Page 13 of Wreckage of Us
His question takes me by surprise. How did he figure that out?
“Hey, Becca,” Oliver’s voice calls to me from behind Dylan. I lift myself on the tip of my toes to look over his shoulder. Yep, Oliver is out there, waving at me with a cautious smile on his face. “Sorry,” he mouths at me, making me roll my eyes at him.
“Let me get this straight,” I look back to Dylan.
He is on a warpath, staring me down like I did the worst thing in the world.
“You came into my home,” I point behind me toward the living room where the proverbial blood bath took place. “You started spouting all kinds of shit at me,” I continue, my voice getting angrier by the minute. “Accused me of being awhore,” I press a finger to my chest and lean forward as I enunciate the insults he threw at me only minutes ago. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you anything. You just assumed everything…”
“Becca…” he sighs and tries to interrupt me.
“No!” I put a finger in his face, although, it’s kind of hard getting up there to where his stupid head is. “I told you I loved you,” I remind him with a shaky voice. “And you accused me of sleeping around while being with you. Which,” I start laughing like a lunatic, “we were never together. You made sure of that, right?”
I sound completely crazy at the moment, and I hate the soft look that takes over his face when looking at me just now.
“Where do you even get the nerve,” I’m pretty sure I got literal spit flying out of my mouth when I start screaming my head off at him, “to come back and demand…Demand,” I repeat and laugh some more, “that I explained myself to you? You are a piece of work, dude!”
I am so angry with him right now, if I had a frying pan in my hand, the cast iron one, my mom’s favorite, I would deck him for sure.
“Becca.”
Dylan’s tone of voice is the complete opposite of mine, like he’s trying to calm down a rabid dog. Well, today is not the day. I will be the bitch from hell, the one he never knew I was. Hell, I didn’t know I was like that either. Learn something new every day, I suppose.
“No.” I put a hand up to stop him. “I don’t care what you have to say. I’ve cried all my tears over you. For months now.Months!” I start screaming again. “No more!” I slash a hand through the air to make my point.
“Please calm down,” he tries to touch me, but I pull my shoulder back. If he does that, I know I’ll give into whatever head games he’s got in store for me. And I just can’t do that anymore. The stakes are much higher now.
“Please leave,” I ask him in a cool tone. “Don’t ever come back. Just stay out of my life, for good this time.”
His stunned face is the last thing I see before I finally grab the door and slam it closed. It feels so satisfying. And also nerve wrecking. As soon as it’s all done, the rush of adrenaline I had is gone. My legs are shaking and my heart is beating out of my chest.
“Oh my god,” I murmur to myself while pressing a hand to my mouth and the other to my still flat belly.
I make it to the couch in the living room and drop in the same spot I was occupying earlier before Dylan came back. I rest my head back and try taking deep breaths. It’s all good. Everything is good. I repeat the words over and over in my head until I start believing them too.
With both hands now resting on my pregnant belly, I try to think logically about this entire situation. What am I going to do if Dylan decides that he does want to be involved in my baby’s life? I think I should get a lawyer, right? Or a… a… a…. I have no idea what else I could get, and now I’m stuttering even in my own head, what the hell!
My cell phone dings from next to me, reminding me that I had a message from before Dylan came back with his shit. My heart threatens to beat out of my chest when I see that I have a message from the last sender I blocked. How?
I will personally deliver your head to him… in a box… hahaha
That’s followed by a picture of an actor who is crying over a box.
My hands start shaking so badly, I drop the phone a couple of times. Bile rises in the back of my throat, and I know I’m about to throw up.
I rush to the small guest bathroom downstairs where I crash onto the floor in front of the toilet bowl and puke my guts out. It’s never ending, and even after I got nothing left in me to expel, I continue to gag, feeling like my entire body is convulsing from it.
“Holy crap,” I hear a voice from somewhere behind me. “Hold on, I’ll be right back,” she calls to me, then seems to go away. I’m not even sure she was real.
A few more minutes pass. I stopped gagging, but I have zero motivation to get off the bathroom floor. I turn sideways and lean against the wall, just breathing and also wishing I didn’t have this bad taste in my mouth.
“Okay, I’m back,” Jessica slides in front of the door to the bathroom, seemingly from out of nowhere.
“Jess,” I start, then remember she doesn’t like that, so I finish her name, “…ica.” Yep, it sounds just as stupid as when it was only in my head. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you guys fighting,” she drops to her hunches in front of me, a small plastic bag in her hands. “I came to check on you.”
“Oh,” I am confused and don’t know what to do with that. Miss Judy had been our only neighbor before Jessica moved in, and while she helped us a lot after our parents died, she never just barged in like this to check on us.
