Gone

I could feel my body grow weak. For whatever reason, I wasn’t angry or sad or anything passionate. I just felt…like I gave up. I was surrendering.

Of course, I had asked if Manny was positive that the boy was Liam, and she gave me a few gruesomely detailed facts about how she knew it was him. And that was it. My boyfriend had cheated on me at a Halloween party, and that was that. There was no going back.

I knew immediately what I had to do, and with some urging from Manny, I got enough confidence to do it. So I waited until the Saturday morning after the big game, so that he wasn’t thrown off his game. And then I went to his house and knocked firmly on his door, knowing that his host family had gone off to the mall, but Liam wasn’t a shopping person, so he stayed at home. Though, I didn’t want to divulge the details on exactly how I knew that.

“Frankie?” Liam looked bored when he answered as he leaned against the edge of the door. “What are you doing here?”

I swallowed, starting to lose my nerve. But I had to go through with it. I had to confront him about what happened. So without thinking too much, I blurted, “Just because we had a fight doesn’t mean we were broken up.”

“I know. Did I say that we were broken up?” His anger had subsided into more of a confusion, and his expression softened slightly.

So he did it willingly, cheating on me. There was no false idea in his head, that we were broken up from that one disagreement. So he’d just dug himself a deeper hole and plopped himself right in the middle of it without giving himself a way out.

“If you thought we were still together,” I said slowly, trying to keep my temper, since I didn’t want the whole neighborhood to hear our disagreement, “then why the fuck did you sleep with some girl at Pat Forester’s Halloween party on Wednesday?”

I expected him to look guilty, to trip over himself to explain, desperate to clear his name in my head. Oh, Frankie, I’m so sorry. I was just upset about you, and I thought you didn’t want to talk to me anymore, and she was just a rebound. She meant nothing, really. You are my everything and always will be.

But he didn’t even look embarrassed. And then he laughed, a deep kind of belly laugh, the ones that show real amusement. It took everything I could muster to keep from picking up one of the decorative rocks from around his house and clocking him over the head with it. “Why, does that bother you?”

“Of course that bothers me! You can’t go sleeping with other girls when you’re my boyfriend!”

“Boyfriend?” That actually took him by surprise. “Frankie, we never said we were exclusive or anything. We were just going out.”

I felt like I’d swallowed Antarctica, the land mass that settled, still freezing cold, in the bottom of my stomach. Maybe I would vomit, right there on his black Nike socks that were pulled up on his calves. I always hated when guys did that. “But…you acted like you liked me so much. That you were serious about me. You met my parents, for fuck's sake!”

“Did I ever say I liked you? I mean, yeah, you’re hot and you’re funny and sweet and shit, but I’m not in love with you.”

“Then why did you chase after me when I didn’t like you?” Why had I ever gone back on my first impression of him? It was obvious that I was right. He was a cocky bastard who didn’t care about anyone besides himself. “You acted like you needed to change my opinion of you to help yourself sleep at night.”

“I don’t like people disliking me, and I wanted to have sex with you. Your body is fantastic, all toned and soft at the same time, and you’re beautiful. But that didn’t mean I wanted to marry you. Why the hell would I come to the U.S. to find a relationship? I’m going back to England in June, where I’ll have to retake my last year of schooling because this one doesn’t count, and that’ll be that. I’m just here to get an experience, and I’m trying to have as much fun as possible while I’m here.”

So I was a distraction, something fun. I felt so betrayed and disgusted with myself. How could I have fooled myself into thinking that Liam actually cared about me, that he wanted to be with me? I was so fucking dumb. Manny never would have fallen for all his fake signs. No wonder he never really hung out with me around her. She would have smelled a rat within ten seconds.

“I’m so sorry that I ever liked you.” And to make the words hurt more, I tacked a hostile, sharp laugh onto the end. “Because you are by far the shittiest human being that’s ever been born. I hope you know that I will only speak to you at soccer from now on, and if you do anything to make me feel uncomfortable or come onto me again, I’ll report you immediately for sexual harassment. Do you hear me?”

“Oh, Frankie, stop acting like a child. So I slept with another girl. This isn’t the first time I’ve done it since we started seeing each other.”

“You’re just making things worse, you asshole. Thank God I didn’t give myself up to you. Lord knows what kinds of creepy crawlies and STD’s I’d have if I did.”

Finally, he started to look angry, his face scrunching up with irritation, but I didn’t stick around any longer to hear what he had to say. So I started down the steps and down the stone path that led to the driveway, where my beautiful car was waiting for me.

And as he yelled, I ignored him, plopping my ass down in the driver’s seat and starting my engine before pulling out into the street without looking, my wheels screeching in protest. I drove away without looking back or giving him any sign that I ever heard a word he said.

It wasn’t until I had pulled into my driveway, my car in park, when I was not a danger for any other human being, that I allowed my deep anger and hurt and embarrassment flow through my veins. My teeth clenched as I hit my head against my steering wheel as hard as I could, desperate to get a physical representation of my inner turmoil. I just couldn’t believe that I’d been lead on, misreading everything and jumping the gun. I’d just assumed that we were on the same page, when, of course, that was not the case at all.

Finally, tears of pure frustration started to trickle down my cheeks as I reached for my phone and dialed the number that was almost as familiar to me as my own.

“Manny,” I sobbed into the phone, wiping off my cheeks, as if she could see me over the receiver. “Manny, I need you.”

“Oh, honey, what happened?”

I just stayed quiet, shaking my head and trying not to take a ragged breath into the phone.

“I’ll be there in five. Please hang on until I get there.”

By “hang on”, I assumed she meant to keep where I was, so that was where I stayed. And that was where she found me when she arrived seven minutes later.