44 Chapters About 4 Men - BB Easton Page 0,58

overcome…by an emotion. Like dripping water erodes even the hardest of stones, after ten years of poems and paintings and pillow talk and unrequited affection, I’d finally broken through.

I felt like I was in one of those movies where the main character sat faithfully beside her comatose partner, night after sleepless night, in defiance of everyone who’d said it was hopeless. Except the only one telling me it was hopeless around here was Ken —every time he’d roll away from me when I tried to cuddle with him in bed, every time he’d fold up one of my frilly little calligraphied love poems and shove it in his pocket with a, “Thanks, man,” every time he’d tap me on the ass five seconds after coming.

Ken had been in an emotional coma for ten years, and something I’d said last night woke him up. He might slip away from me again, but now, I have hope.

And every year on December 20, I will make sure that, though his emorection might be gone, it will never be forgotten.

Guard Your Thighs

January 18

Hans used to get emorections all the time. All I had to do was tell him I loved him and he’d be hard as a diamond. He was my first roommate, and at first, I loved playing house. I decorated the walls with my paintings and stocked the kitchen drawers with miscellaneous gadgets and cutlery that I’d stolen from either my parents’ house or the housewares department at Macy’s where I worked part-time.

I just didn’t love how Hans couldn’t get his shit together enough to help me pay for the place, clean it, or after a few months, even come home to it at all.

Turns out Hans had been spending his weekends doing coke and blowing all his money at the strip club down the street. After discovering that he had also failed all of the college classes I’d signed him up for and lost his job without telling me, I finally flipped the fuck out about his partying, and he had the audacity to break up with me!

Well, the next day at work, I was so distraught that I tearfully clocked out mid shift, snatched an armful of boxes from the Macy’s warehouse on my way out, and decided to race home and dramatically move all my shit out while Hans was…wherever the fuck he went during the day. Only, when I went to pull into my usual spot in front of our building, Hans’s ancient black BMW was already there with one tire lurched up onto the sidewalk, windows halfway down, and keys still in the ignition.

Goddamn it! Of course he’s home! It’s noon on a Tuesday! Where else would he be? Obviously not at work or school!

Up to that point in my life, I’d only experienced two kinds of breakups—the kind where your boyfriend turns into a violent, terroristic stalker and the kind where you just quit answering the phone and they go away. I was wading into uncharted waters. And while I was a thousand percent sure that Hans wouldn’t ever physically hurt another human being, I was about to discover that I couldn’t say the same thing about myself.

As soon as I opened the door, two things immediately grabbed my attention by the balls. They were both black. They were both stilettos. And they were both tossed in a heap on the stairs. The stairs that led to our motherfucking bedroom. I short-circuited. Physically. Mentally. Digestively. My first instinct was to barf up my fucking spleen into those cheap pleather knee-high boots, but I never got the chance because my body beat my stomach and my brain up the stairs.

By the time my consciousness caught up with what was unfolding up there, I’d already kicked open the door to our bedroom, ripped the sheets off the bed, and started screaming, “Get the fuck out of my bed!” while slapping Goth Girl repeatedly on her bare thigh.

Once my out-of-shape consciousness finally made it into the bedroom, huffing and puffing and pausing to light another cigarette, it watched the assault taking place like an innocent bystander, absentmindedly thinking, Really, B? The thigh? That’s kind of a weird choice, don’t you think?

I guess it was the first part of her body I could get my hands on. I dunno. At least I didn’t bite her.

Unfortunately, before I could select a cooler place to strike Goth Girl, Hans leaped out of bed, dragged me into the hallway, locking Goth Girl inside