“Nuh-uh. Keep your ass over there Rome. You’re not touching me. The only thing you
are
doing is leaving.”

He reaches out like a snake and snatches the bat out of my hand. I almost pitch a temper tantrum and demand he give it back, but that’s what he wants.

Fuck that.

I grab my phone and head into the bathroom. After I lock the door, I call 9-1-1.

The operator answers, “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“I’d like to report a break in. A man broke into my window from the fire escape. I need the police to remove him from my apartment,” I tell her.

“You did not just fucking do that,” Johnny says on the other side of the door.

“Are you hurt?” the operator asks.

“No. I just want this asshole out of my apartment.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Noles,” Johnny says.

“Is that the burglar?” the operator asks.

“Unfortunately,” I answer.

“Are you in the room with him?” she asks clearly confused.

“Nope, I’m locked in a bathroom… for his safety and all,” I quip.

“Hang up the phone, Noe!” Johnny shouts.

“What is your name?” the operator asks.

“Noely King,” I answer and then give her my address.

“Ms. King, is this a domestic dispute?” she asks.

“No. It. Is. Not. A. Domestic. Dispute. A man broke into my apartment and will not leave after multiple requests for him to do so. He is not my boyfriend, fiancée, or husband. Hell, we aren’t even friends anymore.”

I hear her report a possible domestic dispute over the radio with the rest of the information I’ve given her.