Chapter 1
The Ending
Mike
“I’m sorry, Christine, I just don’t love you.” Mike Arman watched Christine Sorenson’s face change. His girlfriend’s- no, correction, ex-girlfriend’s petite, beautiful features cinched together. Her pale cheeks glowed an angry red. She blinked long, dark eyelashes, as though trying to comprehend what he’d just said. He gave his words a moment to sink in and when they did, he knew he was in for a bad scene.
“It’s a fine time to tell me that now, after we’ve been together for eight months!”
“I’m sorry! I wanted to give it a shot. A real, honest shot, but I just can’t do it.”
“Because you’re still in love with her? A woman you dated for six months? What does she have that I don’t? What did she do for you that I couldn’t do? Oh wait. I forgot. I never tore out your heart and stomped all over it. I never refused to answer your calls. I never cut you out of my life. Maybe I should. Maybe it would have made you as desperate as you are for her.”
“Christine…” His voice held a warning edge, but she charged right on ahead. She stood, shoving her chair back. It scraped across the stone tile of her kitchen floor with a high pitched whine that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It wasn’t his finest moment, breaking up with a woman in her kitchen.
“No! Don’t Christine me, you son of a bitch! We’ve been going out for eight months! Eight months of my life that I can never get back. Eight months that I threw away hoping that you’d come around and realize what was right in front of you.”
“I do appreciate you. It’s nothing that you’ve done. It’s me-”
“Of fucking course it’s you! God! You’re pathetic, Mike. You’ve always been pathetic. I can’t believe I wasted my time on a loser. Who waits around, pining for someone who never appreciated them? You’re pathetic. Savannah Fiacco has probably been spreading her legs for every single person who wanted to get between them for the past year.”
Mike waited. He counted to ten. He fucking did it again. What he really wanted to do was get up and punch a hole right through the drywall. It was orange. Actual orange. Who painted their damn kitchen and dining room orange? He’d always hated the color and at the moment, his fingers itched to give the damn wall a reason to get a new paint job. He’d be doing it a favor really… he controlled himself. Barely.
Christine’s dainty shoulders heaved with anger. Her face, a face that he’d once thought was pretty, but really couldn’t muster up the attraction to think so any longer, screwed up with rage. With her features twisted like that, she almost resembled some kind of bad Sci-Fi monster. He repressed a shudder.
“Good to see your truly colors finally coming out. It makes this a hell of a lot easier.”
“Yah! My true colors huh? Try dating a single woman, Mike, that doesn’t react like this when you up and dump them, just because you still have a hard on for a ghost.”
“She’s not a ghost.”
“No? Well, she’s too good for even you.”
“You’ve never met her.”
“I know she’s never coming back. There was a reason she left, which I fully understand now. No one wants to date a child.”
Her words rankled, since it was almost exactly what Savannah had accused him of being over a year ago, when she broke up with him out of nowhere. He was almost sure she was with him, just to get with his best friend anyway, but it still hurt like hell. It hurt far worse than it should have. He’d dated a hell of a lot of women. No, dated wasn’t really the right word. More like, hooked up. But the ones he had gone out with, it didn’t ever really mean anything. It was different with Savannah. Even though she was way younger than he was, even though she was spoiled and a daddy’s girl, little more than a rich brat, she got him. Just got him. Right away. It was that instant connection that he’d never shared with anyone else and after she’d left him, she sure as hell had crushed him.
Nothing in his world had been right after she left. Not even his art, which usually got him through the worst of times.
“Goodbye, Christine. Thank you for making this easy.”
“Fuck you, Mike.”
“Not anymore, thanks.”
“It was never that good. I faked it. Every time.”
He knew that was a lie, but he wasn’t going to get into that. He’d never seen this side of Christine before. They’d met when she’d come in for a tattoo. She was pretty. Very pretty. She left her number without him asking. He had a hole in his tattered heart a mile wide and she’d filled it, like a poorly fitted plug. It hadn’t lasted for him. He’d actually never felt it. He’d just stuck it out because he was lonely. He always hoped, like he told her, that he’d come around. That things would change for him and that he wouldn’t see Savannah’s face in his dreams. He wouldn’t sketch her, late at night, when he gave in to the temptation of taking the aching memories from his mind and laying them out on paper. It never happened and he knew he was done. He had to end it, if only to spare Christine. He could understand her anger, even if it was ugly.
“I’ll show myself out.”
“Good. Do me a favor and don’t call.”
He heard the desperation in her voice, underlying her tone, contradicting her spiteful words. He refused to answer as he stalked through the house, to the entrance. He slammed into his shoes and pulled open the door. He shut it quietly, just because he was feeling a little spiteful himself and knew the controlled move would deny Christine the satisfaction that a slam would have given her.
And just like that, his relationship was over.
He got in his classic car, a whole lot of dark green sixties muscle, a project he’d spent years restoring and roared down the driveway. He made it out onto an open stretch of road before he cranked the window open and let the rushing air soar through the cab. The droplets of sweat that stood out at his hairline and the base of his neck cooled and he shivered.
He didn’t know where he was driving. He didn’t truly care. His relationship was over and he felt nothing. None of the required pain, though he had truly liked Christine. She was alright. It wasn’t her fault that he was damaged. Or haunted. Perhaps that was a more apt term.
It made perfect sense, the fact that he couldn’t feel. He was so worn down, so exhausted, so past trying to fix himself. He cast his eyes back to the open road, eating the miles up one after another. So he was broken. So he was pretty sure he’d only love one woman for the rest of his life and she was long gone. At least he’d bothered, given the whole love thing a try. It wasn’t for him. None of it was. The sooner he got that through his head, the fast he could actually try and move on with his life.