Although, it did serve a purpose. Everything that had happened on Saturday, all the pain and anguish that I’d spilt on Sunday, and the silent slap in the face he’d given to me on Monday made me realize something.
Axel had come clean about his feeling for me. He’d confessed and told the truth about how, to him, we weren’t just friends, that he’d fallen for me. I’d maintained what I’d always said—to myself and to him. We were friends, nothing more. I didn’t have a crush on him, because that would be absurd. I didn’t care for him any more than, say, Jill cared for Rebecca. I’d told myself that so many times at the beginning until I’d eventually believed it. I had somehow convinced myself, and apparently Axel as well, that I had no romantic interest in him.
But it’d all been a lie.
How cruel is the universe that I’d fall for someone, for the first time in my life, only to have it ripped away before I ever had a chance to realize my own feelings? Axel was lucky. He had me for however long, knowing how he felt about me, enjoying what little time he had with that small piece of information.
Me? I was delusional.
I’d fallen for a man, only to realize it too late.
They say everything gets better with time. Wine supposedly is better after it matures, hearts are supposed to heal with distance, and for some reason, people enjoy aged cheese. However, I find this all to be utter crap.
I’m sure my mom could get just as drunk on ten-year-old wine as she did on the cheap boxed stuff she bought. The only difference was, she’d have less money.
Distance will never heal a heart. Some doctors can’t even perform this kind of miracle. Give it time? How does that make sense? Every day that passes, you’re one day closer to the end of your life. That doesn’t seem to make anything better.
And as for aged cheese? I think it’s a gimmick like Hallmark, except it’s aimed for the rich instead of lovesick fools. Somehow, people with money have been convinced that it’s a good idea to spend more on old cheese to spread on stale crackers while mingling and discussing how wealthy they are. Give me a Ritz and a slice of Kraft Singles and I’ll tell them where to shove their checkbooks.
Am I bitter? Hell yes, I am. Every morning, I have to see the man that ripped my heart out. I have to listen to him drone on and on about dead people and our founding principles that no longer seemed to matter, all while being expected to pay attention. If his attitude was anything to go on, I’d bet time wasn’t on his side, either. He appeared just as disheveled, acted just as sad, and sounded—if at all possible—even more distraught than he had two weeks earlier on that very first day back to school after our “break up.”
It was obvious that his suffering hadn’t let up. And I knew without a doubt that mine hadn’t eased an ounce. Yet there wasn’t anything either of us could do about it. His mind had been made up. His decision practically etched in stone.
But one thing time did manage to accomplish was shutting Rebecca and Jill up. Their snide comments and muttered assumptions had finally stopped. Took them about a week, but thankfully, it had ended. The very last thing I wanted to happen was for Axel to get into trouble for befriending me in the first place. We had enough to deal with regarding that decision. He didn’t deserve more.
It’d been fifteen days since he’d last spoken to me, and those final words weren’t ones I wanted to carry around with me. He hadn’t uttered a word in my general direction since leaving me alone in his back yard. I didn’t exactly make it hard for him. When he’d ask a question in class, whether I knew the answer or not, I never raised my hand. It would’ve been pointless to, because he only ever called on people that sat on the opposite side of the room as me. I guess that made it easier not to look my way. I was fine with it, because most of the time, I kept my head down and took notes anyway, not bothering to turn my attention to the front of the class.
Every morning when I’d come in, he’d be at the chalkboard, or his podium. In fact, he never sat at his desk during class anymore. Even during a test, he remained up front. At the beginning, it killed me to be that far away from him. But over the last two weeks, I’d discovered that it was easier for me that way. Being too close to him, such as the times I had to walk past him before and after class, made it hurt worse. A dulled knife straight to my heart would’ve hurt less than smelling his cologne. And I’d probably freeze to death if I had to be in such close proximity to his icy-cold attitude for longer than two seconds each day.
But that still didn’t mean I believed in distance making things better. Did it make it easier to have the width of the room between us every morning? Yes. It saved my sanity. However, it didn’t heal anything. It didn’t succeed in making anything better. Only slightly easier. Yet there were still days when I found myself yearning to be close to him, the space between us becoming too much, too hard. My heart ached either way.
I’d never been in a real relationship before—the only one I could even remotely consider as one was Axel for those few weeks. And even then, I never considered it a real relationship until it was over. So I’d never experienced Valentine’s Day the way other people did. To me, it was no different than February thirteenth, or even the fifteenth. Just another day. But for some reason, this Valentine’s Day, I felt as if I’d missed something.
It was on a Saturday, which saved me from having to see Axel at school, but I still found myself wishing for a small glimpse of him. I’d gone out back and waited in the trees for hours, hoping Lassie would show up and haul me away to her owner again. But she never came. When I went to bed that night, I held onto the phone he’d given to me, as if it were a life preserver saving me from a rip current, praying with all my might for it to ring or beep with a message from him. With every day that passed, I lost more and more hope that he’d change his mind. But for some naïve reason, I had it in my head that if he’d reach out to me, it would be that day. The one day set aside, designated to show someone that you care.
He said he cared. So where was he?
I finally fell asleep, clutching the phone to my chest, my face buried into my wet pillow as I cried alone. The first week of his silence, I’d cried myself to sleep every night. But after that, I may have tossed and turned, stared at the shadows on my ceiling, or closed my eyes and thought back to the time before the rug had been ripped out from beneath me, but I hadn’t cried. Reverting back to the flood of tears after days of dry eyes and hardened emotions seemed like regression.
I blamed it on the fat baby that shot me in the heart with his stupid arrow.
Waking up the next morning sucked. My dad used to wake me up the day after Valentine’s Day with a cupcake when I was little. He’d come in and I’d pretend to be asleep until he started singing Happy Birthday to me. The last year he did it was for my sixth birthday. I’d accidentally dropped the cupcake and the red icing stained the carpet. Mom put an end to our birthday morning celebrations. Two years later, instead of waking up to a song, I woke up to the sounds of glass breaking. I never knew what their fight had been about, but whatever it was had my dad in a bad mood for the rest of the day. I only had three more birthdays with him after that one. And each one grew more depressing than the last.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I’d actually looked forward to my birthday this year—until Axel shattered my heart. The thought of sharing my day with someone I cared about had excited me. Which is why waking up this morning sucked even worse than normal. Had I never been ecstatic about it, or remotely looked forward to it, I wouldn’t have been so let down. And I’d worked hard over the years to lessen my expectations in order to protect myself from being disappointed.