Dichotomy.

Haley picks up Spencer and I from the airport, and we decide to go out to eat.

Tina said she had things to take care of and left with Tom.

Despite the painfully silent flight, I’m in a fairly decent mood.

We stop at the first familiar restaurant we see.

“Where’s Kellie?” Haley wants to know, before we order our food.

I want to roll my eyes.

“Yeah, Bren…find the balls to break it off yet?” Spencer adds a bit more snidely than necessary. This topic always annoys the hell out of him.

“I know what I’m doing,” I insist, blowing off his advice and ignoring Haley’s question while I scan the menu.

I catch Spencer rolling his eyes and mouthing something to her, and she elbows him in the side, shaking her head at him.

I pretend not to see and the subject is dropped for the rest of the lunch.

I try so hard to kill time afterwards.

I go to my apartment, unpack, and put everything away – hell, I even start to clean.

I watch tv until I can’t concentrate, and me being me, I go to visit my parents to help me waste even more time before I have to go see Kellie.

I take my sweet time eating the dinner my mom makes, saying, no, I don’t mind staying a little while longer to tell them how tour went.

I stay as long as I can – until my mom wants to know if I’ve gone to see her yet, that I should’ve brought her around for dinner, and blahblahblah.

Then I get annoyed and just decide to get it over with and drive over to her place.

Her face breaks into a smile when she opens the door and sees me.

She immediately hugs me, suffocating me.

My brain wants to tell her I’ve missed her, or that I love her.

But it’s not worth it.

I can’t lie to her anymore.

It’s not worth the guilt I feel whenever I think of her.

And it’s not fair to either of us to keep pretending like this.

The truth is, Spencer was right from the beginning.

Words leave my mouth before I can help it.

“I want to break up.”

She gapes at me in shock.

“Excuse me?”

“I said,” I begin calmly, despite the fury I can see building in her eyes. I imagine smoke coming out of her ears and fire from her mouth. It’s almost comical, but if I laugh, I’m afraid she’ll throw something at me. “I said, I want to break up. I don’t love you.”

My lips curl into an innocent smile with pride that I finally had the guts to go through with this.

I can’t help myself.

I’m outright grinning like a maniac.

I don’t have time to react before her hand comes in contact with my cheek with a sharp SMACK!

The force of it jerks my face to the side, but I’m too shocked to feel anything.

She slams the door in my face.

- Rewind to when Kellie didn’t think I was a douchebag.

Better yet, rewind to when I wasn’t one.