Deanna let me know that she was fine, but that wasn’t good enough. I nearly broke my neck one day trying to get outside to catch her when I saw her walking down the sidewalk to her car. By the time I ran down the three flights of stairs from my room, she was already gone.
Terrell had been trying to coerce her into hearing me out, but she wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t understand how we could live so close to one another and yet I could never find her. The thought occurred that she must’ve been spending a lot of time off campus somewhere…but where?
I paced back and forth in front of my window after my last class for the day, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sam, but her car was gone again. Yeah…she’d found something to keep her off campus as much as possible. Something or someone. The thought of her moving on made my fists tighten.
Tearing my eyes away from the walkway leading to Sam’s building, I reached for my phone when it rang.
“Yeah?”
“Let’s hang. You need to get out and quit perving at the window like I know you’re doing right now,” Terrell replied.
“No, I’m not,” I lied, glancing up at Sam’s window when I did.
“Yeah, whatever. You down?”
A fresh dose of frustration washed over me as I scanned the lot for her car again. “Yeah…I’m down.”
We agreed to meet at a bar and grill downtown that he found. Our table was near a window facing the crowded streets.
“You been alright, man?” Terrell asked.
“Not really, but what can I do? She won’t listen to me.” I lowered my head and stared at the table. “I can’t even blame her, though; I probably wouldn’t believe her if the shoe was on the other foot.” A replay of how that night went down ran through my mind. It looked bad and on top of that, someone had already put the idea of me cheating in her head. Things couldn’t have come together any less favorably for me if someone had sat and planned it all out.
“Don’t beat yourself up, man. She’ll come around after awhile.”
I wasn’t convinced. Terrell didn’t see the look on Sam’s face that night. We’d been through some really heavy stuff, and I’d never seen her so broken before. To add insult to injury, the merger between my father and Mr. Tanaka was completely over a week ago and everything but the irreparable damage that’d been done to me and Sam’s relationship had gone back to normal. No more Vick and Louis. No more threats. Nothing.
Terrell sat across from me silent, watching me breakdown mentally right before his eyes.
“How is she?” I asked. “Like….for real. I mean, Deanna said she’s fine, but…I wanna hear it from you.”
Terrell took a sip of his drink. “She’s doing alright from what I can tell, but she hasn’t been around all that much lately. I still see her because she’s right down the hall, but mostly I just catch her coming and going.”
I frowned. “Yeah, I noticed she’s been gone a lot…any idea where she’s been spending her time?” After asking the question, I braced myself for Terrell’s answer. There had to be another guy…
He shrugged. “I’ve asked, but she just tells me to mind my business.”
I had a feeling that’d be the case. Picking Terrell’s brain was my only way of having access to Sam, hence the reason I hadn’t talked to much of anyone but him since the breakup – living vicariously through his interactions with her, piecing together what her life had become since losing touch almost two months ago.
“This can’t just be how it all ends,” I said to myself, shaking my head at how messed up this whole situation was. Let her go? I couldn’t even process the concept. Aloud or in my thoughts, I hadn’t even been able to refer to Sam as an ‘ex’; in my head she was still mine. “If I told you some of the things we’ve been through, you’d probably think I was lying.”
Terrell gave a thoughtful nod. “Ditto. Maisha and I have had our share of drama, too. We even hooked up under bad circumstances.” He shook his head and amended his statement. “Tragic circumstances.”
From the outside looking in, he and Maisha seemed to have this all figured out, so I’m sure he could tell that his response came as a shock.