They say if you give someone enough rope,
They’ll hang themselves with it.
But you didn’t work that way.
I gave you rope
And you tried to hang me instead.
Day 95 Post-Gavin
“I think Carlos is sick,” I tell Sabrina. “He hasn’t been eating and he’ll hide from me, under my bed.”
She hums.
“Have you taken him to the vet?”
My head shakes violently before she finishes the question.
“I think I’m too terrified to.”
I know when something dark is around the corner. I knew it before and I know it now.
“Take him, before you regret it.”
My phone vibrates, and I don’t reach for it.
“Him again?” Sabrina asks from her massage chair beside me. She’s assessing the polish she picked out, a frown on her face as if she’s trying to figure out life’s mysteries in that tiny bottle.
“Yep,” I tell her after glancing down at my phone screen.
Antonio.
The man I’d been lying in bed with when I dreamed I’d married Gavin.
We met on the T, laughing at some strange woman who was trying to raise money for some cause that didn’t quite make sense to us. She claimed to be an energy reader. I called bullshit when she walked right past me and didn’t wither and die.
My energy was a little poisonous these days.
Antonio was sitting next to me and he’d whispered something to me. I had to pull out my headphones and ask him again what he’d said.
His smile when I did so was slow and enough to make me wonder what it’d be like to feel it between my legs.
It makes sense that we’d only have sex a few times and that be that. While our meeting was something close to cute, it wasn’t like a lightning bolt.
Once I’d experienced that, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—go back.
“Someone’s turned into quite the little savage,” my sister says once she’s put the bottle down. “What happened? I thought you liked him.”
“No. You hoped I’d like him, even though it was only ever sex and I told you this a ton of times.” I squeeze the massage chair’s arms when the man in front of me starts massaging my feet, one at a time.
“You’re way too ticklish for this shit.”
My lips are pressed together to keep from laughing and Sabrina shakes her head.
“So, what went wrong?”
I swipe at my screen and dismiss the missed call notification.
“There wasn’t enough there to actually go wrong.” I shrug. But there was a small part of me, a part that I both despise and admire, that loves that I have the power.
I’m the one calling the shots. I’m the one pushing him away.
I’m the one who is still intact after our time together.
And while I’d insisted in the short time together that we keep a certain distance from each other, he still fell.
And it fed the ego that’d been starving.
Once I got a taste of that power that I’d always known I had somewhere inside, it was impossible to stay with a man that I didn’t feel enough for.
Sabrina shrugs but her focus on her phone feels like a charade. She looks up at me when I continue to stare at her.
“What?”
“You’re worried.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Nah. I’m happy you finally got laid. You’re a lot more relaxed now.”
“If only you’d find a willing penis.”
She gapes at me and looks down at the woman currently buffing her feet.
“Sometimes, it’s like we weren’t raised together.”
My snort makes her laugh. Both endured the pits of hell together. Look at us now.
“We were raised together all right. But you’re much better at hiding your roots than I am.”
“You let me know if you’d let white trash decorate your million-dollar home. Or your penthouse.” She sets her phone down and leans forward to watch the woman paint her big toenail.
“Oh. No, no. It’s not right.” She pulls her foot away and I watch with my mouth partially open as she waddles toward the polishes and picks a few more bottles. She hobbles back and sets the bottles down.
“They look exactly the same, you pain in the ass,” I whisper. The woman who’d been doing her toes looks up at us as if she’s been chastised.
Sabrina ignores me.
“Could you try these? I think that one is a little too streaky.”
“She only did one coat,” I mutter to myself, but the woman is too busy removing the polish she’d just coated part of her toenail with.
Sabrina settles back in her seat and looks over at me with a smile.
“I’m sure they’d rather us talk about penises than have to deal with you wanting to try a million of the same color.” The man painting my toes a deep maroon is smiling and I try to get Sabrina to notice, gesturing toward him, but her eyes are glued to her phone.
“Whatever. The customer is always right.”
“Oh, yeah? What about plaid couch guy?” Sabrina visibly shudders.
“I have nightmares about him. The fact that he can tell potential clients I had anything to do with that . . .”
I notice her smile as her words die away, her eyes devouring something on her phone.
“Are you texting a boy?”
She glances at me, back at her phone, and then back at me, like she’s finally understanding what I asked her.
“Well, yeah. You’re the one who said I needed penis.”
My laughter is loud, and I accidentally pull my feet up toward myself, to the annoyance of the pedicurist.
“So sorry,” I tell him, humor still on my lips.
“They’re probably so sick of us,” Sabrina whispers.
I rub my thumb against my fingertips, and she nods, concurring that we’ll leave them a good tip.
“Who is he?”
She places her phone down, only for it to chime with a notification. She smiles, glances at it, and then puts it in her purse.
“His name is Peter. He’s an investment banker and I really like him.”
“An investment banker? Tell me more.”
All while Sabrina fills me in on Peter, where they met and what he was like, there is this feeling that clings to my back. It reaches down my throat and squeezes my heart.
It’s fear.
I fear for Sabrina. Because if Peter breaks her, she will never love again.
It all starts off so sweetly, just like this.
And then you’re left as half a person with a whole broken heart.
I don’t tell Sabrina to guard her power. I don’t want to be that broken girl to warn her sister that a man would come riding in, with promises and love in his eyes. And as quickly as he offered, he would snatch it all away.
So, I let Sabrina believe in the perfect man with the perfect future and a perfect little home someday.
And I worried about the big bad wolf who’d come to blow it all away.