who hung up, or her mother, but I watch as she stares at the phone a few moments longer than normal.
We stay silent for a while after that as my car melts fluidly through the highway of cars. Felicia doesn’t notice and looks almost relaxed as she stares out the window. I should say something. As much as I can’t stand Felicia right now, I get her pain. She does everything she can to get her mother’s attention, but her mother always seems dismissive as she rains love on Felicia’s older sister Judy. I wouldn’t be surprised if her supposed mistaken call was actually intentional. I’ve only seen her mother a few times, and even then it seemed like I was the only thing she actually liked about her daughter. Talked about how it gave her status, that maybe she’d finally amount to something with my help. It’s sad, and I’ve told Felicia plenty of times to stop living and dying by what her mother thinks, but she’s obsessed.
Just as I’m about to be comforting, say something that makes me resemble a nice guy and not one who’s thinking about ending the relationship, she speaks and ruins it.
“You know what, Jordan? You are just as bad as her. A selfish asshole.”
I nearly choke as my head whips back and forth looking from her to the road. “Whoa, what the fuck? Me? Selfish?”
“Yeah, you never want to hang out with me anymore. All you want to do is study and then you make me feel bad or stupid for wanting to be young. We're twenty-four years old. Stop acting like an old ass man.”
I groan. “I’m not doing this with you right now. You’re pissed at your mom; I’ve got to keep my shit straight for this interview. I’m going to ignore that you said that.”
“Don’t ignore it. Fucking talk if you have something to say.” Her voice is piercing as it reaches that irritating pitch that’s somewhere between a cat screeching and scratching on a chalkboard. I can feel my face getting hot. “You just know I’m right, that’s all.”
“No, you need to stop acting like a damn child.” I explode. “You don't take any responsibility for yourself. Hell, you bent your wheel hitting a curb and decide it's a great fucking idea to drive down the street. You could have caused an accident.” I’m not looking at her, noticing that cars are starting to slow to a stop a couple hundred feet ahead of us. I ease my foot onto the brake, slowing our pace and cursing. I'm still one mile away from Felicia's exit.
“No, you’re boring. You never want to do anything. Oh wait, I take that back. You’d go if your precious Xia asked you. God knows you’d do anything for her.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said. If it’s not about school, football, or Xia, I can pretty much count on your absence.”
“You’re being dramatic. We hang out all the time. You slept at my apartment the entire weekend.”
“Yeah, and the entire time it seemed like you couldn’t wait to get away from me.”
“Well, you know, it's not the worst idea, right about now.”
She seethes as we continue to argue about the stupid bullshit that she's complained about for the last year. Maybe she's right. Maybe I am a bore. But I just don’t care. She’s not the one I want and I need to stop wasting her time, and mine.
The traffic jam is painful and the entire time we spit harsh words back and forth at each other. The type that neither of us are going to be able to take back tomorrow. When I pull in front of her place, we’re still going at it.
“You’re just a waste of time, Jordan. I can’t take this anymore.”
“Great! All the more reason we should break up. I was going to wait to do this better, but fuck that. I’m done being miserable. Go find someone else to torture.”
“No, you go find someone else to ignore. I should have chosen Roman over you anyway,” she screams right before snatching her things out of the car. She slams the door and runs up to her apartment. She didn’t give me the chance to respond and she sure as hell wouldn’t have liked what I had to say to that. Roman has hated her since day one and only tolerated her shit because I put up with it.
I really was going to do this breakup