Our wedding is off. Feel free to give my ring to “Barbie.”
Dropping the pen into the bowl, I lift my head and hold out a hand.
Christin slaps the photos into them. I quickly tear them into little pieces and dump them into the bowl–floating lost.
Much like I am, right now, I think to myself. Gathering myself together, I ask, “Now, who wants to help me get my suitcases packed and out?” I run my tongue over my teeth, “After I brush my teeth.”
Three hands immediately shoot up.
“Then let’s get to it.”
Even on the worst days of our relationship, I never imagined this would be our end. I curl up near the toilet as a precaution while my best friends pack the few items I’d managed to put away in our—his—room before the party. The scent of his cologne mingled with my perfume lingers. Before I went downstairs earlier, it reminded me of the way he devoured my skin, like an animal scenting its mate. Now, all it’s doing is mocking me for not realizing sooner how he rutted into me, not caring one damn bit about me or my needs.
Turning my head, I dry heave into the toilet. At the sound, Amy pokes her head in. “You hanging in there? We don’t have too much more.”
I hold up a hand to keep her at bay. My emotions and stomach lining are far too close to the surface for me to be talking right now. Instead, I lower my head onto my crossed arms on the toilet seat and listen to the sounds that conclude the destruction of my high school love.
Who knew it wouldn’t be fighting or screaming but the clattering of hangers? Drawers slamming shut? Cardboard scraped against metal as it slid out, and then someone dropped a frame into the bed’s center. I’d asked my friends to strip every part of me from Bryce’s life, and they were taking me at my word.
There’d be nothing left of me here because he didn’t deserve it.
Through all the chaos occurring just a few feet away, I keep breathing.Inhale. Exhale.My mind keeps telling my lungs to dothis simple task as if it’s the only function they can manage. My heart hasn’t quite caught up with the game plan. It’s withering away every time something in the other room triggers my mind to review the audio of what I heard.
Part of me wants him to walk in, flash his amiable smile, and say I misunderstood everything. But the larger part of me doesn’t care if he will. He doesn’t get to apologize for his choices and his cruelty.
Emery pops her head in, holding up the sweatshirt I used to sleep in. “You want this?”
I stare at the first Oklahoma Plains University sweatshirt I bought—with Bryce by my side. Shaking my head before I can change my mind, I declare flatly, “No. There’s too much of him tied up in it. I’ll buy a new one.”
She nods before tossing it onto the pile of picture frames. And just like that, another piece of him—of us—is over.
Discarded.
Occasionally, people in the back make loud exclamations during the next two hours. The girls are loading my bags into the car when I make my way down the hall to the spot my heart broke.
I feel a presence behind me. With a deadened voice, I wonder, "Think I need to be concerned about Bryce coming after me for the cleaning bill?” Amy wraps her arm around my shoulders before snarling, “Let him try.”
Soon, all my girls,myteam, have wrapped their arms around me as shouts punctuate the air from the backyard, followed by the occasional yell.
Instead of being angry, I’m numb. I have no desire for further destruction. No need to destroy anything precious of Bryce’s when the thing that should have been most precious to him should have been me.
And look at how he treated that?
With one last heartbeat of silence memorializing the life I’m saying goodbye to, I walk out.
Never to return.
4
BLITZ: SENDING EXTRA DEFENDERS TO PRESSURE THE QB.
Turns out I needn’t have been worried about the repercussions of leaving Bryce without more than a bowl filled with barf that I’d mixed with a few shredded photos of us, my engagement ring and the pen.
I turned off my phone, worried that he would call and ruin the sanctuary of Amy’s apartment with harsh words once the party concluded. As it was, I was drowning in tears and negativerepercussions from having to come to terms with the fact that the fairy tale I was living was complete and utter bullshit.
“You are not ugly!” Amy shouted at me once I’d stopped crying enough to tell them the part of the story they couldn’t get out of me earlier while we were too busy purging my presence from Bryce’s.
“Your features are so striking, what with those bright blue eyes and those curls,” Christin growls.
