Chapter 43
It’s a few days later when Mr. Korgy gives me the news, and I take it terribly. Hiccups and snot, salty tears and broken blood vessels around my eyes. I tried my best to keep this part of me contained, but the seal finally broke.
“I don’t wanna go,” he says, trying his best to comfort me from the driver’s seat as stale heat blasts onto us. “If it’s any consolation. I really don’t wanna go. We booked the tickets eight months ago. Nonrefundable…”
“How long will you be gone for?” I ask.
“Six nights,” he says. “A week.”
He goes on but I hear nothing, his words fuzzy.
Cotton in my ears. I interrupt him, crying that I was looking forward to spring break.
I thought we’d be able to spend time together.
Have some slow mornings. Long afternoons.
Maybe a dinner or two. Nothing crazy, just enough to recharge my batteries fully, or even eighty percent.
I’d take eighty. Or sixty. Or even anything in the green.
Or even yellow. Anything more than the red I’ve been running on.
But this is no recharge. No percent. Negative percent. The absence of him. Everything goes black and cold and terrible.
Mr. Korgy apologizes and says that maybe he should have told me sooner. That he didn’t want me to be stressed for any longer than I needed to be, so he waited till a few days beforehand, thinking that’s what would be best for me.
“I genuinely wish I was spending the time with you instead,” he says.
“People don’t say genuinely unless they mean something disingenuously,” I say. “It’s another one of those stupid words. Fake words. People use it to placate. To oversell.”
“I’m not placating you, Waldo. And I’m not overselling anything. I mean what I say.”
Tears streaking my cheeks, I lean over and go to unzip his pants, but he stops me, or tries to, but I keep tugging on the zipper and I reach in to try to pull his dick out so I can suck it and show him how much I need him, but he grabs my hand.
“Waldo, no,” he says. And he gives me a funny look and says he’s concerned about what all this is doing to me. And I laugh through my tears to try to be more lighthearted and I look at him while I’m laugh-crying with snot dribbling into my mouth and I say:
“Don’t be concerned. This is good. This is great. This is what I want.”