Page 17 of Got to be You

“Don’t be upset,” Anna declares loudly and angrily. “Get mad at him. He’s a piece of shit. Honestly, I want to get my hands around his neck and choke the life out of him for doing that.”

I can’t reach the anger deep inside me. Instead, I’m just deflated, like a balloon has been let down. The more I look at the picture,the worse I feel. I really have lost him. I don’t think I ever could have prepared myself for this. It crushes me so deeply, I don’t know how there is any of me left.

“I have to go to class now.” Anna takes her phone back, which is probably for the best. The picture is seared into my brain anyway, not going anywhere, so I don’t need to torture myself further. “Do you need to go anywhere? I don’t like to leave you here. Especially with all of this going on.”

“I’m fine,” I reply flatly. “I’m just going to stay here today, get my head in order for when he comes back.”

“Is he back today?” Anna’s teeth might as well be gritted together in temper. “I want to see him.”

“Supposedly, but I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything when it comes to him.”

She leans down and kisses me on the top of my head. “I’m here for you, no matter what.”

Anna has to go then. She needs to leave because she has places to be, and maybe I do as well, but I just can’t care about anything. I’m broken, utterly shattered, destroyed from the inside out. And I know, IknowI’ve been telling myself that this is goodbye, that I can’t get too involved with my feelings even if I’m in love, but the reality is too much. Knowing that he’s gone for good hurts me from the inside out.

“Fuck, what am I going to do?” I howl into my pillow. “What do I do now? It’s over.”

I don’t want to be here any longer, not for another second. I just want to vanish, to get out of here before Jax comes back. I don’twant to face a talk with him, to discuss the kiss and how he didn’t mean to, it was an accident, he couldn’t resist, and how we can’t make it work anyway because he’s going to be in LA and I’ll be here finishing college. Iknowall of that. I don’t need to listen to it. The idea of hearing it makes my chest squeeze tight anyway. I can hardly breathe under the pressure of it. I need an escape.

I grab my cell phone as anxiety starts to grip onto me to call someone I haven’t spoken to in far too long and who I now realize that I’ve missed far too much. My real roommate from my actual college, not someone who exists in this little bubble that wasn’t supposed to be a life-changing period, just a little change in my course. God, she isn’t going to believe it when I tell her the drama…

“Lilly!” she answers happily, as if no time has passed at all, which allows my other life to flood my mind. My simple, straightforward life which I now ache for more than anything in the world. I would love to be back there, living for my course and not worrying about my love life at all. “How are you, girl?”

Immediately, embarrassingly, I burst into tears. “Not good, Katie. Not good at all. I’ve made a right mess of things. I don’t even know where to start, never mind what to do.”

“Oh, God, really?” She sounds shocked. “But I’ve never known you to make a mess of anything. What’s happened to you during your sister college semester? Have you changed completely?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I wipe a few tears away before I continue. “I fell in love, Katie, and obviously, it can’t last. But I don’t know how to… how to leave him, and also, he kissed someone else. Amber.”

“Okay, whoa,” Katie interjects. “I think you’re going to have to tell me the whole story from the beginning so I can understand what the hell has gone on here. Otherwise, I won’t be able to help you.”

I suck in a deep breath and start from the beginning, giving my friend all the gory details that have taken me to this point, leaving nothing unsaid, and my great friend, Katie, listens to every word. She doesn’t interrupt at all even though she must be totally shocked because this isn’t like me at all, and I do feel a bit like a weight has lifted from my shoulders now that I’ve shared my issues with someone who cares.

“Wow, that’s insane,” she declares when I eventually get to the end of my tale. “I can’t believe that you got yourself in this mess. But you do know if you want to escape, there is always somewhere to go.”

“There is?” I ask helplessly, almost as if I’m in jail and the walls are closing in on me.

“Yes! Of course there is. Come back here. Come back home. Finish your semester here. Take the class online. Whatever you need to do. The semester is close to being over, anyway.”

“Yeah, I could, couldn’t I?” It’s a way out, a way to avoid that conversation, a way to have my heart healed away from all of this, all the memories. “I could just come back, forget all of this.”

“Exactly!” Katie exclaims excitedly. “I’ve missed you, anyway. All I want to do is hang out with you again. Come back, and I’ll make sure that everything is okay in the end.”

I agree, but I know it won’t be easy. I’m going to have to force myself out of my bed and away from my sadness to get all of this sorted for me to return back to my own campus, but beingat home will be worth it. I slide my hand around the back of my neck and unhook the necklace that Jax gave to me on our date because the memory will be too painful to hold onto when I leave, and I snap into action. It’s time to go.

“What’s going on?” I feel sorry for Anna as she walks into the room to see me with all of my bags surrounding me. “Are you leaving? You look like you’re abandoning me, and that will make me cry.”

“I’m sorry,” I rasp back. “But I have to. I can’t stick around here and break up with Jax. It’s too much.”

“But we’re going to kick his ass. You and me. I want to fight him with you.”

“I know, and I appreciate that.” I laugh gratefully. “But I don’t want that. I’m not angry at Jax… well, maybe a little bit, but I’m the one who said from the start that it was never going to be anything serious, and I just shouldn’t have fallen for him. This is my fault. Now, I want to walk away with my head held high.” I can see that she doesn’t understand, but it’s what I have to do. “I just want this to be done.”

“But I’ll miss you so much.” Poor Anna looks like she’s about to cry. “I’ve loved having you here as a roommate. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you now. I can’t cope.”

“I’ll keep in touch with you.” I hug Anna tight, knowing that she’s the only thing that I absolutely need to take with me when I leavethis place. “I promise that I won’t let you go. Just no telling me about Jax.”

“You don’t want to know about when I kick his ass?” She chuckles through the sadness.

---