Rude Boss

Quintessa: Sorry to bother you this late on a Saturday night, but something has been bothering me and I need an answer. Did you leave a jacket on my car Friday afternoon?

I consider not responding at all. I’m not much in the mood to talk, even to her. And what’s it to her whether I left the jacket. If you need a jacket, you need a jacket. I text back:

Essex: You shouldn’t be contacting me after work hours. You shouldn’t be contacting me at all.

Quintessa: You shouldn’t be leaving gifts on my car.

Essex: I wouldn’t have if you could afford one yourself.

Quintessa: I didn’t ask you to buy me a jacket.

Essex: You’re welcome.

Quintessa: I don’t want it. I’ll leave it on your car tomorrow.

Essex: And if you do, you and I are going to have a problem.

Quintessa: What kind of problem???

Essex: The kind you don’t want.

I shake my head and put my phone away. Part of my persona is being a man who doesn’t need anything from anyone. But I need something from her and that scares me. That’s one of the reasons why my heart is doing a tug-of-war with Quintessa. I want her, but I don’t want her to know how much I want her. And then there’s the fact that she hurt me all those years ago. Men do not handle or process pain as well as people think they do. We suppress a lot of it, which ends up creating other problems that shift the person we hope to become into someone we no longer recognize.