2007
I didn’t move out like Elise demanded, figuring she just needed a few days to cool off and hopefully, sober up. Maybe then she’d realize she’d put our relationship on the line and come to her senses. Sunday afternoon, she called. My heart skipped a beat when I saw her number flash on the caller ID. She must want to talk. I answered with my standard greeting to her.
“Hello, Angel-face.”
I heard a disgusted sigh on the other end of the line. “I guess you haven’t gotten your shit out of the apartment, yet.”
“I know you didn’t mean it, Elise. We love each other too much for you to throw us away like this.”
“Justin,” she heaved another sigh. “I don’t. I don’t love you anymore. All these months, I’ve just been going through the motions with you, you know? I finally feel alive again, and a relationship just doesn’t figure in with what I want anymore. At least, not with you.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather, I was so stunned. “Elise…” I began to say.
“Listen, Justin, don’t bother moving your stuff out. Leah said I can stay with her for as long as I want. Keep the apartment if you can afford it alone, or just go find yourself a new place. I’ll be by to pick up my stuff when you’re at work tomorrow. Do not be there,” she said before the line went dead.
I held my phone in my hand for a moment. I didn’t know whether to break something or sit down and cry, my emotions were so twisted up inside. So, I did both. I threw my phone at the wall so hard it not only exploded into a million, tiny plastic shards, but left a deep divot in the drywall. Then, I sank down onto the sofa and dropped my head into my hands. I’m not ashamed to admit, I bawled like a baby. Huge, shuddering, rib cage rattling, sobs.
I felt a deep remorse when I lost Kylie. Losing Elise was of a different magnitude altogether. I gave my head a quick shake. No, I hadn’t lost her. It couldn’t be. She was mine. She might be confused right now, but if I could find a way to get her out of Leah’s grasp, I would remind her of who she really was and what had together.
I didn’t go to work the following day even though Elise warned me not to be home. She had to know there was no way in hell I’d simply let her pack up and walk out of my life. It turned out she did, because not only did she come with Leah, but a couple of rough looking guys, too.
They were all tatted up and thinking they were badass in their black leather vests and big boots. Being perfectly honest, they didn’t look much different than I did, but they weren’t patched anywhere. They were more like the kind of guys you’d find hanging around the custom shop, wishing and hoping they could afford the kind of bikes that came out of there. They dressed the part to make themselves feel like badasses, but likely, the only things they owned with two wheels were a Schwinn and an old Huffy. In any case, I wasn’t impressed nor intimidated when they followed Elise and Leah through the door.
“I told you not to be here, Justin,” Elise clipped at me. “Why do you have to make this harder than it needs to be?”
“Elise, we need to have a real talk. We haven’t done much of that over the last several months because I was trying to give you the space you seemed to want to work things out. That obviously didn’t work, so now we talk. You don’t get to just give up on us. Not after three years and countless dreams.”
“I did need the space. I have done lots of thinking since… my mom died,” she could barely say the words. “I don’t want to live my life like she did. I don’t want to settle down early and have kids and the whole nine yards only to end up divorced and out trying to find a new man in my late forties! Who knows, if she had done things differently, she may never have been in the car with that man and would still be here today!”
I looked at her, speechless. Were those the kind of irrational thoughts spinning through her head or were they the by-product of the chemicals she was ingesting? Because none of that made one bit of sense to me.
“Elise! Your mom wasn’t in the accident because she fucked up some major life decision! It was an accident. A tragic accident, but an accident. Some bad shit happened. To her. To you. It doesn’t mean it has to happen to us.”
She had been on her way into the bedroom when I made the last statement, but she whipped around and came at me. She shoved me hard in the chest before hammering her little fist against me.
“You mean to you!” she screamed. “You don’t want any bad shit to happen to you! Well, join the club, asshole. You get to suffer right along with me even if it’s for a different reason.”
“Is that what this is about? You’re angry with me because you lost someone, and I didn’t? Jesus, Elise. I loved Renee, too. She was good to me, and I miss her. I miss the way she would tease me when we were together and the way she would smile at us when she thought we weren’t looking. Your mom was a wonderful person, and everyone who knew her lost something the day she died!”
“Shut up! Just shut up! You didn’t know her! Not really. She was my mother, not yours! Don’t even try to pretend you have a big, gaping wound in your heart like I do.”
I grabbed her wrists and brought her hands down from where she was beating on me.
“No. You’re right, I don’t. I wish I could do something to fix that hole. I wish I could mend it and make you happy again. You don’t let me try though. You’ve only ever shut me out.”
She ripped her arms from my grasp. “Every day, I watched you get up and go to work like nothing had ever happened. You slept soundly all night long, then woke up when the alarm rang. You’d take your shower, get dressed, and go to your dumb job. Then you’d come home. Every single day. You got to go along like you always have whereas my world stopped the day my mom was killed. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. Every second ticked by slowly, another sliver sliding into the bleeding gash in my heart. It hurt to even breathe. And I watched you… moving around and going through the daily routine untouched by what happened. I hate you for it. I hate that you don’t bleed like I do!”
I tried to grab her and pull her close, but she pushed away from me again.
“You can’t fix this. Just go. Go somewhere else while I get my stuff.”
“Elise, please. I love you more than anyone or anything in the world. If you leave like this, it’ll rip my heart to shreds.”
“Good. Then you can suffer, just like me.” She spun around and ran into the small bathroom just before the bedroom. She locked herself inside and refused to come out until I left. With Bruiser and Bluto staring me down like they might try something, I finally just left. All the fight had gone out of me. Elise had gutted me.