Page 68 of My So-Called Perfect Life
“Six years where I clearly never even knew you. How long were you cheating on me, Scott? Were any of those messages you sent me to inform me that you gave me chlamydia or to apologize for trying to break my door down?”
“I didn’t know I gave it to you. I made a mistake, Danielle,” he says lamely. “I told you that.”
“You didn’t bother to make sure you didn’t give it to me either, asshole. You clearly never cared about me.” I didn’t even know Ryan and I made sure to go back when I’d found out the truth. It’s called being a decent human being; which Scott is not. “Nothing you did was a mistake, Scott. It was all deliberate. Your only mistake was leaving your phone on the roof.”
He places the box on the ground and tries to step closer to me. “No, Danielle, my mistake was taking you and what we had for granted. I know I fucked up royally, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. We can fix this.”
My anger rises and surges in my chest. How can he stand here and tell me more lies? Is he this disillusioned to the entire situation?
“Scott, you need to leave.”Before I grab a butcher knife from the kitchen and pull a Lorena Bobbitt on your ass.
“Come on, Danielle. We need to talk. Please. I’ve changed. We can still make this work. I’ll do what I have to in order to prove it to you.”
His begging is pathetic. He just doesn’t get it.
“There is nothing—not a single damn thing or even a million things combined together—you can do to fix it. We. Are. Over.”
Ryan rounds the corner, entering the hallway, just as Scott says, “Not if you give me another chance.”
“Everything okay here?” Ryan asks as he reaches us.
The tension in the hall is thick, and I’m surprised Mrs. Martinson hasn’t come out yet.
“We’re fine,” Scott replies with no clue that Ryan can easily tell something is wrong. No clue that Ryan knows every detail of our story and its terrible ending.
I shake my head. “We’re not fine. You need to leave now, Scott. You made your bed. Now, go sleep in it with whoever you do on Saturday nights.”
Ryan chuckles, which draws Scott’s attention to him.
“Is there a reason you’re still here, man?”
Ryan stands taller, about four inches over Scott’s average five-foot ten height and looks down at him. “I think the better question is, why are you still here? Danielle asked you to leave.”
Scott’s eyes flicker back and forth between Ryan and me as he finally realizes that Ryan isn’t just a neighbor. “Who is this douche, Danielle?”
Ryan’s sardonic laugh echoes throughout the hall. “I’m the douche? You’re the one who got caught cheating, tried to take your mistress on your honeymoon, and needed to be hauled off by the cops. And I’m a douche?”
Scott’s eyes narrow, and he glares at me. “Are you seeing this chump? Is that why you won’t listen to me?” He steps back and looks Ryan up and down. His eyes focus on his tattered looking jeans and button-down shirt rolled up to his elbows, exposing the tattoos covering Ryan’s arm. He sneers. “Wow, I guess all your standards went out the window, huh?”
Everything raging inside me explodes as I step into Scott and shove my finger into his chest, pushing him back a step, making him almost trip over the box he placed on the floor. “You don’t get to judge me or who I go out with! Ryan is a thousand times the man you’ll never be. You messed up, not me! We are done. Over. I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t want you or your filthy dick. Go back to your girlfriends and have fun. Don’t ever come back here again. You’re not welcome. The police last time should have made that clear to you. Do I really need to get a restraining order?”
“Fuck this,” he says, stepping over the box “You aren’t worth the trouble.”
Ryan moves to him, getting dangerously close to his face. “She’s more than worth the trouble. Don’t take it out on her because you couldn’t figure that out before you fucked up the best thing that ever happened to you. Your loss is my gain. Now beat it. Don’t let me catch you here harassing my girl again.”
Scott’s hand balls into a fist, but rational thought must prevail because he turns and walks away, mumbling a bunch of shit I couldn’t care less about.
“Hi.” Ryan smiles as if nothing just happened with Scott.
“Hi,” I reply back, trying to calm my nerves. “Sorry about that.”
He reaches around me and pushes open the door to my apartment, guiding me inside and out of the hall. “No worries. Are you all right?”
I take a deep breath and exhale slowly as we head inside. “Yeah. I wasn’t expecting him. I thought it was you. That’s twice he’s gotten me like that.”
“Twice?” Ryan asks, his voice sounding slightly mad. “He’s been here, harassing you, again since the cops dragged him away?”
“No, only that time and the day after we were supposed to get married. The day I wound up in your bar. I thought he was the delivery guy that day.”
