Saline
Jace
“What are you doing here?” I ask as Melissa walks through my front door, almost bowling me over in the process.
“Men are fucking terrible, do you know that?” she asks.
“Trouble in Shangri-La?”
“Seriously, what is it with you people? You’d think Ty would have been thrilled that I was finally free and clear, but once I ask him when he’s going to leave his wife, he starts stuttering.”
“Melissa,” I say, “I’m sorry you’re having a bad day, but I really don’t-”
“Anyway,” she interrupts, “it got me to thinking. You and me, we weren’t such a bad thing, were we?”
“I really don’t know how to answer that in a nice way.”
“Yeah, I get that you’re pissed and everything, but I mean, come on, the way we ended things? You can’t tell me that there’s not something there,” she says.
“Melissa, you spent what I can only surmise to be a good portion of our relationship cheating on me with your boss. What makes you think that I’m eager to jump right back into that?”
“Jace,” she says, “I love you. I know you love me. Yeah, things weren’t perfect, but can you honestly tell me that you didn’t make any mistakes?”
“I made plenty of mistakes,” I tell her. “That doesn’t mean that I’m just going to forget about everything that happened.”
“Just think, though, we could go right back to where we were and just forget it ever happened. You forgive me, I forgive you. It’s really that simple. We built a pretty good life here, didn’t we?”
“Melissa, what’s this really about?” I ask. “I know you’re having a bad day because of what’s going on with you and Ty, but you said yourself that you were miserable in our relationship.”
“That’s just because I wasn’t trying. I don’t think you were, either.”
“Melissa,” I repeat, “what’s this really about?”
“I don’t know,” she says, “it’s everything. Have you ever been so sure that what you have planned for your life is going to work out, and then one day it’s just gone?”
“Yeah,” I tell her, “pretty recently, actually.”
“What happened to you?” she asks, and I give her the condensed version of what’s happening in my little slice of hell.
It’s surprisingly quick to sum it all up.
“You know what you did wrong?” she asks.
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t talk to her before you talked to Dr. Preston,” she says.
“How was I supposed to talk to her before him?” I ask. “I didn’t even know he was coming.”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have talked to him at all, but you should have talked to Grace before you decided to nix Plan B,” Melissa says. “Have you ever bothered to consider that she may have only signed off on the trial because she thought you were protected? She would have lied to protect you. Hell, just to get into the trial, you know that she already did. All she wanted was the choice, but you took that away from her without asking.”
“I guess I never saw it that way.”
“Anyway,” she says, “I’d say the damage is done, so how about we get back to the topic at hand.”
“You don’t want to be with me,” I tell her. “You’re here because you’re used to being here. You’re used to coming to me when things aren’t going your way, but that part of our relationship is over. Even if it weren’t,” I continue, “that wouldn’t mean that you and I should get back together.”
“I know!” she shouts. She’s pacing the floor in the living room now. “I’m just sick of feeling alone. I felt alone with you because I pushed you away so I wouldn’t feel guilty about sneaking around with Ty. I felt alone with Ty because he always had to go home to his wife and that’s apparently where he wants to stay. I’m just sick of being alone,” she repeats.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I really am, but you can’t think that the two of us pretending like we’re something we’re not is going to make things better.”
She’s quiet.
“That’s not how it works,” I tell her. “If we did that, you’d feel just as lonely because you’d know that what we’d have wouldn’t be real.”
“I don’t care if it’s real. I’m just sick of always being in the background.”
“I’m not the one that put you there,” I tell her.
“Don’t you think I know that,” she says. “I’m not saying this is your fault, I’m saying that I’m sick of it being mine.”
The truth is, despite how uncomfortable the situation, a big part of me is happy to see her back in my apartment. You don’t just throw away years with someone without having some kind of residual feelings.
“Do you really think we could go back to the way things were before?” I ask. “I find that hard to imagine.”
“We really could,” she says. “The one thing that got in the way is out of the way. Maybe we just start off with a drink.”
I do feel like drinking.
“I don’t know if I have anything,” I tell her.
“I brought you a little something,” she says, opening her purse.
She pulls out a fifth of blueberry vodka. It’s my kryptonite.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Nothing’s going to change, and I don’t want you to think I’m leading you on.”
“You’re pretty conceited, you know that?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Actually, I do.”
She goes to the kitchen, and I’m having trouble getting my head straight. On the one hand, Melissa and I really did have our good times together. There were a lot of things that I wasn’t willing to live with anymore, the affair with her boss first and foremost on that list, but there’s a lot to miss.
She comes back with two shot glasses and a smile. “I know you’re not sold on it yet, but I really think this is going to be the best thing for both of us,” she says, pouring the drinks.
I don’t know, maybe she’s right. Maybe we both just lost sight of what made us work in the first place, and maybe that’s something we can fix.
I just wish Grace would return my phone calls.