Chapter 23

 Janelle

If the entire planet exploded right now I’d be fine with it.

Words can’t even explain what I’m feeling right now. The amount of anger inside me is almost impossible to process and has started to meld into a sort of calm detachment. It’s almost like if I think about things any harder, my feelings might actually kill me, so my mind is trying to keep me from feeling all the things I should be.

Part of me wants to drive my car straight into a tree, or a telephone pole, or off a bridge – or maybe just park on the tracks and let my car and me be crushed when a freight train comes by.

The other part of me wants to turn around and head straight back to Chris’s and scream at him until my voice is sore, pound my fists against his chest until my hands are bleeding and curse him out for breaking my heart.

And it’s such a beautiful day out too. I wish it was raining or thunder-storming like I am inside. At least that would make sense. If this was a movie, that’s what would be happening, but sadly, my life isn’t a movie. Things are not just going to work out because I want them to. I gambled on the wrong man and that bet is coming back to kick me in the ass – and stab me in the chest.

So what do I do? The only thing I can do. I drive home. Carla will be fine watching Max for a little longer, but there’s nothing left for me to do. I can’t even process this anymore. As I pull into the driveway and shut off my car, nothing but questions are racing through my mind.

Who was that girl? Is Chris really that horrible of a guy? How could he come over to my place, bare his soul like that to me, and then go back to his place and hook up with some slut?

Or maybe he’s been with her the entire time!

Maybe all that stuff he told me about his dad was a lie. Maybe he’s just been lying to me the entire time and is some sort of psychopath weirdo that can’t stand not getting what he wants one hundred percent of the time. But for a man who has everything, who has every woman he could ever want at his fingertips, why would he make up all that stuff just to have me again?

The fact that there are no answers to these questions is the hardest part. If I knew what was going on then maybe I’d be able to process things or come to peace with his behavior. But I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of man Chris is, and just when I thought I was starting to figure things out, this happens.

I shove open the door to my car and step outside. At least Carla is here and I’ll have someone to commiserate with. It’s going to be hard to keep a happy face in front of Max, but I’ll do my best. That’s part of being a mother, and apparently part of being a father that Chris doesn’t get; when you have a child, your life changes and no longer revolves around you. I was a fool for thinking Chris could understand that.

I open the front door and step inside. I don’t hear Max and Carla out back, and as I step into the kitchen I’m relieved to see her sitting at the table texting someone on her phone.

“Is he asleep?” I ask quietly. Carla looks up and nods, but when she sees my face, I know she knows something’s up.

‘Oh, God,” she groans. “What happened?”

“Let’s go outside,” I tell her, grabbing the baby monitor from the counter.

We take a seat out back and Carla just stares at me while I try to figure out what to say.

Where to even begin?

So much has happened in such a short period of time it’s almost hard to believe. It feels like a lifetime of history between Chris and me. Maybe that’s part of the reason why things have felt so intense.

The sun is shining right in my face. I pull my chair back into the shade and try to figure out how to begin. But I guess there’s really nothing else to it than to say exactly what’s on my mind.

“So, I went over to Chris’s,” I start. But as I speak, I feel the tears start to well up in my eyes. This is going to be harder than I thought. I swallow and take a deep breath and push them back down. “And there was another girl there…”

Carla sighs, almost like she had expected it. For a second, I want to jump to Chris’s defense. I don’t know why. It’s okay if I’m mad at him, but Carla has never liked him. But she never saw the side of him that I saw.

Why am I defending him!?

This is a guy who lied to me and broke my heart and here I am rationalizing his behavior and wanting Carla to like him. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Like…she was there there?” She asks.

“Oh, yeah,” I groan. “Kissing him with one hand down his pants.”

“Shit,” Carla says with a sigh. “What did you do?”

“What could I do?” I ask.

“I’d have grabbed that bitch by the hair and introduced her to the fucking floor!”

I choke up a laugh. She’s not lying. Back in high school when Carla caught her boyfriend talking to Chrissie Madison in the parking lot behind the gym, she tripped her into a puddle and dumped her book bag out into the dumpster. The worst part about it all, was that Chrissie turned out to just be asking her boyfriend about the math homework and really wanted nothing to do with him at all.

But did Carla learn anything from that about jumping to conclusions?

“Yeah, well, I just turned around and left,” I tell her. “Well – more like ran out, jumped into my car and floored it. I was driving like a maniac.”

“Understandably!” Carla exclaims. “Men are pigs, Janelle.”

“Would you stop?!” I blurt out before I know what I’m saying. “He’s not – he’s not…”

“Not what? A pig?” Carla can’t believe her ears. “The guy bails on you after he fucks you, comes back two years later and expects you to be waiting on him, gives you some speech about how great he is and then goes back to his house to fuck some other girl? And he’s not a pig!?”

“I mean, when you put it that way…” My voice trails off as I think about what she’s saying. She’s not wrong, but somehow hearing it all laid out like that doesn’t seem to get to the heart of it all.

But I’m just being stupid, aren’t I? This is just more of dumb Janelle refusing to accept the reality of the situation in front of her.

“He’s a pig, Janelle,” Carla says, putting her hand on mine. “You need to get over him and move on. He’s just going to keep doing this, and I hate seeing you hurting.”

She’s right.

My eyes drift to the backyard and I see Max’s football lying in the grass. I want to throw it away, but I know how much Max already loves it. Maybe I’ll replace it tomorrow so I don’t have to see this one and be reminded of Chris every time I look at it.

It feels nice holding Carla’s hand. Having a friend like her is something so great I can’t even put words to it. If only I knew a man who could give me the same thing. I thought I might have that with Chris, but now I know that is an impossibility.

It’s time to move on.