All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

For part of the drive out of town, we were behind his truck, but when I turned for the highway, he went on straight. I let out a long sigh.

“I know you love him, but what a psycho,” I said. “Did he used to do that kind of thing? Kicking in the door like that?”

“Sometimes,” Wavy said. She sounded exhausted.

“And your wrist? Did he do that, too? Rough you up?”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“Right. They never mean to, do they?” I said.

We passed under the last row of streetlights before the highway went to four lanes. I looked over at Wavy, who still had her hand in a fist around the ring.

“Seriously. He’s a crazy fucking asshole.”

“Don’t, Renee.” The first time she’d ever said my name.

Because she asked, I didn’t say the rest of what I thought, but my rose-colored glasses had been shattered. Kellen wasn’t the love of her life. He was a dumb brute with greasy hands and a cheap haircut. A guy with no education and a bad temper. Big enough to kick a dent in the side of his truck, and stupid enough to do it, too.

After almost an hour of total silence, Wavy started making this soft hiccupping noise that I realized was her crying. She had been leaning her head against the window, but she slowly folded over until her head was resting on her knees.

The crying kept getting louder and louder, until it was hard to listen to. You can look up the word keening in the dictionary, but you don’t know what it means until you hear somebody having her heart ripped out. It went on and on. I was terrified. I didn’t think you could cry like that without hurting yourself. I drove faster, ten, then fifteen miles over the speed limit. Then I did something I never imagined doing: I reached out and laid my hand on Wavy’s back. I wanted to comfort her, and myself, but feeling her whole body shake made me feel worse, so I put my hand back on the steering wheel.

The last ten miles, I cried, too. I went all-in for histrionic romance crap, but I’d never loved any guy the way she loved him. My heartbreaks lasted a month. I’d eat too much and mope around crying, but I always found a new guy. I was as fickle as those Cosmo quizzes said I was. I couldn’t imagine being with one guy as long as she’d been with him. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like losing him.

When I pulled into the driveway at our apartment, I was almost hysterical. I tried to get her out of the car, but she curled up into a ball and totally ignored me. Even as small as she was, there was no way I could carry her up to our apartment.

For half a second, I thought about driving on to her aunt’s house, but just for half a second. That would be traitorous, taking her to a woman she didn’t even trust to look at a picture of Kellen.

I left Wavy in the car and ran up to the apartment, trying to think of who I could call to help. Her cousin Amy, but she was at the University of Nebraska. Even if she left right then, she wouldn’t be there until the morning, and it was finals week. I was standing in the kitchen, holding the phone and crying, trying to think of who to call, when I saw the napkin with Darrin’s phone number. I dialed and he answered. I don’t think I made any sense, but when I stopped blubbering, he said, “I can be there in ten minutes.”

It was more like five minutes before he rolled into the parking lot in an open Jeep. Watching him jog toward me, where I stood next to my car, I could tell I’d gotten him out of bed. He was wearing sweatpants, a Marine Corps T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. For a while, we stood there, looking at Wavy curled up in the front seat.

“Are you sure she doesn’t need to go to the hospital?” he said.

“She’s not sick. She just got her heart broken.”

Wavy was so far gone, she didn’t even care that Darrin picked her up and carried her to our apartment. He laid her down on her neatly made, virginal twin bed, and she went on sobbing, that godforsaken ring clutched in her hand.

We left her there and went into the kitchen, where Darrin made us both giant glasses of rum and coke. While we drank, I told him the whole awful thing as far as I knew it. Mostly because I couldn’t stand being alone with knowing it, but also because Darrin was a good listener. We had another drink and then another, and talked about everything. My nightmare year in a sorority. His eight years in the Marines. How my father thought I was too stupid to get anything but an MRS degree. How his father was in prison when he was a kid. That was why Darrin joined the Marines right out of high school.

When we went to check on Wavy later, she’d finally worn herself out crying. She was asleep with her arm flung out, the ring next to her hand. I turned off the light and closed the door, but then Darrin and I were standing in the hallway outside my open bedroom door.

“Do you want to stay?” I said.

“I could stay on the couch if you think you’ll need me.”

“Maybe I need you in here.” I felt so stupid, because he looked down, kind of embarrassed. Had I completely misinterpreted his interest in me?

“It’s not that I don’t want to, because I really would, but in my book this falls under the heading of taking advantage,” he said.

He slept on the couch, in case I needed him. I thought about going out to the living room, and seducing him in the safety of darkness. All I did was think about it, though, before I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of typing. At first I assumed it must be morning, because what kind of crazy person types a letter in the wee, dark hours, but it was only four o’clock. Under normal circumstances, I would have yelled at Wavy, but considering everything that had happened, I let it go.