Someone to Love(94)

My heart pulsates through me like a series of grenades. It thumps through my ears until the world warps to the deafening sound of a jungle drum.

I stagger backward and trip over a root. The ground jolts, the entire universe spins on its axis as I gather what strength I have left and head back to the house.





Tears pour like rain for the first twenty minutes, as an entire cyclone of emotion rips through me. I hadn’t seen the storm on the horizon. There was no time to batten down the hatches. Cruise doesn’t love me anymore, and now he’s sorry he ever put this ring on my finger.

I’m numb inside, a shell of who I was just an hour ago. I segue into the hiccupping, slap-cheek red phase of the ugly cry, but I need to pull it together.

I sent a text to Ally. She said I could crash with her for a while. There’s no way I’m staying in the bed and breakfast with his family, even if Mom, herself, has already taken up residency there. I’ll fill her in on my trauma some other day. Besides, I don’t think I could get the words to vomit from my throat, not with this boulder of pain Cruise lodged in it.

The door jiggles, and everything in me freezes. I wipe down my face with my T-shirt and brace myself for what I have to do next.

Cruise walks in and beams a sad smile while taking off his jacket. He looks resplendent, divine. How I ever thought someone as godlike as Cruise Elton could love me, want me, just shows how hard I’ve fallen.

“Look who’s up?” If I didn’t know better I’d think he was hurt, but it seems like I’m the only one hurting in this equation. He does a double take at my suitcase, packed and ready to roll by my side. “What’s going on?” His features transform with genuine surprise, and I’m almost sold on the fact he’s aching to see me stay, but I know better.

“Just heading to Ally’s.” I shrug, running my fingers through the back of my hair as if he didn’t just cut my heart out with the knife of his tongue and unwittingly serve it to me for breakfast. “You know, just getting out of your way. Rumor has it your ex is interested in patching things up.”

“That’s what I hear.” He rides his eyes up my body, slow, suspicious.

“So, I guess that means you’re still into her.” My heart sinks—you could tie it to my neck and throw me into the sea with the millstone it’s become in such a short time.

His brows dip as if to protest the idea. “Are you into other guys, Kenny?” His strangled gaze remains unmovable.

I take a breath and hold it.

What’s happening? This is, Cruise. A few short hours ago, I would have bet my life that we were Garrison’s next power couple, and now here we are, frying each other on the skillet, searing our hatred over one another for the hell of it.

Those hurtful words I overheard this morning waft through my mind like the stench from a rotting corpse.

“Maybe I am into other guys,” I say it low. “That’s how this whole mess started, remember?”

His chest lurches as if he were going to laugh—cry, but he aborts the effort. “I guess I trained you well.”

“Guess you did.” I glance down at his grandmother’s ring still gracing my finger and gently pluck it off. He doesn’t stop me or beg me not to do it with some impassioned plea, which only solidifies what I heard him say.

This right here—this stabbing rejection is real. Cruise and all his love for me was just another illusion. I jumped into love believing it was a battleship that would withstand the test of time when all it turned out to be was a paper boat that dissolved to nothing beneath my feet.

“I suppose this was just a test,” I say, holding up the platinum band a moment before placing it on the table. “I guess I failed because a player never commits.”

Cruise closes his eyes an inordinate amount of time and takes a breath that goes on for miles. “Look, I get it. You’re not ready. You’re in college—you’re young. You want to see what’s out there.”

His lips tremble, and for a minute I think he’s going to tell me this is all some joke, that he still loves me, that I should put that ring back on right this fucking minute, but he doesn’t. Cruise is somehow trying to pass all this off on me because he’s too chicken shit to admit the fact he’s over us—that he never thought I was pretty—that I’m prone to blame everything on my screwed up fatherless childhood.

“Maybe in the future.” He takes a step forward, and I retract. “Maybe we can see where things lead.”

My heart implodes. This is it. The big kiss off. Cruise Elton has the balls to look me straight in the eye and offer me “someday” while hacking down any fantasy I might have had about forever.