I Can Do Shameless Too, And This One Goes Out To You

Men are only useful for one thing; at least that’s what my mother would say. Procreating, according to Elisabetta Bianchi is the only thing a man can get right, apparently they fail at everything else. I have always listened to my mother because she is wise beyond my years and she successfully managed to raise three children almost single handed. She married twice, lost one husband to alcohol abuse and divorced another when she caught him in bed with her personal assistant. Since I was twelve she has been romantically involved with no less than fourteen different guys, all of whom have been ditched because they didn’t quite fit in with her lifestyle.

It was only when I hit fifteen that I started to wonder if my mother was in fact wrong about guys. Of course there were always going to be those jackasses who would break a girl’s heart at the drop of a hat, but I was sure that somewhere out there, there was a guy for every girl who would treat her right.

So I started dating. I started out with casual romances with boys I had known all my life and that was okay for a few months but I soon got bored. There were only ever two boyfriends before I met the guy I stupidly thought was the one. Alex was absolutely gorgeous, there was no denying it. He was tall, dark and handsome; just what I had been looking for. At sixteen my mother called me foolish she explained that in a few months I would have moved on, having realised that he was in fact just another jackass.

Mother was wrong of course, Alex and I were together for two years before we even had our first major disagreement and all he had to do was turn up on my doorstep with his guitar and all was forgotten. Our relationship was perfect, or so I thought.

“C’mon Bells, I’m sorry.”

You see what Alex and I had was apparently only working for one of us; me. My gorgeous, wonderful, talented boyfriend didn’t think that what he was getting from me was enough; he felt the need to go elsewhere.

“Fuck off Alex.”

We were sat against opposite sides of my front door; it was the furthest into my house I could get before my legs gave way and I burst into tears.

“I’m not going anywhere until you open up and talk to me,” he called as I wiped at my face with the sleeve of my jumper.

I felt like telling him that he was going to be there until hell froze over but I felt too weak to do anything. I had physically exhausted myself because of my sobbing and I quietly curled up onto the carpet, letting my eyes drift shut.

I wasn’t asleep and I could still hear Alex’s pleas through the solid wooden door when Jack’s car pulled up into the driveway. I could tell it was his car because of the awful noise it made as it climbed the slight slope; I had been telling him to get the damn thing fixed for almost a year.

“What happened this time?”

I almost laughed at Jack’s question because this was a usual thing for Alex and I. We were always having little arguments that ended in us sitting either side of one our front doors. It wasn’t always Alex who screwed up, sometimes it was me and sometimes it was both of us, either way Jack was always the peace maker.

Alex mumbled something incoherent and I heard Jack’s sharp intake of air before he started yelling at his best friend. I sat back up and carefully lifted myself from the floor enough that I could drag my drained body over to the family room and onto the couch.

My mother’s crappy original windows made listening to the argument outside easy, even with the heavy curtains drawn and all of the windows slammed shut.

“Are you completely fucking stupid?”

It seemed that Alex had chosen to ignore Jack completely and take to banging on my door with his fists. It occurred to me that my neighbours would probably be trying to eat their dinner right about now and that the noise coming from my yard was probably very distracting.

“Bella let me in, we have to talk about this.”

Jack took the words I wanted to say right out of my mouth, “Talk? You think you can talk about this? You think that sitting outside with your stupid fucking guitar and that notebook is going to fix this? You’re a fucking moron, just leave.”

The relentless banging ceased almost immediately and the shouting hushed down to just one raised voice. He was talking far too fast for my brain to comprehend and I squeezed my eyes shut until the sound of a car door being slammed seeped through the windows into my eardrums.

Suddenly it was perfectly silent, which was only broken once when Jack inserted his key into the lock and twisted, letting himself into the house.

I could no longer keep my eyes open and as I slipped into the black abyss that was sleep I muttered the four words I hoped I would never have to, “My mom was right.”