Page 59 of When Stars Collide
“For listening to me, for giving me the most interesting night I’ve had in quite some time.”
“If it’s one thing I’m good at, it’s bringing the interesting.”
*****
My feet throbbed something fierce by the time I arrived back at my apartment, so much so that when I reached the elevator, I decided my toes had suffered enough torture for the day and removed my heels. When I opened my purse to put them inside, I saw my cell phone, its screen sternly facing me as if to ask, “Did you forget something?”
“Peter! Oh, shit!”
I grabbed my phone with one hand, stuffing my shoes as far as they would fit inside my purse with the other. My finger pressed the button on the side of the phone to activate its screen. Five missed calls. One from Elle and four from Peter.
The elevator door opened, and I hobbled out into our hallway, my heel burning from a blister. Somehow, my phone’s volume had been muted, causing me to miss my calls. I just hoped I hadn’t worried Peter. It was the first time I failed to call him when I said I would. If the tables had been turned, he probably would have had double the amount of missed calls on his phone, all from me, and all increasingly more frantic. Restraint was not my middle name.
Even before I put my key in the door, voices from inside our apartment alerted me to the fact that Jo’s night was still going strong. For a brief second, I thought about turning back around and returning Peter’s call in the hallway; but as sore as my feet were and as tired as I was from the night before, the desire to rest on my bed outweighed witnessing whatever atrocities were going on behind the door in front of me.
“Party’s over. Time to put your clothes back on,” I announced when I walked through the door, my hand covering my eyes.
All commotion inside ceased as soon as everyone heard me, enough to where I felt comfortable peeking between my fingers. Jo stood in the middle of the living room, a bright pink feather boa around her neck and an equally as pink cowboy hat on her head. On her left, the redhead with the nose ring—Courtney, I believe—had her arms wrapped around Jo’s waist, a blue boa around her neck. On Jo’s right, not to be excluded, the tube top girl stood with her own purple feather boa dangling from her hand as though it had been in mid-spin before I entered the apartment.
At least they’re fully clothed.
I gawked at the three amigos, remaining uncharacteristically silent, while Jo looked me up and down, taking in my bare feet, disheveled hair, smeared makeup, and wrinkled dress that had ridden up to my mid-thigh. The moment of silent assessment between us dissolved thereafter into a mutual nod and an unspoken consent that we would each be keeping our own secrets for now.
The moment I closed my bedroom door, I threw my purse on the floor and called Peter. He must have had his phone nearby because he picked up on the first ring.
“Mena?”
“Hey, I’m so sorry. To say last night was crazy would be an understatement. I meant to call you. But between Phineas rescuing me from some thug at the club, to having a little too much to drink and my phone being on mute, I guess you could say a whole constellation of events kept that from happening.”
“Wait … Phineas went out with you?”
“No, he just happened to be at the same club we were at, and it’s a good thing he was there because some creep was getting a little handsy with me and my backup, being Jo, was a tad occupied. After that incident, I was a bit shaken, so Phineas—”
“Look, Mena,” Peter interrupted me. There was something foreign present in his voice, an unsteadiness to his words. He was holding something back. Tears? Was that it?
“Peter, is something wrong? I remember you had something important to tell me last night, and—”
“Mena,” he said my name both sternly and with that same tremble in his voice that was beginning to make me feel uneasy. “Please. Just let me finish. Because if I don’t finish now, I don’t think I’m going to be able to, and I have to.”
Finding myself just as nauseated as I had been right before I let the evergreen have it the night before, I slumped down on my bed. In my heart, I knew what he was going to say. I felt it in my bones, down to the very marrow. My brain, however, was fighting it, looking for a logical conclusion to what could be causing such a change in his demeanor. It was a defense mechanism I’d put into place for myself, especially when the pain it was shielding me from was going to be particularly severe.
“Mena, I’ve put a lot of thought into … into us. And,” he sighed from frustration or, maybe, an attempt to keep his composure. “I-I can’t do this anymore. We live in different worlds, and it’s become increasingly clearer that our worlds are never going to intersect.”
“But they have intersected, they’re intersecting now. We’ve been intersecting.” My voice, as hard as I tried to fight against it, was mimicking the tremble in his.
“We’re both strong people with strong convictions, and in another time and another place, we could work together brilliantly, but right now, it’s just not possible. I’ve known it in the back of my mind for a little while. My heart just wouldn’t let me see it.”
“This is it? Just like that?”
“Y-Yeah.” The unsteadiness in his vocal cords gave way, allowing the tears in his words to be heard as clearly as they could be seen falling down his cheeks.
“This is what you want, then?” I struggled to sound firm on shaky ground.
He was silent for so long that I was beginning to feel an iota of hope, but that was promptly shattered when he simply answered, “Yes.”
“Okay,” I said, fighting back tears. “Peter?”
“Yeah?”
