In my head, I called him every colorful swear I could come up with. A sailor would have been proud.
How could I have possibly thought that a guy like Chase would be so infatuated with me? Would care about me? Would love me? Especially knowing he could have any girl he wanted. He could have Sierra. Why would he want to tie himself down to me for the rest of his life? It didn’t make sense that fateful night, and it made even less sense now.
What an utter fool I’d been. Just the other day he had his tongue blissfully down my throat. Then he turned around and snuck off with Sierra. And what pissed me off the most was that he made me look like a sucker. So here I was surrounded by dust, staring after the tail end of his car, flipping him the bird. My eyes welled with tears I refused to shed.
Or more like, I didn’t want to shed on the likes of Chase Winters. He didn’t deserve an ounce of my hurt, but the heart wasn’t easy to dupe. And right now, mine was shattering into a gazillion tiny, jagged pieces.
I wiped the sleeve of my blue cardigan over my eyes, erasing a few tears that had escaped. Through the smudge of my blurring vision, I saw the flashing of his red brake lights. My heart skipped, only to fracture again with an overwhelming new surge of agony when his silvery car turned onto the main road, full speed ahead.
The lying snake was going to pay.
As soon as I was able to pick my crushed heart off the concrete and piece it back together. Not only had Chase pummeled my heart, it was also the realization that I had cared. I had more than cared. I had started to fall in love with him. And that was as much a punch to the gut as seeing him go off with slutty Sierra was.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
Pressure squeezed in my chest and everything around me went silent. My feet felt super glued to the sidewalk. I couldn’t move. It wasn’t until a girl in a lower class accidently bumped into me that I stumbled back into the present. Running a shaky hand through my hair, I walked to my car like a mummy wrapped in anguish.
The ride back to my house seemed to take hours. I was numb. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed, pull down the blinds, and wallow in self-pity. But the longer he was gone, the stronger the pounding of anxiety knocked in my chest.
My bed was the only thing on my mind when I walked through the front door. I hit the silver comforter like a sobbing hot mess. The tears couldn’t be repressed any longer, and I needed to let go of all the hurt building inside me. It was like a flood of raw emotion.
Alone, I shut myself off from the world. I shut myself off from him. Ignored the phone calls. Dismissed the text messages. But as long as he was gone, my body wouldn’t give into the sleep I desperately wanted. Sleep – the one chance to flee from the ache.
I watched the clock above my door, as the little hand clicked and clicked in slow motion around in a circle. The room darkened with nightfall, while I lay curled into a ball, wishing this connection between us was severed. Then on a sharp intake of air, I opened my eyes and the anxiousness was gone. Every muscle in my body relaxed, losing the tension that seemed to have increased with each passing minute.
Shitbrick was home.
What I wanted to do was get up, stomp across his yard, karate chop the door, and give him the lashing of the decade. However my worn body had other plans, lashes fluttered close as I pulled the covers to my chin and promptly fell in a deep slumber.
Tomorrow would be another matter entirely.
***
I was up at the crack of dawn, something that was completely unheard of, but the little sleep I’d gotten had been sound. It might have been completely na?ve of me, but I had almost hoped that when I awoke, this gut-retching hurt would be gone.
It wasn’t.
Bracing myself on the bathroom sink, I groaned in horror at the sight that stared back at me. I looked like I’d been ravished by a zombie. And these puffy, red, and swollen eyes weren’t going to miraculous vanish.
I cursed him a thousand different ways standing there in the middle of the bathroom mirror before I decided that I wasn’t going to let him see my pain. If it killed me, I was going to look fabulous. Nothing a shower, two frozen spoons, and some heavy makeup couldn’t fix.
Or so I prayed.
After a long, steaming hot shower, I plodded to my closet. Tearing open the doors, I started to rummage through my clothes like a woman on a mission. Then I realized my wardrobe sucked some serious ass. That was all it took for a wave of heartache to bombard me again. I slid down the wall and put my head on my knees. Wet hair fell over my shoulders.