Fix this. Now. She’s the best thing that’s happened to you and if you mess this up because of the walking STD, I’m gonna kick you square in the balls. Twice.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees. My eyes close, and I picture Lizzie’s face. She’s smiling at me, just like the afternoon we rode my four-wheeler. Or she’s cradled in my arms while we fall asleep, like last weekend. The night I whispered I loved her, wishing I was strong enough to tell her when she was fully awake.
Charli
You there?
Me
Yeah. I’m working until tomorrow morning. I’ll get ahold of her.
Charli
And fix this!!
Me
Yes, Charli. I’ll fix this.
God, I hope I can.
My sister’s right. There’s no telling what Whitney told Lizzie, but I’m sure it’s not flattering toward me. She blamed me for everything, from being gone too much while I was serving in theAir Force to being the reason she stepped out of our relationship. According to her, I wrecked everything we were supposedly working toward together.
Yet, I wasn’t the one sleeping with my friends—or, my former friends.
Plural.
But the guilt trip she put on me was pretty intense. Fuck, I blamed myself for quite a while after it all went down. If only I had married her during my time in the military, then I could have taken her with me. Of course, she probably would have cheated at some point then too, so marrying her wouldn’t have fixed anything.
If anything, it saved half my pension and the division of marital assets.
My phone chimes with Charli’s reply, but I don’t read it. Instead, I pull up Lizzie’s name, noticing a message she sent just before one this morning.
Lizzie
Thinking about you and hoping work is going well. Stay safe. Good night.
My fingers hover over the screen. How do I reply? Everything I want to say—needto say—really should be done face-to-face. Sending a text and wanting to talk about my ex is shitty as hell, and I refuse to do that. Instead, I let my heart do the talking.
Me
Good morning, beautiful. Yesterday and this morning were pretty intense. Bad fire. I’ve been thinking about you nonstop. There are some things I need to tell you, I know, and when I get back home, we’ll talk. Until then, know you consume me. I miss you.
I bite my tongue to keep from typing the three little words I want to say. Not because there’s drama happening, thanks to the appearance of my ex, but simply because I need to tell her. I should have said it before I left for work last weekend, yet I kept those words to myself. Well, I said them, but only when she was asleep.
I’m a fucking mess.
But this is something I can rectify. I can fix this, I know it.
I just need to get to Lizzie so I can fill in the details of my past, the ones I should have told her before now. Even if we started off as casual, that’s not how it feels now. The moment we started to teeter into more exclusive and a bit more formal, I should have told her. That’s on me.
We need to talk. Soon.
Until then, I’ll keep communicating, despite doing a shitty job thus far.
Come Monday morning, I’m beat. The drive back to Cooper Town is filled with listening to my mom talk through my speakers, but wishing it were Lizzie. Not that I’m not grateful my mom calls to keep me company on the trip back to town so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel, but I’ve barely spoken to theone woman I want more than anything to have a conversation with.
Between her work schedule and mine, our only communications Sunday were sporadic texts between fire calls and patrons. My morning started with a big car accident on the interstate not thirty minutes after I talked to my sister, and it was practically nonstop until it was time to clock out this morning. I don’t know if it was a full moon or what, but there was definitely something wonky going on out there.
