“Uncle Rocco, it’s nothing, I promise.” Hey, maybe I should let them run with this train of thought and keep their minds off the other thing. That would be nice, except for the fact that if I did that, she might end up at the wrong end of a pier with this bunch.
The three old men exchanged looks, which in this family could mean anything, but I was more worried about the hot head, aka Dad, who was uncharacteristically quiet. “Dad?”
“What?”
“What’re you thinking?”
“About what?”
I counted heads again to make sure everyone was there, including my brothers, and breathed a sigh of relief when they were all accounted for. It might seem like an overreaction, but my family is not known for their rationality. Every little thing sets them off, and no one gives a thought to the chaos that always ensues when they get their shit in a twist.
How is my breaking up such a big deal? You’d think this was the first time in history that someone’s relationship didn’t work out. Most people handle breakups by bingeing on poor food choices and mediocre movies while bashing their exes. I have to navigate this minefield of degenerates to make sure no one spends the night in jail. It’s nuts!
I spent the next hour or so fielding questions from the Thornton-Escalante conclave, which had the added benefit of keeping my mind off of Julius and the long-dormant feelings his presence had reawakened in me. Once the grilling was over and everyone went their separate ways with the reassurance that Iwas fine, I was left alone with my thoughts, and the real ordeal began.
Upstairs alone in my childhood room, I had nothing to do but stare up at the ceiling and play the past few hours over again and again in my head. My family had been so obsessed with finding out just how Dale’s family had treated me in the past that they forgot about nagging me about my need for physical release after my run-in with Julius.
I also never got around to telling them just how I had facilitated the affair that brought about the end of my relationship with Dale, but at least that nitwit Denise would live another day, and no one on my end was going to jail. All in all, things ended much better than I expected, and I’m glad that it was all out of the way.
I tried to feel anything about the breakup, but all I could think about was Julius, how hot he still looks, and how my heart still trips when in his presence, even when I want to hate him with every fiber of my being. That asshole had quelled my anger at Dale, and my thirst for vengeance had trickled down to something less fiery.
That shit doesn’t even make any sense. I had a whole plan laid out. All the ways I was going to make him and his little side piece pay for betraying me, but for some reason, all I can think about is the fact that I am free to… Free to what?
I shook my head in the dark and rolled over to bury my face in the pillow, warning myself over and over again that I would not make an ass of myself over Julius Blair again in this lifetime. He’d burned me once, so bad that I had promised myself I wouldn’t spit on his ass if he was on fire on a lonely road in the desert with no one else around.
I’ve hated him for years, or so I thought. At least I had convinced myself that I did. I’d savagely crushed every wayward thought of that jackass, even the ones that popped up out ofnowhere at the most inopportune times, and I’ll be damned if I was going to fall back into old habits just because I was a single woman once again.
It never mattered to him before that I was available. In fact, he couldn’t have made his disinterest more plain back when I was young and stupid enough to wear my heart on my sleeve and make the first move. The first time he turned me down, I could excuse him; he was right. I was too young then. But that night, when I was twenty-one, he decimated my young, innocent heart with his harsh words of rejection.
That should be enough for me to be done with him, something I had told myself that I was a thousand times. But it only took seeing him this once for all the old feelings to come back in full force; All the anger and hate I held for him just seemed to have dissipated, and I know why. It’s because I can never erase from memory the want I had seen in his eyes that one time.
JESSICA
The phone rang sometime in the midst of my mind trip, and I looked over at the bedside clock. Three in the morning, where had the time gone? I picked up the phone and saw that it was Dale calling. As if! From the looks of it, it wasn’t the first time that night, but since my phone had been tucked away, I’d missed all the others.
I turned the phone off and rolled over in bed, ready to pick up where my mind had left off. I know that piece of shit like the back of my hand, and my ignoring him would do more harm than having it out with him would.
I was tempted to answer just to ask why he hadn’t made good on his threat and ended himself, thereby making the world a better place, but the last words I said to him were the last bit of me he was going to get, the bastard, and I know that is going to torment him for the rest of his miserable life.
A narc like him will never be satisfied with not having the last word, or at the very least, the opportunity to spew his bullshit reasons for being a piece of dog shit. I know from experience it would just be more of his justification of himself, which would somehow work itself around to everything being my fault because assholes can never hold themselves accountable for shit.
It's kind of debilitating to realize that this is the type of thing I used to put up with in the past. I’d numbed myself down so much to the point that I was willing to settle for that dumb shit from a subpar human male.
I could wallow in regret and self-pity, beat myself up for not leaving sooner, and a whole host of things which I half expected. But that was before the intrusion of one Julius Blair. Instead of plotting my grand revenge, I spent the last couple of hours dwelling on him, which is something I hadn’t done in years and never expected to again.
Dale had been a good distraction and a placeholder, if you will. Something I knew from the start but never saw fit to tell him. He knew he wasn’t the love of my life; at least, I was honest enough about that. But he filled a void for a time. The fact that I wasn’t in love with him was neither here nor there; if he wanted out, he was free to do so at any time.
Instead, he chose to cheat on me after pleading his undying love for yours truly and promising that he would make me love him as much as he loved me. He never knew that there was someone else living in my heart; why would I tell him that? But at least we were honest with each other; at least I thought we were.
He was in love and was working hard to win me over. I’d made up my mind that even though I bore him no great love, I didn’t exactly hate the thought of spending my life with him. For me, it was simple. If I couldn’t have the one I wanted, there was no use holding out hope for that to change.
Dale was the best choice out of all the others who had tried. I respected him as a person and thought he did the same. I was always upfront with him about the fact that I admired him, but wasn’t in love with him the way he claimed to be with me.
I won’t lie; we’d had some good times, and not once did I ever think of cheating on him. I would’ve settled and was well on myway to doing just that, having committed to the relationship and the life I thought we were building together.
Though there was no great passion between us, I had committed to the relationship, championed his every move, and cheered his every victory along with him. I think I had even gone above and beyond to compensate for the fact that I couldn’t and didn’t love him the way he claimed to love me.
It's not like I woke up every day and looked at him and said, ‘Hey, I don’t love you, just so you remember.’ No, though my heart was broken and carefully locked away for safekeeping, I had given him all that I had, which was plenty if you ask me. In fact, there were times when I was genuinely happy and content, and so was he, or so it seemed.
