“I mean, really, most people don’t have to deal with that shit, Emily. It’s not right.”
She has a point. I’ve considered it before but thought I was pacifying myself.
When most boyfriends leave you, they fall off the face of the earth. They crawl back under whatever rock they emerged from. They don’t go on to become successful F1 drivers achieving their dream all over NBC, Sky Sports, and ESPN every week.
First-loves change us all, I suppose.
They leave a mark on your heart and soul that fundamentally alters your chemistry. An indelible blotch etched deep inside that can’t be scrubbed away no matter how much Sailor Jerry you scour it with.
Maybe you only get one true love. Perhaps you give so much of your heart away that there is simply nothing left for anyone else.
Would Makenna be haunted by Doug to this day if she had to see him on the cover of magazines every time she went to the grocery store?
If I’d ever felt the same about anyone else, I might get over it. Maybe I need to try harder.
Logically speaking, Cole is just another bundle of DNA walking around the planet. A stupidly handsome bundle of DNA, but flesh and bone just like everyone else. There is no science supporting the concept of soulmates or eternal love.
I’ve looked.
Magic and fairytales do not exist. Certainly not in jolly old England, like I once hoped.
I wish my heart understood logic and reason, but it continues to beat to its own drum without regard for cold, calculating science. It’s filled with the all-consuming consequences of giving itself over, entirely, to someone who was supposed to protect and cherish it.
“I’m being an idiot,” I mumble.
“You’re the smartest person I know, shut the hell up,” Makenna fires back, which makes me giggle more.
I need to stop drinking, I’m not a giggling kind of girl.
“I still want your curly hair,” I smile and touch the screen like I’m petting her. Shit, I’m drunk.
“There’s enough of it to go around, I’ll ship you a pound or two,” Makenna’s chin drops as she burps. “You know what? Fuck him, Emily.”
“Fuck him? Like you think I should fuck him again? That sounds nice,” I close my eyes and imagine fucking Cole again.
Those few months we had together after my first time, spending every day together culminating in being naked in his arms, they’re never too far out of my mind. He took the last little piece of me and, from that day forward and ever since, Cole Ballentine has owned every cell in my body.
Stolen them.
That was right before he accepted the offer to the Imperium Junior Driver Program and moved to Europe, leaving me all alone in swamp-ass-Florida.
Why I can’t turn the feelings off, I will never understand. My brain and my heart have long since given up being friends. I know love isn’t a choice, but you’d think self-preservation would kick in after enough time, and it would heal.
Sometimes I think it has, but then I’ll see a photo of him, or a video, or a race. I’ll swear I see him in a crowd, a flash of those electric blue eyes. Then I’m right back in high school with my best friend, my first and only love, with the man who still owns me.
He just doesn’t want me.
I mean, that’s what I have to believe because he left me with no other option that will satisfy my brain. After he became my everything, Cole Ballentine ghosted me. He made me promises, he made plans for us even after he left. He held my heart in his hands and swore me his forever. And then he just… stopped.
He stopped returning calls, texts, emails. There was no reason, no explanation given. There was no big fight or breakup. There was only a cold, abrupt, silent end to my world and I was left alone to fill in the gaps of why.
WHY WHY WHY
&n
bsp; Three little letters can cause so much destruction. And when asked of humans, of love, I get no answers.
Maybe I seek answers to WHY in science now instead. I get answers then, indisputable facts of WHY something is the way it is.