After Ever Happy (After 4)

“What . . . what are you . . .” He fumbles the words. His eyes follow down my arm and somehow grow even larger as he takes in the sight of Mark’s hand over mine. Pure rage fills Hardin’s face, and I pull my hand away.

“You two know each other?” my party host asks.

I don’t respond. Rather, my eyes narrow in on the woman whose legs are still wrapped around Hardin’s waist. He still hasn’t made any move to remove her from him. She’s wearing only panties and a T-shirt. A plain black T-shirt.

Hardin is wearing his black sweatshirt, but I don’t see the familiar peek of a faded T-shirt collar underneath. This random girl is oblivious of the tension, focused only on the joint she just pulled from Hardin’s mouth. She even smiles at me, a clueless, obviously intoxicated smile.

I have been rendered silent. Stunned to even imagine that I know this person now before me. I don’t think I could speak even if I wanted to. I know Hardin is in a dark place right now, but seeing him like this, high and drunk and with another woman, is too much for me. It’s too fucking much, and all I can think of doing is getting as far away as possible.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Mark laughs and pulls the bottle of liquor from Hardin’s hand.

Hardin still hasn’t spoken either. He’s just staring at me like I’m a ghost, like I’m an already-forgotten memory that he never expected to have to revisit.

I turn on my heel and push through anyone who gets in my path on my way out of hell. When I make it down one flight of stairs, I lean against the wall and slide down it, out of breath. My ears are ringing and the weight of the last five minutes is crashing down on me—I don’t know how I will make it out of this building.

I listen in vain for the sound of boots slamming against the steel stairs, and each silent minute cuts deeper than the last. He didn’t even come after me. He let me see him that way and didn’t bother to chase after me with an explanation.

I don’t have any more tears to give him, not today; but it turns out that crying without tears is much more painful than with, and impossible to control. After all this, all the fights, all the laughs, all the time spent together, this is how he chooses to end it? This is how he tosses me to the side? He has so little respect for me that he’s getting high and letting that other woman touch him and wear his clothing after doing God knows what with her?

I can’t even allow myself to indulge that thought—it will cripple me. I know what I saw, but knowing and accepting are two different things.

I am good at making excuses for his behavior. I have mastered that talent in the long months of our relationship, and I have been loyal to those excuses to a fault. But now there is no excuse. Even the pain he feels from the betrayal of his mother and Christian doesn’t give him a pass to hurt me this way. I have done nothing to him to warrant what he’s doing right now. My only mistake was trying to be there for him and putting up with his displaced anger for far too long.

The humiliation and pain is transforming into anger the longer I sit in this empty staircase. It’s a heavy, thick, overbearing fucking anger—and I’m done making excuses for him. I’m done letting him do this shit and letting it go with just a simple apology and promise to change.

No. Hell no.

I’m not going out without a fight. I refuse to walk away and let him think it’s okay to treat people this way. He obviously has no regard for himself, or for me right now, and as the angry thoughts fill my head, I can’t stop my feet from pounding back up those shitty stairs and back into that hellhole of an apartment.

Pushing open the door so that it slams into someone, I make my way back to the kitchen. My anger surges further when I find Hardin still in the same exact spot, the exact same whore still attached to his back.

“No one, man. She’s just some random . . .” he’s saying to Mark.

I can barely see straight I’m so angry. Before he can register me, I grab the bottle of vodka from Hardin’s hand and throw it against the wall. It shatters, and the room falls silent. I feel detached from my body; I’m watching an angry, outrageous version of myself losing her mind, and I can’t stop her.

“What the fuck, Bambi?” Mark shouts.

I turn to him. “My name is Tessa!” I yell.

Hardin’s eyes close, and I watch, waiting for him to speak up, to say anything.

“Well, Tessa. You didn’t have to break the vodka!” Mark sarcastically replies. He’s too high to even care about the mess I made; apparently his only issue is the liquor spilt.

“I learned how to smash bottles against walls from the best.” I glare at Hardin.

“You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend now,” the skank latched onto Hardin says.

I look back and forth between Mark and the woman. There is an obvious resemblance . . . and I’ve read that letter too many damn times to not know who she is.

“Leave it to Scott to bring a crazy-ass American chick into my flat, throwing bottles and shit,” Mark says, clearly amused.

“Don’t,” Hardin says, stepping toward us.

I give him my best poker face. My chest is rising and falling with deep, panicked breaths, but my face is a mask, a front devoid of any emotion. Just like his.

“Who is this chick?” Mark asks Hardin as if I were not standing there.

Hardin dismisses me again by saying, “I already told you,” not even having the balls to look at me while degrading me in front of a room full of people.

But I’ve had enough. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I scream. “You think you can slum it here and smoke pot all day long to forget about your problems?”