“You’re done? Just like that?”
“Okay. Have it your way. I’ll say it. I didn’t want to be hurtful if I could help it. I don’t love you, Michelle. It just stopped, went away, whatever.” I gave a purposeful shrug, just to be even more of an asshole.
“Why? Drew, tell me why?” she had said. There were tears on her face. She was reaching for me. She didn’t want to believe it. It had killed me to say it once. I couldn’t do it again, couldn’t stand there and explain anything to her. There was nothing to explain, no words that could make any of this make sense to her. So I did the only shitty thing left that I could do to her.
I left her.
I turned around and walked away from her, stuffed my hands in my pockets and left her there crying by herself in the middle of the street.
Worst day of my life, and I’d relived it ten thousand times since then. I was stuck in what I call the Purgatory Loop. Growing up, my mom said sinners went to purgatory to think about their sins and truly repent. So when I went into the spiral of dwelling on what I did to Michelle, when I sat and remembered our times together and how good it was, I considered that part of my time in purgatory. I was paying for my sins with the kind of futile suffering only a man who wrecked his own life could experience. The phone rang, and that jostled me out of the descent.
“Hey,” I said, answering the call from my brother.
“Hey yourself. How’s my baby brother?” Greg asked.
“Long day. How bout yourself?”
“Must not be too long, you sound like you’re home and not in the shop.”
“I started early. I took off at seven, grabbed some takeout and here I am.”
“What’d you get? Chinese? You know I miss Mama Yi’s chop suey.”
“They don’t have Chinese food in Chicago?” I joked.
“They have amazing food here. But nothing quite like Mama Yi’s.”
“No, no Mama Yi’s tonight. I just ran by the bar and grabbed a burger.”
“Let me guess. You inhaled it on the drive home?” he joked.
“No. I wasn’t that hungry by the time I got it.”
“Are you sick? Cause you used to eat two of those and some onion rings in one sitting. It was scary.”
“I dunno,” I said dully, “I wanted it and then as I was walking out…” I trailed off.
“What?”
“I ran into Chel. Ran literally right into her in the doorway.”
“Shit. So what happened? Don’t leave me hanging,” Greg said.
“Nothing much. She crashed into my chest, I made sure she didn’t fall down. It had been a minute since I saw her so I asked how the library was, that kind of thing.”
“Did she say lonely because she misses you?” he teased.
“Of course not. She’d never say anything like that. We’ve been over for a long time, and we live in the same town. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
“I call bullshit. You’re talking to the guy who found you with your head over the toilet puking because you dumped your girlfriend when you still loved her. I saw what you looked like that summer, Drew. Don’t try and convince me there’s nothing more to it. Did you at least ask if she’s seeing anybody?”
“No. It was bad enough running into her. She still uses that fucking almond shampoo. Now I know that and I shouldn’t know that. I’m gonna think about it. What am I supposed to do? Walk up to her and go, ‘hey, Chel, remember how much fun we had before I crushed your heart? Well that was all a lie, P.S. I never got over you. Want to go out for a beer?’”
“Offer her the beer first,” Greg advised with a chuckle. “No, it should go more like, ‘I know it’s been a long time, I’d love to get together and catch up. Is tomorrow good?’”
“You make that sound so simple. Like there isn’t a better-than-sixty percent chance of her trying to stab me for the way I treated her.”
“She’s a librarian. Librarians don’t stab people.”
“She knits. Those big-ass needles. That makes me nervous,” I said.
“You afraid she’ll impale you through the heart with a foot-long knitting needle?” he laughed.
“It feels like she already did.”
“She didn’t do shit to you, baby brother. I love you and I’m in your corner, but you’re the one that fucked that up. You and her old man, may he rot in hell.”
“Amen to that,” I said. “I stay out of that neighborhood, but the last time I drove by their old house, I wanted to spit on it.”
“He doesn’t have that kind of power. He never did,” Greg said. “For my part, I don’t see why you can’t try and work it out with her. It’s been a long time. You’re still hung up on her.”