Someone to Love(95)

“Fuck off, Cruise.” I wheel my luggage past him at breakneck speed and open the door to the icy world waiting to comfort me with its barbed wire embrace.

Tears bubble to the surface, and I refuse to do him the honor by letting them fall.

“Kenny, wait,” he pleads.

My feet somehow find the strength to carry me over the threshold one last time. I glance back at him—his gorgeous frame stains itself like a bookmark in my mind. I never want to forget how bad falling in love can hurt—how quick the jagged granite comes up after you dive from the cliff.

“My name is Kendall,” I stammer. “But don’t worry. You won’t have to use it. I won’t be hanging around too much longer.”

I toss my shit in the car and speed the hell away from the Elton Bed and Breakfast where hearts are stolen and returned mutilated on a whim.

I drive down several miles until I come upon a sign that reads, Now leavening Carrington. Please visit us again!

Carrington was beautiful, but its lessons were harsh. It watched with eager anticipation as its prized son cut out my heart with a rusted razor for the hell of it. The world tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. I wanted the fairytale, the fantasy of it all. I wanted to be the princess that Cruise told me I was. I bought the lie, and my heart was thrown back in my face. I came to Carrington with a heart of glass, and Cruise crushed it under his heel. But today, as I leave Cruise and Carrington behind for good, I trade that heart of glass for a heart of stone.

No one will ever hurt me again.

I’ll make damn sure of it.

I pull off behind a row of Junipers and sob my eyes out for the next several hours.

My maxim comes back like a haunting refrain—love never works out in the end.

I hate that I was right.





Cruise



What the fuck just happened?

I stagger over to the door and stare at the empty space where her car sat a moment ago. A plume of dust rises over the hill from the direction she sped off in. I step back into the house, panting—my heart threatening to evict itself from my chest. I should have fought for her. I should have laid down my pride and dropped to my knees, begged her to have me—hell, pencil me in on Tuesdays if she wanted.

Who was that imposter? It couldn’t have been Kenny. Maybe she’s got a twin, and she’s punking me.

Then I see it. Neatly laid out over the sofa is the wool coat I gave her. Her boots sit on the hearth as if she were suggesting I use them for fuel.

A hard roll of nausea cycles through me. How could I have let this happen? Then again, how could I not? I’m Catastrophe Cruise, and fucking up relationships seems to be my specialty. Although it wasn’t me who cheated with Blair, and it wasn’t me who cheated with Kenny. But I would tolerate just about anything Kenny dished out just to be a part of her life. I’d take the leftovers of her love on every day that ends in Y if she let me. That’s how far I’ve drifted from the person who built his life around ideals, when high standards and morals were the order of the day.

The baseball bat I keep in the corner catches my eye. I speed over and choke the shit out of it like my life depended on it—hell, my sanity. I blow out every fucking window in this psychotic love shack of ours—shatter them to millions of pieces just like Kenny shattered my heart.





True to her word, Kenny doesn’t show for class that week or the following week after that. She doesn’t return my calls, and her mother manages to give me to the cold shoulder each time I’ve bumped into her.

I’ve been holing up in the bowels of the bed and breakfast, going over the books, as if I weren’t depressed enough already. Just as I suspected, Mom has let a few bills go unpaid, and now the creditors are breathing down our necks. I assured her I’d take over. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable. The only question is, how am I going to handle school and running a fulltime business.

On Wednesday there’s a note on my desk, and for a moment my adrenaline skyrockets.

Mandatory meeting. My office 3:30. Dr. Barney.

For sure not the note I was hoping for. I was looking forward to something a little more erotic in nature with a big fat heart and a giant K gracing the bottom of the page. I’ve been fantasizing all week how she’d sneak into my room—that this had all been some great ploy to initiate the world’s greatest make-up sex.

At 3:30 on the button, I stroll into Dr. Barney’s office and try to forget about the constant ache gnawing at me ever since Kenny rolled her suitcase out of my life. I press out a manufactured smile and nod into the tired looking man who holds my fellowship in his hands. I must be early because the rest of the seats are suspiciously empty. Either that or this is a private pow-wow. He probably wants to tell me how proud he is of me, handling Bradshaw’s class with one hand tied behind my scholastic back.