mewling like a porn star. My heart collapses in my chest, deflating like the balloon my neighbor Sarah popped of mine on my fifth birthday.
My mind flips through the past few days, months, and even the almost two years we’ve been together. Memories flicker in my mind as contemplation sinks in, and every situation, mood, and days spent away from Wes skitter across my mind. No matter the imagery, I can’t recall a change in him. Did I love this blindly? The notion to run floods my veins like wax drying, thick, heady, unmovable. What did I do? It has to be me. It’s always me. The constant hours, the never being around... it’s my fault, right?
Instead of freaking out, I allow a calm to settle. Like when you straddle a board, waiting for the surf, and just feel the ocean beneath you and the air surrounding you, it frees me. I open our bedroom door to her on all fours while my boyfriend’s dick thrusts in and out of her ass. Bare. It takes everything in me not to gag. We’ve never done that, let alone without a condom. I’m glad. With my luck, this isn’t his first pump and dump in a cumdumpster.
He doesn’t turn immediately, not until she gasps. “Wes, stop!” He turns to me then, all six feet of him staring at me in surprise.
Well, yeah, motherfucker. I’m surprised too.
His eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot, sunken and dry. He’s high again. I turn away, not wanting to see the visual of him inside her for longer than I already have. It’ll be burned into my brain.
Memories don’t fade.
They reside on our skin like a living brand, making sure we never forget the past.
“Josey,” he gently tries, his voice heady with emotion. Hurt blooms inside my chest as I shake my head at him, going to our closet. Whenever he called me by my dad’s nickname, my body ached in an intrinsic way. He did it to connect with the broken part of me—the one that misses my mom, wishes my dad wasn’t heartless, and hopes life would be less of a dick.
I grab my travel bags from our closet, realizing they’re not nearly big enough to carry everything. Two years of growth. Dust wafts from the movement, and I start piling everything I can fit of mine in them. I have a lot to bag up, and not all of it is physical either. Some exist deeper. Emotional damage, the wounds that never drain and heal will only get deeper, sicker, and more detrimental with time.
Years I’ve wasted. That’s the one thing we never have. Time. It tricks us, thinking we have it, own it, and have the capability to manipulate it, but that’s the biggest lie of all. It has us. It owns us. It manipulates us. We’re just too dumb to see it.
“Hotwheels,” he calls out from behind me, the pet name from a story not meant to be slices through me. I refuse to turn to him. Refuse to see his body that’s tainted. Refuse to be broken by something I can’t control. Again.
I’m not weak. I’m not malleable. I’m not a victim.
“Don’t,” I bite out, barely holding in the tears. No. I won’t cry. Not for him. Not for them. Not for me. “Let me get my shit so I can leave.”
“It was a mistake,” he pleads, his voice small and apologetic. My hand grips a hoodie, my fisted fingers crumpling it as the pain of his betrayal presses into me.
“A mistake is falling off your surfboard and causing someone else to crash along with you. It’s not sticking your dick in some random chick’s ass in our bed. And fucking raw. You’re so dumb, Wesley. We’re done.” I say these words with a fierceness I don’t feel. It’s all a fa?ade. It’s a front to save myself; it’s my mesh guard for the cold bitter bite of love.
“Please look at me, Josey. I’m not lying,” he implores, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard him. But it doesn’t matter because he’s not getting a second chance. Second chances are for people willing to change. Yet for as long as I’ve known him, change isn’t something he’s capable of. He’s okay with staying as is, being content but not happy, being financially fine but not stable. He’s accepting of a standstill, but I’m not.
I turn to him, seeing his chest, the one I’ve touched and loved and cuddled. It’s all him, it’s