Dear Heart, I Hate You

“Who?”

“Most people do, actually.”

She grinned as she waved the bartender over and tapped the top of her glass. “I know. I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment.”

Like me, Tami was motivated to succeed and build a name for herself in her career. It was why she kept men at arm’s length, but she’d never admitted it to me before.

I nodded. “I know you’re not.”

“You and I are really similar when it comes to guys and work,” she said, echoing my thoughts. “The biggest difference is that I don’t deny myself sex the way that you do.”

“Because I can actually go months without having it and not feel like I’m going to die.”

Her jaw dropped open as if I’d said the most ridiculous thing in the world. “How that happens, I’ll never understand.”

As the bartender returned with two fresh drinks before placing them in front of us, I stared at her and her pink eyes, knowing that tonight she’d eventually find a guy to go home with, and I’d go home alone. But I’d be okay with that because I was finally okay.

Again.

Chickenshit

Cal

Dropping Jules had been a chickenshit move, and I knew it. But that still hadn’t stopped me from doing it. I stopped calling, stopped texting, and did my damnedest to remove her from my brain and heart completely.

But it hadn’t worked.

Nothing worked.

Cutting her out of my life hadn’t stopped her from existing in it; I was already too attached to her. She’d wormed her way into my heart, and no matter how much I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, it had. I felt her there.

Each day that I ignored her, the place where she lived in me ached more. The pain hadn’t lessened with her absence—it had only grown.

When Jules had told me that day about handing off her client to her coworker, my chest had ached for her. The last thing I’d wanted was for her to sacrifice anything work-related because of me. But she had done it anyway, willingly, and I figured she’d eventually hate me for it. I didn’t want to be someone she ended up hating, so I made a horribly stupid decision and stuck by it.

And now she probably hated me anyway. She had to, by this point.

Shit, even I hated me.

How the hell I’d gone this long without talking to her was beyond me, but as each day passed, it seemed more and more impossible to pick up the phone and fix the mess I’d created. What kind of an apology would be enough? How could I ever make her understand why I’d done what I had?

When you knew something had an expiration date, what did you do? If you were me, you apparently ran away like a coward and tried not to speak to the love of your life ever again. Like a goddamned idiot.

How could she not see what I was doing? How could she not see that I was driven by fear and insecurity?

Jules was smart. Eventually she would figure it out.

• • •

Days turned into weeks, and eventually a month passed. If I thought it would get easier to be away from her, I was dead wrong.

Jules was apparently a hard habit to break, and it hit me that I didn’t want to. I’d spent so much time trying to fight what was happening between us, trying to talk myself out of having feelings for her. What I should have been doing was figuring out how to fit her into my life instead of forcing her out of it. I should have been thankful I’d found someone so amazing, not freaking out because of that fact.

I had been so stupid, so incredibly selfish and immature, and I didn’t know how to fix it. How could I repair what I had so willingly broken? Lucas had given me a stern talking-to on more than one occasion, and I was convinced that if he had access to Jules’s phone number, he would have called her and ended this fiasco weeks ago. The weaker parts of me had wanted to let him, but I couldn’t do it.

And now we sat in a bar, drowning my sorrows as it all crashed down around me.

“You gonna finish off that bottle?” Lucas asked as he pointed to the Blanton’s sitting across the bar.