Good Morning.

The upstairs of my one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in New Jersey was a mess. Clothing laid everywhere and I often tripped over small objects left on the floor. It was a lonely place to be at night, especially when I couldn’t drink the pain away like I used to be able to.

I left Gerard in March and found an apartment in May. It was cheap and downtown and I can assure you, dear reader, that where I found myself staying was not the cleanest or safest part of town. Sometimes I heard gunshots. Sometimes couples screamed at each other right inside the apartment complex, keeping me awake at night. I had to listen as their headboard hit the wall when they made up.

The apartment was a lonely place.

I remember how once - just once - I almost called Gerard back.

He had left me calls in the past, ones begging for me to go back. He got my number somehow, and despite the fact that his calls became less and less frequent, because as time went on, I think he started to take the hint.

They were always desperate, though, the messages I had to force myself to listen to. I hated hearing his voice. The first call I ever got, he was crying. Crying. I couldn’t believe that he had been reduced to tears because of me. I’d only seen him cry a few times the entire time I knew him - no matter how sad he was or how bad the situation was, he never allowed himself to cry because that showed a weakness that was visible. And, to Gerard, that was worse than anything.

I will never forget that one message he left.

It was at night and I’d just gotten home from work. I stripped down from the required work attire and caught myself in sweat pants. My skin dripped exhaustion and my eyelids drooped. I could hardly even see straight as I threw myself onto the couch. I was fully prepared to fall asleep.

And that’s when I got the call.

I knew who it was when the phone started ringing. It rang and it rang like empty echoes throughout a canyon, and my heartbeat pumped faster and tears stung at the corners of my eyes as I thought of him again.

The machine beeped.

“Hi, you’ve reached Rebecca. I can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave your name and number I’ll be sure to call you back as soon as possible.”

The buzzing sounded.

Then came the slow sound of soft breaths.

I held my knees up to my chest and my eyelids fluttered open.

“I don’t expect you to call me back,” he said. He paused for a moment. Breathing. Waiting for a chance. Maybe waiting for me to pick up the phone. “I know you’re there. We lived together, Becca. I know when you get home, the hours you work. Even if I don’t know your apartment number, or if you’re alone, I know what it all used to be.”

His voice sounded like pain and my eardrums buzzed. I pinched my eyes shut tight and held my breath.

In my apartment at 9:45 at night, it was just Gerard and me. My everything came rushing back and I felt that same sting that ruptured in me that night I found him with his arms around that woman.

“So you’re listening to me,” he said again. “You’re listening and waiting for me to say something you haven’t heard before. Something else besides ‘I love you’ and ‘please forgive me, I was so stupid and I wasn’t thinking clearly.’” He took a deep breath. So did I. “Truth is, I’m waiting for that something else to come too.

“You’re all I ever had, Becca, and I mean that. You were my world and then some, and… this house just feels so empty without you. The house is big and warm and elegant and luxurious, and I have more now than I’ve ever had.

“And yet, I have nothing. There’s nothing left - you took it all with you when you took off without packing. Your things are still in the closet. I still find hair ties underneath the bed, and bobby pins in the corners of the room, and sometimes I’ll find one of your socks in my sock drawer. And that’s when I think of you best, although you’re all I ever spend my time thinking about anymore. You’re all I’d like to waste my time with. You are my biggest waste of time and my greatest downfall.

“I know that I don’t deserve you, and I- I know what I did. I know how I felt that night. It was hollow. It was wrong, and in the very core of me - in every single bone, and every inch of my body - I repelled that false sense of affection.

“I’ve loved you since I can remember. I’ve loved you since we were children. You broke my heart, but not as much as I broke yours. Mutual, but unequal. I was foolish. I was rotten. You were gorgeous, and I missed you, and I missed the love I felt when I was with you. But more than that, it’s like this whole part of my life that was once here, that I thought I would have forever as soon as I worked up the courage to ask you that one question I know you’d always wanted me to ask you - the one you longed for when we were young and the one you still longed for, even as an adult. And that part of me was all of you.

“It was your lips. Your skin. The way you felt in my arms. The way you kissed me. Your eyes, and the look in them when you cried. And I would kiss you back and made you feel like you were worth it all.

“You’re worth it all, Becca. You’re worth it all and then some.”

He stopped. His words came to an abrupt stop, after speaking and speaking without ending. And my heart broke into a thousand different pieces from the hundred that had already been crushed. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. His voice was everywhere.

I thought of his eyes and how they stared holes through me, and how good it felt for him to love me when we were together because he was the truth and I was just a foolish girl who never felt like she could measure up to what he was, to what he had become due to his friends and family and career.

And I began to cry as I sat there on the couch. Teardrops ran down my bare legs and hit my shorts, darkening and dampening the material. Mascara ran down rosy cheeks.

His words stung.

“Please,” he begged. It was broken and lonely and pleading. “Please, come back home.”

And no matter how much I wanted it, no matter how much my body begged me to put my shoes on and return to that place and be with the one I knew I was missing, I couldn’t do it.

I just couldn’t do it.