"Are you sure you won’t right now?" I ask him, as I back up a little further away from him. Hunter though keeps stalking towards me. "You keep playing games with me. ‘I want to be yours forever Gigi’, ‘I don't want anything to do with you’. Keeping people away from me, threatening and stalking people who even look at me, being my tutor, breaking into my room. Putting a ‘think of me’ note on my fucking vibrator. You, Hunter, are fucked up! You know that right," my words are delivered with a sharp tang of my searing anger. The space between us seems to grow bigger, seems to widen until I am sure we won't ever be on the same page again.
"Yeah, Verginius sounds about right. You are right actually, I don't want anything to do with you. You are so damn manipulative. You lie, and cheat, to get everyone to feel sorry for you. I wish I never knew you as a child. You fucking ruined my childhood! Fuck off, Gigi. I don't want to look at your fucking face anymore. I can't. I am done. Find another tutor, don't look at me, if you walk in a room and see me, leave. Don't pretend that this is a game, it is not. This is it, this is us. We are fucking DONE!" he screams at me after jumping the void between us. His words are so sharp, they hurt, and they leave me unable to move. I can't even flinch when he approaches again, so close that his final words, hurled in my face are felt and heard.
He turns his back on me again and without thought, my hand reaches out and grabs his arm, somehow stopping him.
"Please don't Hunter, don't leave me like this again. You are always running away from me," I say softly nearly pleading with him.
"Take your hands off of me. You lost that right about fifteen minutes ago now. Honestly, I meant what I said. We are so done. Do you understand yet Gigi? You killed what I have dreamt about since I was a kid. This is all on you. But just so there is no miscommunication or misinterpretation, here we go again, I don't want anything to do with you. I don't want to see your face. I don't want your happiness. You go play someone else. Looks like Dom is happy to join the game, but I am not it, anymore. You understand what I am saying, Gigi?"
"Why are you doing this Hunter? Can you just please explain to me what happened, what I did? I don't get it. You told me to say yes, you told me to accept his invitation, I did what you wanted me to do," I plead with him.
"Nah, you just didn't hear what I was saying," he finishes speaking, and his eyes close in his anguish. Regardless, his words opened up the big void between us again and he gently tugs his arm out of my hand. He doesn't stop this time, he doesn't look back. He just goes. Leaving me there, still not understanding this thing between us. All I know is that I feel every word as it bounces through my shocked brain, every word cuts a little deeper across my heart.
I stand behind that hedge in the gardens of St. Joseph's, lost. Completely disoriented, I know that I will never be able to find my way back from Hunter's leaving but I also recognise that I need to keep moving, the threat of impending exams and a mounting number of assignments, as well as a quarterly board meeting, means I don’t have the luxury of falling apart and drowning in my self-pity.
It could be minutes, hours, days or weeks later, all of a sudden, time has no meaning but I eventually find myself back in the library. I gather all my books and my laptop, packing them all in my satchel before I leave. Surprisingly I haven't lost all that much time, everyone who was here before is still studiously working and no one turns their head at my return.
Makes me wonder if I am really here at all. Makes me wonder if I care.
