12. Maddie #2
In the bedroom, I fall on the bed and cry. The sheets and blankets Kevin and I picked out together feel awful, but they’re the ones I have. At least they shelter me a little while I cry into the pillow.
It almost feels like the world got together and decided to put me in my place. Let’s be honest, it’s what I deserve. For so long, I wanted to believe that the world was on my side. It seemed too sad to think that we live in a universe that doesn’t care what happens to us.
It’s true, though. The universe doesn’t care what happens to us. It doesn’t care about anything, and no amount of finding the silver lining will change that.
My phone buzzes three more times, and finally I push it off the bed. It lands on the floor, muffled by the carpet. What does anybody want from me? They don’t want to sit on the other end of the phone and listen to me cry about the mistakes I’ve made in my life, and they don’t want to come over.
I don’t want Graham to see me like this.
I don’t want anybody to see me like this.
I don’t even want to see myself like this.
Every time I think I’ve cried all of the feelings out, more tears come.
It starts to seem like one long pattern.
Everything went wrong before Kevin. It went wrong when I got cocky about my abilities in life.
It went wrong when I thought I could come back from any breakup, any setback.
It went wrong when I just kept pushing ahead into the next thing instead of taking stock of how I was causing all the trouble myself.
I don’t know how long it’s been when someone knocks at the door.
Shit. I didn’t lock it. I closed it, but I didn’t lock it, and now anybody could walk in.
Only I know that it’s not going to be anybody. It’s going to be Graham, coming to see me at my most pathetic. My stomach turns. He could fix all of this, but I’m done asking to be bailed out. I’m not going to sit up on the edge of the bed and tell him he can fuck me in exchange for fixing…
I don’t know. All of it. Kenzie’s situation, my situation, my aunt, the apartment.
And that might mean I can’t enjoy him anymore. So it’s not just all this bad news in one day, it’s him, too.
He keeps knocking, and I don’t say anything. My throat feels too rough to answer him. My body feels too heavy to get up and answer the door, much less push the covers off, so I just lie there.
He’s going to leave, eventually. That’s what always happens in the end. People want you for one thing, and the second you don’t give them exactly that, they’re gone.
I don’t even blame him.
I’m the one who pushed for all this. I’m the one who thought it would be okay.
I keep waiting for Graham to leave and for the knocking to stop. Instead, after a while, I hear the door to my apartment open, then close.
It’s quiet for a while longer, and then soft footsteps come toward the bedroom. He’s passing the sitting area where we fucked the first time. I wonder if he thinks about it.
I hope I can stop thinking about it.
The bedroom door creaks a little on its hinges. Even the door is a sign that things aren’t going how they should. Doors in an apartment like this shouldn’t creak, which means I should have called maintenance to make sure the hinges were oiled or whatever, and I haven’t done that.
It’s a tiny failure, barely even a mistake, but it makes more tears leak out of my eyes. I try to wipe them away.
It doesn’t do anything.
Graham steps into the bedroom and hovers near the door, his mouth a thin line. His shoulders are tense. He’s obviously uncomfortable, and I didn’t expect anything else. He didn’t sign up for me crying in my bed because I got fired. He signed up for hot sex in exchange for the rent.
I sniffle into my pillow and try to get myself under control.
It doesn’t work.
“Madelyn...” Graham says carefully. “Are you okay?”
There are lots of things I want to say to him, like, please get into the bed with me.
Like, could you explain how everything keeps going to shit when I try so hard.
Like, what is it about me that makes it so impossible to keep anything good?
Why aren’t I just better? Why can’t I just go along with what life wants from me?
“ No.”
There’s an even longer silence. I wait for him to leave without saying anything else, but Graham just stands there, watching.
“Should I come back another time?” he asks.
The answer is no. He shouldn’t come back. He should go on with his life and forget the game we’ve been playing. Both of us should, because games like this only end in heartache, even if they’re not the final cause of it.
But my heart hurts for how much I want to be touching him. If I were the strong woman I pretend to be, I could tell him the real truth—that it was a mistake to get involved with each other and the best thing we can do now is walk away gracefully.
I don’t feel very strong at the moment. I feel weaker than I’ve ever felt, and I just can’t give him up.
Not right now. What the hell am I supposed to do? Tell him I got fired, I failed my cousin, and my aunt is sick? No. No, I cannot and will not burden him with that when I don’t even deserve him.
“Yes.” I tell him. “Red.” I tell him because I don’t know what else to say. I just want him to know I’m not okay.
Graham takes a breath, and I can’t tell if it’s a disappointed noise or a relieved one. His hands come out of his pockets, and then he puts them back in.
“I’ll leave you alone, then.”
I nod, mostly into the pillow. My bedroom door opens again, and then it shuts.
My heart breaks.
It’s more painful than being fired, more painful than my conversation with Kenzie, more painful than anything else. I can’t breathe because it hurts too much.
I was hoping he would come to me. I was hoping he would see what a wreck I was and just make this feeling go away.
I was hoping he’d fallen in love with me, because I’ve fallen for him, even if I haven’t been willing to admit it.
Graham is the only person I want comfort from right now, and I sent him away, and he just went .
That’s the proof I needed and it hurts. I need to leave. I should have left when Kevin did and made my way somewhere else. I could’ve figured it out; I know that now. But leaving felt like giving up.
Well, sometimes it’s better to give up. That’s obviously a lesson I’ve learned too late. Somehow, I thought that if I had the apartment, I’d at least have something to prove myself, but I don’t.
I have nothing.
I turn over and sob into the pillow until I fall asleep.