You Own Me (Owned 1)

“Be grateful.” Zoe bit her lip. “Try to look at what you have instead of what you don’t have. Cherish the moments when you are truly happy.”

“What if there is something or someone out there that will make me happier?” I remembered how I decided to drop out of school because I didn’t think it would make me happy. Instead I picked up event planning. I remembered all the boyfriends I’d left, thinking I’d find better ones. But if I hadn’t left them, I wouldn’t have found Vic. So, wouldn’t that mean if I left Vic, I’d find someone better? I rubbed my hands over my face.

“There is always going to be someone or something else,” Zoe said, entirely serious. “The world is huge. There are over seven billion people on the planet. The idea of soul mates is absurd. You will find someone who will love you and who you will love back if you’re looking for that someone. But will you be happy? That’s up to you, doll.”

I absorbed her words. She was right. I would always find something or someone, but that doesn’t mean it would be better than what I had now. It just meant that I would find it.

“Zoe, you should be a therapist,” I said, utterly serious.

“No way,” Zoe said, laughing.

“Why? You’re great at it.” This was the most eye-opening conversation I’d had in a long time. And I’d had a lot of therapists try to help me figure out how to be “happy.”

“I really wanted to smack you when I opened the door and saw you there. I don’t think good therapists hit their clients.”

I shrugged. “Some do.”

Zoe’s jaw dropped.

“I’m kidding! Well, sort of.” I twiddled my thumbs, wondering where to go from here. Zoe had just given me great advice and proven to be a great friend, again. I was a mooch and basket case, again.

“Really, thank you, Zoe. I’ll be a much better friend from here on out. I just need a little help.” The words came out on their own volition; it startled me. I just need a little help. It was almost exactly what Vic had said. He wasn’t good at love and he had fucked up with me, taking me for granted. I suddenly saw how easy it was to take for granted someone you cared about deeply. I had been doing it with Zoe, after all. It was so easy to throw stones until you realized you were living in a glass house.

“It’s not as romantic as you might think.” Before I could say anything in response, Vic continued. “I left my parent’s house. I was seventeen with no GED and nowhere to go, so I enlisted with the army. I thought I could do a tour and then go to college on a G.I. Bill. They’d pay my way, and then I could get a career and a family. I don’t know. Some American Dream bullshit.”

“And that didn’t happen?” I blurted out, stating the obvious.

“What the fuck do you think?” Vic asked.

I recoiled at his harshness, looking away.

Vic sighed. “No, Lennox.” He sighed again. “No, it didn’t.”

I turned to look at him. He was staring out the window, but whatever he was looking at, I couldn’t see it.

“I was plucked out of my squad and the rest is history, er, classified. Fuck.” Vic stood up and poured himself a drink. He stopped when the glass was half full with alcohol then appeared to reconsider and poured the glass all the way up.

“Do you like your job?” I asked, unable to stop myself. Sitting on the couch that had been my bed for the last few days, I wanted to know everything about him. Like the pillow I clutched to my chest, Vic kept even the simplest of answers locked tight.

Vic stared at the murky, brown liquid in his cup before taking a long swig. After he was finished, let out a resounding ahh and then answered,

“I thought I did.”

I had moved in with Vic. It wasn’t passionate kisses and hot, steamy, sex. It was me on the couch and Vic in his bed. Long, awkward silences engulfed us while we figured out how to navigate the situation.

I don’t know what I’d imagined it was going to be like. Just because Vic professed his love for me and I had (secretly) forgiven him, we were going to monkey fuc

k our way into a fairy tale? Yes, actually, that’s kind of what I imagined.

That didn’t happen, obviously. This was our first conversation in four days. Four days. He’d found me examining one of his guns (with my eyes only; my hands were behind my back). Vic promptly launched into the story of how he’d joined the army and became a big-bad commando dude.

It’s not that we hadn’t seen each other in four days, we had. We just hadn’t said anything. There was one time that I walked into the bathroom and found him naked. Dear God, the color of my cheeks on that day. But did we say anything? No. The moment just evolved into yet another elephant in the room. At the rate we’re going, we’ll have enough elephants for our very own African wildlife sanctuary.

I wanted this conversation to keep going. Forever. I wanted us to be like before, where we could talk and talk, and I could bare my insides to him and not care that he saw my gross guts. At this point, I would give up kissing him forever if that meant we could at least have our conversations again. Living with him, being so close to him, yet feeling like he was on another goddamn planet, was torture.

“Are you trying to torture me?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I wasn’t very good at the whole think-before-you-speak thing, which was kind of ironic, considering how much time I spent in my head.

Vic looked like he’d been smacked in the face. I was getting used to seeing that expression on him. It happened a lot when he talked to me.