Page 31 of Picture Perfect Love

Joshua

It was obvious that the morning smiles I had grown used to were long gone by the time Abby and I woke up. At some point in the night, she had retreated to the far opposite side of the bed. I reached out to her, but she quickly threw back the covers and jumped up. I waited for her to look at me as she rushed to throw on her clothes, but she offered me nothing.

Flashes of the night plagued me. The look on her face when she came back to the table, and how that look only worsened from there. I told myself the fact she stayed the night with me at all had to be some sign of hope.

“Come back to bed,” I asked. “I’m not done making this up to you.”

“I have to work,” she groaned coldly.

“So do I, but we can spare a half hour or so… Can’t we?”

She stormed out the room and slammed the bathroom door without saying a word. I collapsed back down to the pillow and wished I had a magic button to push. I thought back to that night we met, before I had made my big mistake, and desperately wished there was some way to go back. To do it all over again… the right way this time.

The thought inspired me to leap up and meet her at the door as she emerged.

“I have an idea,” I told her, ignoring her obvious disinterest in anything I had to say. “Why don’t we take the day off?”

“I have a test and I can’t take any time off work,” she huffed.

“Come on, Abby. We need a day to sort things out. Just give me a chance to remind you of what we have. One day. That’s all I’m asking.”

“If you’re so certain you can pull it off in one day, then we can wait for the weekend when I don’t have responsibilities and obligations. You have to work too. I told you before that I wasn’t going to mess around with you if it meant shirking our jobs and acting like reckless teenagers.”

“Can’t we be reckless every once in a while?” I argued. “All work and no play…”

“I think you’ve been reckless enough for the both of us,” she fumed, pushing past me to gather up her things. “Just stop, Joshua.”

“You work too hard and you’re stressed. I agree that all these changes you’ve brought on in me have been good. But isn’t there some middle ground?”

She stopped and stared back at me, waiting.

“Move in with me,” I pleaded again. “Sure, you’d still have classes. But no more catering gigs and sore feet. Let me do that much for you.”

“You’re unbelievable,” she grumbled, shoving things into her purse.

“It’s not unbelievable. There was a time when people would get married right after they met, you know. I’m just asking you to move in, and we’ve been seeing each other for months.”

“All under false pretenses!” She snapped, flying around to face me with a venomous stare. “Who knows what would have even happened between us if you hadn’t scared Christopher off. I might not even be here right now. You can’t just manipulate people into doing what you want. You can’t do that to me.”

“I did you a favor,” I argued. “If that guy was so great, you wouldn’t have gone out with me in the first place.”

“But would I have seen you a second time? Or a third? I’ll never know. You tricked me.”

“Abby, please,” I pulled her in, begging her with my eyes to stay. “This can’t be over between us. Not like this.”

She was quiet for a moment, stewing in her own thoughts. But then she pulled away and reached for the door. “I need some time to think.”

The door slammed shut. She was gone, like sand slipping right through my fingers until I was left with nothing. It was just as much as I had before we met, but now it felt like so much less. There was a big gaping hole where she had been, and all I could do was hope she’d come back to me to fill it.

I waited patiently in the coming days, trying to give her the distance she asked for. But with every hour, I grew more hopeless. My sisters kept piling more work on me, just as I had requested. Only now it felt like I was being buried and dangerously close to drowning. I couldn’t complete a single thought in my brain without Abby seeping in.

I would send the occasional message just to remind her I was thinking of her, with no response. The work days grew longer, and I was finding it harder to see the point in proving anything to my siblings. What good was my job and my career if I had nothing worth living for outside of it?

By Friday night, I was more restless than ever. Still no word from Abby. I paced my apartment and wondered where she was, what she was doing. I resisted the temptation to use the IT department to check on any activity from her or Christopher on the Heartstring app. I was completely in the dark, and completely at the mercy of when she might come around, if she ever did.

I didn’t drink or go out or resort to any of my old coping mechanisms, which only made my phone feel that much more sad and pathetic when I checked it Saturday morning. There was nothing but a slew of invites to club openings. No response from Abby. I couldn’t take it anymore. My “thinking of you” texts didn’t feel like enough anymore.

I paced my penthouse again, this time dialing her number as I went. It rang and rang with no answer. Just how much space and distance did she need to decide our fate? My fate?

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