Wrecking Ball (Hard to Love 1)

Inadvertently, I catch a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror and gasp. My hair looks like it’s been dry humped by a squirrel while my face looks like it’s undergone a chemical peel. Real nice. I make a half-assed attempt to tame my hair, my fingers snagging on multiple knots, as I gather strength for what I’m about to say.

“We can’t do this anymore, Calvin. You can’t text, or call. I can’t see you. It’s too hard, I’m too weak, and I love you too damn much.”

A sideways glance reveals his stony countenance directed straight ahead. He’s working hard to measure his breathing. His Adam’s apple rises and falls, as if he’s fighting to keep something locked down. Still, he remains silent. I open the door and get out. I don’t say goodbye, and I don’t look back. Because that, most of all, is too damn hard.

The next day, I open the front door to find Mercedes looking like the harbinger of doom.

“Mercedes? How are you? Is something wrong?” Not the slightest lift of the corners of her mouth, nor an explanation. I’m starting to worry. “Is Cal okay?” I hold the door open in a gesture to welcome her in.

“You need to come home,” she announces in that thick Spanish accent of hers.

Lost, I look around for clues. “Uhhh, I am home.”

“Where you belong,” she clarifies.

I usher her in and she follows me without objection. “Mercedes––it’s complicated.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, a headache threatening.

“You are a woman, he is a man. It is not that complicated.”

Oh, jeez.

Angelina walks into the foyer and I introduce the two women. That was my first mistake. Two hours and three cups of coffee later, the two women are still commiserating about their faithless daughters and their inexplicable love lives. It turns out that Mercedes daughter, Stella is a very successful trader and has absolutely no wish to ever get married. Angelina trumps her easily with stories of my criminally minded deceased spouse. Listening to these two go on and on, I’m pretty sure I’ve hit rock bottom. By the time I’m ushering Mercedes back out, she’s resigned to the fact that I’m not budging.

“Men say these things. They don’t know what they want until you make them want it,” she adds, in a last ditch effort.

I’m shaking my head before I even speak. “No. No, I won’t do that to him. I won’t be another person that forces something on him. He’s too good a person. He’ll give me what I want at his expense.”

Now that I hear it said out loud, it dawns on me that we’re exactly alike. Holy crap, how did I miss this?

“How is he?”

“Not good. He’s not eating well. He barely speaks. He’s depressed, Camilla. How do you feel?”

“Depressed. Not eating well. Barely speaking.”

She grips my chin and kisses me on the cheek, leaving me standing on the front steps of my parents’ house with a heavy heart.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Radio silence lasts all of two days. Part of me is thrilled to hear the sound of the Monday Night Football theme I’ve assigned to him. The rest of me hates it. The man is a world champion, for heaven’s sake. Where I’m a champion of…nothing, other than myself. Given time, it’s safe to assume who would eventually win this battle of wills. That’s why when he texted that he was on his way over to my parents’ house because he needed to “talk”, I did the only thing I could, I packed my bags and took Amber up on her offer to stay at her place until I could find another job. That was ten days ago. Ten days of text and messages I don’t dare look at because I know I’ll cave.

“My boobs hurt.” I say this in a very small voice. Cue ten years later, I finally get a response.

“That’s nice,” my consiglieri absently murmurs. On her nights off from the club, Amber is always on the couch watching her favorite shows.

“Amber…Ambs?” Crickets. “Paging Amber Isabelle Jones. Yo there, Miss Jones.”

Her blonde head turns towards me. “It’s Scandal! I can’t have this convo during Scandal.”

“I said––” and I say this very slowly and meaningfully. “That my boobies hurt. They also happen to be as large as an inflatable raft––two inflatable rafts to be precise.”

“Stop bragging,” she bites out, shooting me a look of feigned contempt. “You’re due for your period.”

“I was due two weeks ago.”

That’s when she peels her eyes off of the television and slowly, ever so slowly––like in the The Exorcist when Linda Blair’s head does a 360––well Amber’s head does a ninety degree turn to face me.

“Store. We need to go to the store immediately.”

For two weeks, I’ve been talking myself out of believing it. The excuses have run the gamut from stress, to uterine cancer, to early menopause. And yet the P word never once came up. Lies, all lies I told myself because the truth could very well be more frightening than early menopause, though clearly not more so than uterine cancer. The look on Amber’s face is like a slap upside the head.