You should have known that she was going to run, I curse myself. Of course she did. She ran before and now she’s doing it again. She will always run from you, Jace, because she doesn’t want you.
But even that thought isn’t enough to put me off., I still want to find her, to explain. I need to let her know what I did was wrong, that I wanted to speak to her, that’s all. That I didn’t know what else to do. There have to be some words to make her hate me less. I don’t know what they are yet, but they might just come…
“Addie!” Finally, I spot her, slumped against the wall, what looks like tears streaming down her face. “Oh god, Addie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…” I don’t have any words; how can I make this sound okay?
“Why did you do this?” Addie asks through the sobs. “What are you getting out of it?”
“I just want to talk to you, Addie. I’ve been trying, but you never want to speak to me anymore.”
“For a reason!” She throws her hands in the air. “Because I don’t want to speak to you.”
“Yeah, I know, I… I probably should have got that by now.”
I try to laugh weakly but of course, she doesn’t join in. Why would she? It was better before; I should have just left it as it was. Worked out my other stuff first.
“I’m sorry, Addie, I didn’t mean the whole thing to turn out this way. I just thought that it would be a good way to talk. Because we haven’t talked for six long years…”
“Because you kept hurting me!” she screams. “Over and over again,”
“Huh?” I don’t know what she’s talking about. I only have happy memories of our time together. I thought that we had it good, her and I. We cared about one another, we respected each other, we loved each other fully from the depths of our souls. If anyone hurt anyone it was her. She just vanished and killed me.
“You were an asshole, Jace,” she continued yelling. “And you’ve been an asshole your whole life. You’re a heart breaker.” She shoves me away and I almost stagger right back into the road. There’s a moment of panic in her gaze which gives me a glimmer of hope that she does still care enough. “You broke my heart and then you have gone on to fuck anyone you can, breaking all of their hearts as well.”
“I don’t, I can’t…” What can I say to that? I might have broken a few hearts along the way.
“You think you’re above the rules that the rest of the world has to follow because you’re this big famous rock star, but you do still affect people. Real people.” She breaks off panting before she starts up again. “And then you pull off this shit. I don’t even know how you managed to make it happen, but suffice to say I’m not impressed.”
“I… I…”
She holds up her hands to stop me. “No, that isn’t an invite to tell me. I don’t want to know. I just want to forget that any of this happened and stop dating for the rest of my damn life. It’s clearly a terrible idea.”
She goes to walk off, but I grab her arm to keep her in place. I can’t just let her leave like this. I promised myself that I wouldn’t lose her again and I’m not going to fall at the first hurdle.
“Addie, don’t do this. Things were so good between us; we don’t need to be so tense.”
She glares at me. If looks could kill, then I would be dead by now. “Tense? Are you fucking serious?”
“Yeah, I mean, we had a good thing once and I’m not saying we need to get back to anything, I just want to…”
“Jace, just leave it.” The tears are pouring down her face now, but she’s red with anger not sadness. “Just leave me alone. You’ve managed to leave me alone for six years. Do it some more.”
“I’ve tried to talk to you…”
She rolls her eyes and snorts. “Give it up, Jace. Just leave me please. You can stand in front of me now acting all hurt, like I’m the one who’s done something wrong to you. You wrecked everything.”
“You vanished!” I blurt out, I can’t help myself. “You left me. One minute I was having the time of my life with you, the next th
ing you were gone. You’d left college and I didn’t know what had happened to you. No matter how much I tried to get a hold of you, I couldn’t do it. You cut me right off.”
“Because of what you did!” she screams. “And if you don’t know what you did wrong then it just proves that you’re a terrible person. The sort of person that I would never pick from a profile at a dating agency because I don’t want to be with someone like you. Why are you even here anyway? Why did you track me down? Just to make sure that I’m not happy? Not moving on? It can’t be because you actually want to reconnect because you’ll only be here for five minutes, then you’ll be gone for another six long years. So, why? Hmm? What’s the point? Maybe you’re a sociopath who gets kicks out of destroying the lives of others.”
“I never wanted to destroy you,” I gasp. “I didn’t ever want to upset you.”
“Then why not just go the hell away?”
Now it’s my turn for the emotion to well up. I never cry, that just isn’t me, but this is the closest that I’ve ever been in a very long time. I really might lose her here.
“I don’t know what I did, Addie,” I reply quietly. “I don’t know what I did to make you hate me.”