Page 5 of Leah

She was moving on right that very minute, and I…

Ultimately, I needed to do the same.

Two

Leah

2013

24 years old

“I’m leaving you.”

Standing behind the couch, I could do nothing but blink at him. I sort of figured that out like ten minutes ago, but whatever.

I watched Brett race around the room, packing away his X-Box and video games. I think I was sadder to watch those go than him.

“Why are you dumping my bestie again?” Mel asked from the couch, feasting on her popcorn as the commercials aired in the background. “I think I need to hear it out of your mouth because I’m a little stumped.”

Brett paused, letting out a hard puff of air from his lungs. He looked at us with exasperation, like we were too thick to understand. Pointing at me, he said to her, “I know who she’s been with! That rockstar all over the magazines! I can’t compete with that. I didn’t sign up for this dishonesty! I saw him at the checkout today, and I swear to God, he was mocking me. Telling me I’m nothing but second best!”

Mel glanced at me with wide eyes before she replied to him, “You saw him at the checkout?”

He stiffened for a moment and straightened his posture. Looking away, he muttered under his breath, “Yeah, I saw him.”

“The real him?”

“Well, it was the magazine, but he was staring right at me, so yeah, it was real in a different sense. It was symbolic, Mel.”

When Mel looked back at me, I just shrugged. Honestly, I really didn’t care. I’d toughened it out with the guy for two months, which was a feat of its own. He was funny, sure, but in that too-awkward-and-need-to-be-pitied kind of way. He had some wicked video games, which made work nights on the couch pretty fun, and the sex….

…

…

Well, the sex (if you could even call it that) was possibly the most important thing I wouldnotmiss about Brett the fucking Dentist. I still could not shake the memory of my first encounter with him in bed just two weeks ago—after weeks of kissing and unsatisfying make-outs—and the way he spread my legs wider than anyone had ever spread them before, until my bones ached. I really wasn’t flexible. Maybe I’d led him to believe that I was along the way, I wasn’t sure.

He'd settled himself between them and stared at me for a solid ten seconds. It was like he was trying to stare into my soul, but he wasn’t. Not even close. And when he finally entered me, his dirty talk was dirtier in the sense it rotted my brain cells just hearing it.

“You like that? Oh, yeah, I know you like that! Pull my hair, baby. Pull my hair!”

He didn’t have hair.

“Come on, baby, do it.”

I remember scratching at his head, pretending to pull, and the weirdo actually growled like it was seriously happening.

I questioned my life choices.

I’d been so picky about who to take to bed.

I was sharing my body with another human being, and I’d fucked it up in that moment.

I still had not come back from it, and I had dodged sex with him since. I had tried so hard to break up with him, but I wound up feeling bad for him, which was so fucked-up.

I still cringed at the memory; I’d cried from the pain—I swear, my legs might have snapped off if I’d bitten my tongue and took it—and he’d stopped abruptly. The sex had been five seconds long, and five seconds too long in my books. My pain had spooked him. Jumping off me, he’d gotten dressed and left, his bald head riddled with pink scratch marks while I spent the night nursing my aches with a bag of ice between my legs.

Communication since then was stilted and awkward, and now this.

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