“Why do you only have polish on two and a half toenails?”

I poke my foot further out from the covers and inspect my badly chipped pedicure. “I just haven’t had them done for awhile,” I say, squirming so my other foot sticks out.

“I take that back, five toes’ worth of polish,” he teases as I wiggle all ten toes at him.

“Shuddup,” I say, elbowing him in the ribs. “I’m saving money. That’s thirty dollars including the tip.”

“Toe polishing costs you thirty bucks?!”

“Well, there’s the spa tub and the lotion thing and the calf and foot massage…”

“Oooh, footrub. I guess thirty isn’t too bad. But why don’t you just paint them yourself then?”

“Cause I’m lazy and it’s not flip-flop time anymore. And what’s this sudden interest in the state of my toes?”

“I was just noticing. And you have the polish right there.” He gestures at the bottle of bright pink O.P.I. on my nightstand.

“That’s not the color.”

“It looks just like it.”

“It’s not.”

“Close enough. I’ll even do it for you.”

I can’t help but snort a little. “Right,” I giggle, grabbing the bottle. “Go for it, muscle man.”

“Huh?”

I hand him the pink polish. “You’ll see.”

He tries to twist the cap and it doesn’t budge. He tries again. “What the hell?”

“It’s dried shut.”

“Then why do you even have it?”

“Dunno.”

He sighs and tosses the bottle over my head into the trash can on the other side of the nightstand.

“Honey?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I have thirty bucks?”

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post: For worse, for better, for…whatever.

My phone actually rang twice, but it wasn’t until the end of the second missed call that I heard it. I slide my feet off E’s lap and retrieve it from the study.

“Uh-oh,” I say, walking back into the living room.

“What?”

“Two missed calls.” I point at the phone. “Melissa a few minutes ago. Ben just now.”

“I wonder what it is,” he says, twisting his mouth into a frown.

“They had their first marriage counseling thing tonight,” I remind him, flipping the phone open to dial Melissa. “It looks like it did not go well.”

Mel doesn’t pick up and I leave her a quick voicemail. I try Ben next, and he answers with the same small, broken voice he used when he first told me she was leaving. “She doesn’t want to work on it,” he says. “She doesn’t even want to try. It’s completely over.”

I can’t pretend that I didn’t know this would happen, so I make some sort of mumbly noises as he continues, telling me what she said that clued him in to the fact that there really is no chance. I’m shocked that he says these things, not because I didn’t expect him to tell me what went on, but because she’d told me before that she didn’t intend to tell him certain details. “Some of these things could be really hurtful to him,” she’d told me over lunch one day. “I’m leaving and that’s going to hurt him enough, I don’t want to tell him things that will just make it worse.” She was right. So now it’s worse.

I don’t have time to reply to Ben before he says he has to go and hangs up the phone quickly. Sitting back down next to E on the couch, I snuggle into his arm. “Bad, huh?” he asks.

I tell him what was said.

“Ouch,” he says, eyes wide. “Really. OUCH.”

“Yeah.”

My phone beeps with a new text message. It’s Mel, asking if we can meet up and go somewhere to chat. “You don’t mind, do you?” I ask E, even though I know what his answer will be – had BETTER be. “I know we planned to spend the evening together but – “

“Go, baby,” he says gently. “I’ll wait here. You need to be with her right now.”

I slide over and smoosh into his lap, dropping a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, honey.” He kisses me back. “This sort of simple thing, this is what I need from you. Just understanding when things are hard for me too.”

E hugs me close for a moment. “I know. And I’d never tell you not to go. It’s going to be okay.” I text Mel back, telling her to come pick me up whenever she’s ready, and I go to pack. “What are you getting?” he asks as I head into the kitchen.

“I am getting what is necessary for an evening like this,” I announce, opening the fridge. “I knew there was a reason I saved this thing!” Shoving the bottle and two plastic cups into my (fabulous) new Juicy Couture satchel, I head back out to the living room to wait for her.

“What did you get?” I hold up the Polka Dot Riesling, mine and Melissa’s favorite, and make a pouty face. E frowns at me. “Honey…”

“Pleeeeease.”

“I won’t tell you what to do,” he says resignedly. “This quitting drinking idea was all you, so it’s your decision.”

“Just tonight, it’ll only be tonight. We’ll sit in the park and drink like winos and bond over our troubles and I will come home to you safe and sound.” I hear her car in my driveway and tuck the bottle back in my bag. “Bye, sweetie – I’ll call you if we’re gonna be late or when I know what’s going on.” He just smiles and shakes his head.

I get into the car and immediately pull the plastic cups from the parish picnic out of my bag and plop them in the cupholders. “What are those – “ Mel asks, then sees me reach for the wine. “Woo!” she squeals as I twist the cap off (yeah, it’s the classy kind) and pour us each half a cup. I take a long swallow of mine, savoring the sweetness that is all the sweeter because it’s forbidden.

“All right,” I said. “I talked to him and he told me what you said. And you said you weren’t going to tell him those things – but now you did. What the heck happened?”

“I just… it just came out. It was just something I had to say.” I ask why, what had changed since she said she didn’t want to hurt him with harsh facts. “It started off with the counselor asking us questions,” she said, taking sips from her cup. “Mmm, this is good. But anyway, he was asking us questions and so we were talking to him, and then it really just came to a point where we were talking back and forth to each other and not to the counselor.”

I nod, almost sloshing wine down my jacket as she turns onto the main road. “Did he specifically ASK you about that?” I wonder aloud.

She sighs. “Kind of. But not.” We let it go at that and sip the wine, stopping for a refill at a stoplight. She abruptly lurches right. “Let’s get chocolate martinis!”

Breaking no-drinking vow? In for the penny, in for the pound. This is all about solidarity.

In the Applebee’s parking lot (I told you, we’re classy girls), we park among three cop cars and keep working on the bottle of Riesling, giggling about nothing and saving the crucial conversation for the hard liquor.

“Hi, can I help you ladies with—“

“Two chocolate martinis,” she says quickly. When they land on our table, we swirl the chocolate syrup from the bottom with our straws. “Now,” she says, turning to me mischievously, “now we can talk.”

“Okay. So you told him. WHY?”

“I was mad.”

“And…?”

She sighs and savors a hefty sip of chocolatey goodness. “Bek, he was SO condescending! Said that I could move out, be on my own and just ‘get it out of my system’ like it was some sort of phase, and he insisted that I’d get over this ‘independence thing’ and come back home and be a family again.” I sip and nod in agreement. Ohhhh, the chocolate is making me happy. “It’s like he didn’t take me seriously, like he just had to humor me for a few months and then I’d get over it. Like I hadn’t thought this through already, like I couldn’t possibly make a decision and stick to it.”

“Well, he wants to give you space, Mel, he doesn’t want to pressure you to try and stay right now because that would obviously be counterproductive…”

“I don’t know, it was just the way he said it, like he was treating me like a child, saying ‘Go, go, you’ll be back’ and I KNOW I’m not going back and frankly, I want him to know that. I didn’t know how else to get it through his head.”

“So you told him.”

“So I told him.”

Long, slow swallows of chocolate. Oh, so good. We look at each other and I can tell she’s asking me not to judge her and she can tell I’m trying not to. “I guess you did what you had to do,” I say finally. “I guess it’s kind of like what I did with Bear.”

“You told him the same thing?”

“No. I felt the same thing. I never said it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell a man who loved me, who I loved but was not in love with anymore, that I was no longer emotionally or physically attracted to him. He would have blamed himself for everything that was wrong instead of blaming me, and I was the one who deserved the blame for what went wrong with us.”

“I had to tell him. It just came out.” She signals the waiter for another round of martinis. Tasty drinks are dangerous like that. “But I can’t be stuck in a marriage like that, a marriage where I have to fake the most important things. I’ve been trying Bek, I have, but I can’t fake it anymore.”

“I faked it with Bear sometimes. And I loved him, but we were never super great at… that. But we were practically kids. I thought it would get better.”

“Yeah well, we’ve been together for ten years.”

“But don’t tell me you’ve been faking ten years. That’s not true and you know it and I don’t believe it. You guys have had great times, don’t just write those off because the last six months or a year have been rough. I mean, come on, how many times have you told me how much you love your husband, how you guys have such a great sex life and all that? I mean, walk out of this if you want to but don’t say there was never anything good there.”

She covers her face with her hands as though that will magically make the next round of martinis appear, and then peeks at me through her fingers like a child. “Maybe I wasn’t always telling the whole truth.”

“MEL!” I lean across the table at her. “What the heck?” The waiter brings the martinis and we mumble “thank you” in unison and I get back in her face. “Why would you lie about that? It’s not like I ever just came up and asked you about your sex life, so why even bring it up and brag on it?” And why is everybody lying about being in love these days anyway?

“Because it sounded better than the truth.”

At this we grab greedily at the martinis, both of us feeling the buzz off the wine and the first round. “And the truth, then?” I probe.

“The truth is I don’t know if I should have gotten married so young. Or to him at all. And I did love him and I wanted to make that commitment to him but… Bek, I’m just done. It felt like it could be the right thing at the time but I can see now that it’s not.”

I drink because I’m not sure what to say. So much of this draws me back five years to the wedding I was supposed to have just one month before Melissa’s, to the relationship I ended before I could regret marrying the wrong guy, marrying too young, and having to fake the most important things in life. This could have been me. I have a strong suspicion that it WOULD have been me, with a husband, a baby, a job, and an unshakable feeling of claustrophobia and regret.

I remember my friend Bella, on leaving a marriage begun when she was only 21 or 22, went right out and launched into an affair with someone she said she felt more connected to than she had to her husband for a long time. God, she was funny when she went back into the dating world, going on and on about how this guy understood her and listened to her, and by the way, was extremely well-endowed and knew what to do with it. It was Bella like I’d never seen her before, high on her new freedom and regrets be damned. It’s what I did when I ended my engagement – well, minus the super well-endowed guy.

During the third round, Mel asks about E and I tell her about the events of the last few days. We ponder the mess, what we’ve taken to calling the beautiful mess of our lives. “This is what it means to be a single girl,” I warn her.

I call E when we get back to the car, giddy from three martinis each. Mel doesn’t really want to go home, so we invite her in for awhile and the three of us sit on the porch and talk about her plans for getting a new apartment, getting furniture. Getting a future all her own.

After she leaves, E and I get ready for sleep. “What’s this?” I ask when I see the bubble bath out on the counter. “Were you getting pretty while I was gone?” I tease.

“I was going to make you a bubble bath.” He looks a tiny bit embarrassed and does not meet my eyes. “I thought you’d probably be all stressed. But,” he says, nipping at my waist, “you’re all sloshed and not stressed, so I think I’ll take you to bed instead.”

“Mmm, yes please.”

He’d even done the dishes.

This is really a follow-up to yesterday’s post “The gauntlet has been thrown,” so if you haven’t read it, you may want to do so first to get the gist of this situation.

I could hardly work on Tuesday. I was completely brain-dead from an overly-emotional night capped off with a mere four hours of sleep. And it wasn’t that I was just tired… I was SAD. The rage had tapered off and all I wanted to do was cry through my three-hour morning meeting. I was sad for myself and my own hurt, disappointed in my actions and my willingness to trust again so quickly, and, like a sap, sad for him and whatever was inside him that was making him do this. It was tearing my guts out to think of him so locked up inside himself because deep down, for all my angry words and screaming and stomping, I knew where he was. I’d done it. I’d shut out the world and the people I loved and hidden in my bed, curled into a ball and unable to deal with the simplest things from a fear I couldn’t name. And I thought about me, about who I was at that point in my life and the way everything and everyone seemed to be putting such immense pressure on me when all anyone wanted was for me to be better.

I’d done it too. And I survived it because people yelled at me and made me get out of bed and LIVE when I was afraid of the mysterious whatever.

“Just… life,” he says at his apartment later, after my completely unproductive work day. “I’m scared of everything, of so many things I want to change and so many things I feel like I can’t change.”

“Why are you afraid of me?” I ask quietly. He doesn’t say anything, but flops backward onto his bed. “You told me over and over that you wanted to be more open with me and more able to share those things with me so I could be there for you. But you’ve got to tell me, E. You’ve got to let me in.”

“I was scared because the other night you said you love me.”

“You’ve been going on and on about how you’ve never stopped loving me,” I remind him. “You got this big stupid grin on your face when I said it. So when I told you I’ll give you the chance you asked for, what scares you about that?”

“Because now it’s real.”

I lay back on the bed with him and we stare at the ceiling. “I know you’re scared of a lot of things,” I say. “So am I.”

“What are you scared of?” he asks.

“My job, I hate my job and I’m scared to even look for another one. I’m scared of being stuck here. I want to move, I want an adventure and I’m afraid to even try. And I’m scared of you hurting me again. I’m fucking terrified.”

“Oh.”

I roll over and look at him. “I thought we were supposed to help each other, E. Not shut one another out. You feel so alone and scared and you say you need me, but you have to let me in. And you have to take care of me too. I have things I need from you and you have to give those to me just like I want to for you. There’s no other way to do this.”

He turns and faces me, puts a hand in my hair and brushes it out of my face. “I do need you. I wasn’t lying when I said that. You’re the only person who makes me believe I can make my life better – I feel inside like I can do more with myself and one of the reasons I love you is because you push me to do that.”

“You need me to scream at you and tell you to grow balls?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to have to be a bitch to get you to treat me right,” I say firmly. “I will not do that. I don’t deserve that. You have to step up, because I’m not going to hurt myself just to wake your dumb ass up. I may have gone a little crazy, but I’m not replaying last night.”

“I deserved that.” He looks miserable.

“It’s not that complicated,” I continue. “You – WE don’t have to make this so complicated. Just do one thing at a time. Job later. Apartment later. This is today. You love me?”

“Yes.”

“You want us to build a relationship together?”

“Yes.”

“You understand that I’m not proposing to you or anything?”

“Yes, but if we head that way–“

“You said you wanted that. Do you?”

“Yes. But it scares me.”

“God, E, it scares me too! But quit worrying about that now! We’re NOT THERE. We’re not on a stupid timeline. I wouldn’t marry you now if you asked me. If we can just get on the right track and do this together, THAT is what I want. I need you to give things to me too. I need you to call me back. I need you to keep promises. I need to feel like I am a priority in your life and I need you to consider my feelings when you make decisions. That’s it. That’s all I need from you right now. Can you just focus on that?”

“Baby, I love you. I don’t ever want to hurt you, but it’s hard for me to open up because then you… you see my weaknesses. And I never wanted to show you that.”

“Answer me. Can you give me those things I told you I need? Because if you can’t promise me that, I am walking, no matter how much you need me. You can’t tell me you’re scared to just be respectful and caring to your girlfriend. Make me little promises. Promise you’ll call and then do it – just simple things so you can help me trust you again. Can you do that?”

He closes his eyes and pulls me across the bed to hold me close. “Yes,” he says.

I push him back a bit and look him in the eye. “Say it again and look at me. Promise me you’ll just do those damn simple things and I will be there for what you need, for your weaknesses, for whatever it is.”

“I promise.” I want so desperately to believe him.

——————————-

And so we tried to recapture what we had before that was simple and good. Again. We go to the grocery store and pick up a chicken, some veggies and biscuits and a bottle of wine. We cook together in my little kitchen and give little kisses across the counter like we always used to. I set up the trays in the living room so we can watch the baseball game, and he brings out the plates. He really can be very sweet sometimes, asking me if I want more of this or that, telling me the potatoes I cooked are good even when they sucked (there’s a reason only one of us is a chef) and saying “thank you, baby” when I bring him another drink.

“I just want to watch a movie and curl up with you tonight,” he says tiredly, pulling my feet into his lap and rubbing them as I push the trays out of the way.

“Mmmm, that sounds nice.” I close my eyes. “Let’s pick something out.”

——————————-

Why does it seem that we are always so good together when we’re in my house? Why do we hold each other close there, make promises and make dinner and make love there, and then walk outside into fear?

I’m still scared of so many things but I don’t always want to curl up in my bed and hide anymore. I want to face things, and I’ll come right out and admit that I want to face them with someone by my side because I need help sometimes too. Maybe that’s why I wanted to give him that chance, why I’m already putting up with what hurt me before, why I’m screaming at him to be a man – because when I was in that blocked-off state of mind, someone pushed me and I finally got up. What he does hurts me because I care about him, not just about myself. And maybe that’s why I’m still such a fool for him, because I recognize the pain in him that was in me, the fear that I thought I could hide from everyone, and because I love him I can’t let that go.

——————————-

I pull his feet up into my lap and we do mutual footrubs for a minute. Then my phone rings and the tone of the night completely changes.

I felt like I was underwater, pushing my arms and legs forward with concerted effort, unable to hear the traffic on the nearby highway. Everything around me blurred. Bending over, I nearly lost my balance as I reached for it. It was unmistakably his. And he had unmistakably lied.

——————————————

Sunday night E and I went out for Mexican food and had a lovely dinner, followed by a lovely evening at my house. We cuddled, did mushy kissing things, and engaged in pillow talk not unlike our previous conversations that week.

“You’re absolutely sure?” I asked him once more.

“Yes.”

“You’ve got it in you to do this right this time? For us to be together as a team?”

“Yes,” he said, looking right at me. “But I need you. I’m scared of a lot of things, and I love you, and I know it’s going to be hard but I need you to help me with that.”

“I’m scared too, babe. And I need you to help me with those things. I need you to reassure me a lot because I’m going to need it. I promise you, I will be downright neurotic about the way you treat me, especially after last time when you just stopped returning calls for three days, like Tim did. And I need you to not be like that anymore. I need you to make me, make US a priority.”

He nodded. “I understand.” He looked away for a minute, then turned back to me. “We’re going to do this,” he said firmly.

“We’re going to do it right,” I rejoined.

Monday morning I dropped him off at his house on my way to work. He was cuddly and affectionate all night, pulled me away from the alarm clock and blew raspberries in my tummy to wake me up in the morning. “I’ll call you when I get off work,” I said. “You’re off tonight, right?”

“Yep. When will you be done?”

“Four, four-thirtyish.”

“Okay, call me, we’ll see what’s going on. Have a good day at work, babe.”

———————————————

4:30 pm: I call. No answer, leave voicemail.

6:30 pm: I text. “Where you at, goof?”

8:30 pm: I call. No answer, leave voicemail. “Hope everything is okay, call me when you get this, I need to talk to you.” (His mom had been pretty sick so I was hoping there hadn’t been an emergency.)

10:15 pm: I call. No answer, leave voicemail. “I’m going to bed, babe. Don’t know why you haven’t called me when you wanted me to call you in the first place, but whatever.”

10:16 pm: He calls.

“Hello.” My voice is flat, emotionless.

“Hi honey,” he says nonchalantly. “How are you?”

“Where have you been?”

“Well, I’m walking home from Jean’s house, and I was hanging out with James and Duke for awhile earlier. How’s your day been?”

Hanging out, he says. Just “hanging out.”

“Did you get my voicemails?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t call me back?”

“I’m calling you back now. What, what’s wrong baby?”

“I told you not to do this,” I say, my voice starting to waver. “You know what this does to me. You know I have the worst possible time trusting you right now and you know I can’t take when you do this.”

“Honey, calm down, it’s not a big deal. I was doing stuff.”

“And you couldn’t give me two minutes for a call or even a text to acknowledge me, say you’re busy and that you’ll call me later?”

“Baby, really, you’re being silly.”

“Do NOT start this again with me, E,” I fume. “This is what I asked you for and what you said you’d give me. You said you’d call and when you didn’t I was worried that something bad had happened to your mom, but here it’s just because you were too busy ‘hanging out’ to respond to me. That’s bullshit and you know it. You did this to me when we broke up before. You know Tim did this when he left me. You KNOW not to do this.”

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“This will not continue. This is an incredibly stupid way for you to treat someone you claim to love.”

“I do love you.”

“Then f*cking act like it.”

The conversation continued in this vein for another fifteen minutes, in which I calmed down a bit and asked him about his day and how his mom was, and we talked about work and so on. I was still angry, still hurt and frustrated, and it must have shown in my voice.

“You’re still upset, aren’t you?”

“A little,” I admit. “I hate feeling like I can’t trust you and already you’re making it worse.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“I’ll come pick you up.” I really did want to see him. We can never have a productive discussion on the phone.

“No, I’ll call a cab,” he said quickly. “You really want me to come?”

“Of course.”

Five minutes later, he calls me back. “Cab on its way?” I ask.

“No, I canceled it,” he mumbles. “I called and ordered one but then I called back and canceled it.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t really think you really wanted me to come over.” His voice is getting smaller, like he’s shrinking into himself. Something is going on.

I try to lighten the mood. “Well of course I want to see you, goof,” I say cheerily. “I’ll be there in a few minutes, forget the cab.”

“No, I’ll call them again. And I’ll call you right back.”

“Sounds good.”

——————————————–

8 phone calls, 3 voicemails, 5 text messages, and TWO HOURS later, I called the cab company he usually uses. They confirmed that they’d not had a call for a cab to his address.

At one o’clock in the morning, I get in the Jeep and drove over to his house. The door is unlocked as usual, and I quietly go upstairs to his room and find him fast asleep on his bed.

“What the F*CK are you doing?” I practically yell. He rubs his eyes blearily and looks at me, jaw dropped and confused. I lower my voice when remember that his soon-to-be-ex-roommate is there, but he’s probably stoned and counting cracks in the ceiling so it’s unlikely that he cares. “You said you were calling a cab and then calling me right back two hours ago!”

“I tried to call you back, I didn’t really feel like coming over after all so I thought maybe we could hang out tomorrow.”

“You did not call me back. And why did you suddenly not feel like coming over?”

“I just… your phone said it wasn’t receiving calls.”

“I called you EIGHT times.”

He points at the pile on his nightstand. “It didn’t ring, I don’t know why…”

“And you just suddenly didn’t want to come over. E, what the hell is going on with you?” He grabs my arm and tries to pull me down to lay on the bed next to him. I push him back and sit at the foot of the bed instead, and he stares at me blearily. “Speak,” I demand. “You had better explain this.”

For about twenty minutes, we go back and forth, him mumbling things along the lines of “I just got scared, I love you but I’m scared to do this” and me biting back with “You don’t hurt someone you love like this, and if you’re so scared you should never have asked to come back into my life,” and so on.

“I’m tired,” I say. “I have to get up in less than 5 hours and I’m going home. This is a completely pointless conversation, you’re half asleep and you just don’t get it.”

“Sleep here, stay with me.”

“I don’t want to stay with you. I cuddle with you when I feel close to you, and right now you’re on another f*cking planet. Call me when you feel like it.”

————————————–

Then on the porch. The drowning feeling. And I stomped right back upstairs.

————————————-

“I figured out why you didn’t answer your cell phone,” I said, shoving it in his face. “It was on your porch, sitting on the steps. Eight missed calls. Wonder who THAT was.”

He looks at it incredulously, and I grab his chin and pull his face toward me, “You didn’t call the cab, did you?” He shakes his head slowly. “You liar,” I say softly. “You are a goddamn liar.”

“Baby, wait.”

“What a stupid thing to lie about, E. I don’t care how scared you are, I don’t want to know what your problem is. Here’s mine. You are treating me like shit already. I did not put my heart back out there for you to do this after giving me ONE. GOOD. DAY. You don’t respect me and it hurts and you don’t even care!”

“I don’t want to hurt you – ”

“You KNEW this would hurt me and you did it anyway! You deliberately hurt me, AGAIN!”

“I wasn’t thinking – ”

“You’re never thinking about anyone but yourself! You’re all pretty words to get me back because it’s what you want, and then as soon as I say I’ll give it a chance, you have what you want and you don’t care about me anymore! What the HELL happened between this morning when we were fine and tonight when you’ve become an idiot again? Who got to you this time? James? Your dad?”

“It’s not anyone, it’s all me, I’m just so…”

“Scared, yes I know,” I say mockingly. I throw the phone on the table. “Two days into what you say you want so desperately and you have 99% killed this already, E. I have tried and tried to give you what you say you need, to be there for you when things get overwhelming, and when I ask you for honesty and respect, you can’t give me anything. So just call me when you feel you can talk about this like a man, and don’t you ever f*cking lie to me again.”

I stalk out, and as I head for the stairs I hear noise in his room as though he’s getting ready to come after me, but I don’t slow down. I get in the Jeep and drive for about five minutes when my phone rings. I think for a moment about giving him a taste of his own medicine and just letting it go, but for some reason, I don’t.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have let you leave.”

“You didn’t LET me. I left. And I told you not to call me till you can be a man and talk about this reasonably.”

“I can, I’m ready.”

“You’re still half-asleep and I doubt you’ve grown your balls back in five minutes.” God, I’m mean when I’m angry.

“Then please talk to me tomorrow. Call me after work, come over, we’ll go for a walk. I’ve been an idiot, I need to talk to you.”

“Are you going to pick up the phone?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll call you.”

——————————————

I’ll finish this story tomorrow. It’ll probably need a Part 2 and 3 to just get through those 24 hours.

Wow, good start, E. Way to lie about being done lying.

Keep up like this and when I kick your ass no jury of women in this country will convict me. They’ll effing applaud.

(More on this later.)