“So… yeah, I’m gonna go chase her now.”
Ryan laughed. “Yeah, okay, you do that. Please let me know how this dramatic saga ends, I’ve got to know.”
I laughed back. “Yeah, not sure what my life has turned into, but pretty sure it belongs on television. I’ll keep you posted.”
I shut the front door behind me, took a deep breath, and forced myself to walk more slowly downstairs this time. I needed a breather, needed a moment to think things through. I’d just experienced the biggest rollercoaster of emotions. But I was sure of one thing…
I wanted to know how this would end, too.
18
Emily
I wiped the tears from my face before I went inside. At least, to the best of my ability. My eyes were puffy, and it was very obvious that I’d been crying, which I didn’t want Abby to know.
If she saw me, there’d be no avoiding it. I decided I’d just walk in and hope she was in her room or something rather than the living room.
To my dismay, she wasn’t. She was still sitting on the couch eating pizza. I tried to walk straight to my room, but she wasn’t having it.
“Oh my god, Em, what happened?” she asked, easily reading my face.
“Nothing. I’ve got to go,” I told her as I started walking to my room.
“Emily!” she called out after me, but I didn’t answer, nor did I give her time to say anything else. I shut my bedroom door and started to cry some more.
She didn’t come in after me, either. I was grateful for it. I wasn’t surprised, though. She was good at reading people. She knew the right time to stay close and the right time to stay away. Now was the time to stay away, at least for a bit, and let me be sad on my own.
Although sad didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling at the moment. Devastated was more like it. As well as guilty, ashamed, unable to cope with my actions… really, the vast expanse of negative emotions that existed in the human psyche all could have been used to describe me right now.
I just felt awful.
But I couldn’t blame Kaitlyn, not really. What had she done? Moved on? She’d told me full well if I was breaking up with her she wasn’t going to be able to wait for me. I knew that going in. And I’d still left her. That hardly seemed like her fault.
The real question was, what was wrong with me? What was my problem that I constantly needed to get in my own way? Why did I have to destroy my own happiness? For someone who strove for perfection, I was pretty self-destructive.
I wanted to collapse onto my bed and wallow in everything that was making me upset, but I didn’t do that. I refused. I was going to handle this pain the same way I’d been handling all of my pain so far, by studying. Admittedly, the pain I felt now was much worse than anything I’d felt in the past few weeks. I supposed that was because, in the past few weeks, I’d avoided thinking about things. Maybe in a small way, I’d even convinced myself there was a chance that things could still work out with us.
Now, I knew they never would.
I buried myself in a textbook, even though I was completely caught up on all my chapters and had been reading ahead these past few weeks. For this textbook in particular, I only had a few more chapters left. I might as well finish them. Nothing else was going to distract me.
Unfortunately, compared to the last few weeks, reading did little to help me. I still felt all my pain, all my misery, welling up inside my chest. It was like all the pain was physically building up inside me and threatening to burst out. I understood why it was called heartbreak now… it felt like my heart really had broken.
When I’d gotten a few pages into this chapter, I heard the doorbell ring. I decided not to get up and get it, since I knew that Abby was already in the living room. And I had no energy to get up, nor did I want some stranger to see my puffy, streaky face.
I was mildly curious who it could be, though. The only people that ever came to our door were Abby’s friends and people delivering food. Obviously she already had a pizza, so it wasn’t food. And when her friends were dropping by, she usually told me. Although, I guessed she’d expected I’d be out of the house going to talk to Kaitlyn, so it made some sense that she wouldn’t mention it.
I heard the mumbling of voices and then footsteps coming down the hall. Okay, so it probably was one of her friends, I thought to myself. Then, unexpectedly, my door opened, and Abby stood before me.
“Uh, hey, someone is here to see you…”
What the hell? Who could possibly be here to see me? I didn’t have any friends, didn’t have anyone I knew who knew where I lived… there was nobody.
“I don’t want to see anyone,” I told her.
“Not even Kaitlyn?” she asked.
My head shot up to her. “What?’