Which is a total fucking mindfuck because she’s my girl, right?
Wrong, buddy. Clearly, she’s not your girl.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was supposed to find the perfect moment tonight to tell her that I’m in love with her. Instead, I stood in the middle of my own after party while someone else made Julia his girlfriend.
I didn’t even get to say hi to her tonight.
I close my apartment door behind me and immediately regret how loud it slams.
But the silence after is worse.
I walk to the kitchen and open the fridge. Close it two seconds later without grabbing anything. I turn on a lamp and turn it back off. Fold the blanket on my couch and then scramble it like I’m Gordon fucking Ramsay.
None of it leads anywhere, and more than that, none of it helps.
I start fucking pacing. Back and forth across the same stretchof hardwood floor, like if I walk it enough times, it’ll turn into a path that leads to a version of tonight where none of this happened.
I should let it go. I should sleep it off.
But instead, I stop by the front door and listen.
It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. But her apartment’s right across the hall, and some part of me—the part that hasn’t caught up to what just happened—wants to know if she’s home. If she’s alone.
If she noticed I left the party and came to find me.
I wait and I wait and I wait. Before I know it, I’ve managed to shower, change my clothes, and pace my hardwood floor another fifty times while listening for any signs of Julia coming home.
But then, I hear it. The sounds of footsteps and keys and a soft laugh that I know better than my fucking own.
Stomach churning, I push my ear to the door, trying to listen harder.
Julia’s voice is low and easy and so fucking sharp inside me I can feel the score. “Thanks for walking me back.”
Drew’s voice is a lot of shit, but mostly, it’s closer than I want it to be. “Of course. Tonight was…yeah. It was perfect.”
A beat of silence.
Then Julia says, “Good night.”
I look through the peephole before I can talk myself out of it. Julia is standing there, and so is that asshat Drew. They’re facing each other, smiling, eyes locked. And then, he leans forward and kisses her.
It’s soft and quick, but adjectives don’t matter when it’s a fucking kiss that shouldn’t be happening at all.
He says something I can’t hear and walks off down the hallway, and Julia watches him go like she used to watch me.
I try to get a read on her face, try to figure out if she’s happy. But this fucking peephole is so goddamn small it makes it hard to make out much of anything, and when she turns and walks inside her apartment, I can’t make out anything at all.
Not her face. Not my feelings. Not any sense of this giant fucking mess.
Before I know it, I’m opening my door and walking across the hall.
I knock twice and wait with raging energy while she comes to the door.
As she opens it, surprise is written all over her face. “Ace?”
For as determined as I was to come over here, my words fail to do the same. I don’t answer. I can’t. My heart pounds so loudly I can hear it in my ears.
Effectively mute, all I can do is step inside.
