“No, Ted, please. Don’t walk away like this.”
“I don’t have a choice here Chloe. I have to…… I have to.”
“No… please …” I cry after him but he doesn’t seem to care. “Ted…”
Without a final kiss, a goodbye, or even a glance as he walks away from me, Ted storms off, leaving me a sobbing heap in his garden. He just destroyed me. How do you go from “I love you” to “I can’t right now” in a matter of minutes? We were supposed to be just getting started, so why does this feel like the end?
Maybe the way that he just tossed me aside is proof that we aren’t meant to be after all.
Chapter 2 – Ted
Six Years Later…
Fuck this, fuck this place, fuck all of it. Why the hell am I here? Honestly, as I lie on this shitty couch in my cousin’s shitty apartment which has doubled as my bed for the last six years, I can’t help but wonder how the fuck I got here. Growing up, I pictured my life so much differently than this.
My mom and dad wanted me to go to college. She didn’t want me to get involved with my uncle, we fought over it so many times, she knew he was dangerous. But Stix convinced me that family members take care of each other, and this was going to benefit all of us, monetarily as well as offering safety for everyone. Too bad at the time, I didn’t realize that my family needed protection because of what Stix does. God I am dumb. And now I am on the bottom of the totem pole of an organization that is less that legal, running errands.
I suppose I could advance and do more if I wanted to, but I don’t. I would like to get out of this if possible, but I don’t think that I can. This is one of those deals where you are in for life.
Fucking family… real family should want better for you. Family should want you to become the best version of yourself, not living on the couch on what might as well be a crack den. The day I agreed to “help them out” is the day I unwittingly signed my life away. I was so young, I didn’t realize that I had a choice, and now I’m stuck. This is all I have now. I don’t even have my parents to go back to now. Not after I went against their wishes and ran off with my uncle and cousins. He made this lifestyle look glamourous and exciting, not so mention threatened the safety of my family so I thought I had to go. My parents don’t really talk to me anymore because of that.
“Yo, Teddy Boy,” Stix growls at me from his bedroom where he has a bunch of drugs, most of which are going up his nose I’m sure of it, while sitting next to a woman who I think might be a prostitute. How am I in the middle of this? Honestly, this is pathetic. My parents taught me so much better and this is where I ended up. “Pass me a drink.”
I don’t want to move, but I also can’t deal with another one of Stix’s tantrums. The older cousin, who I used to think was so much cooler than me, is the biggest loser ever. I wish I had seen it before, but now it’s all that I can see. Stix is scum of the earth, and my uncle isn’t much better.
As I haul my ass off the couch and I head over to the fridge to get him a beer, because that’s all he ever drinks. I honestly don’t know how he’s still alive, all he does is drink and do drugs. I could have avoided all of this. If only I had listened to Chloe Smith when she begged me to stay. She knew what was best, and I ignored her. Of course, I wasn’t aware that I was leaving home forever, I assumed it was just a temporary thing, but I still should have listened to her. She wanted me to wait until my mom came home, because she knew that she would stop me. Chloe begged me to stay and work on “the new us”, she messaged me a million times afterwards, begging me to come home, and I didn’t. Because I’m an asshole.
I don’t know what happened to Chloe because I stopped communicating with her completely. I didn’t want to drag her into this mess. I’m sure if I stayed, I would have gone to college, got a good job, and would have lived happily ever after with her. We might even be married and have our own family by now, living a normal life together, not living separate lives as strangers.