Page 96 of Total Exposure

So I wait. I make coffee. I eat the almost-spoiled raspberries left in the fridge, and I wait.

But he never says anything. No notes materialize. I even get up and walk around the house, conveniently disappearing from the kitchen to give him a chance to come out of whatever secret room he’s hiding in and leave me the final chapter of our story.

I even get dressed, go outside, and swing on that stupid family swing for a while, hoping that when I go back inside, our book, the story of us, will be there waiting for me. And next to it a new note. An apology. Sorry for making you wait.

But it isn’t. He didn’t write that. There is no apology. There is no book.

It’s like… he’s forsaken me.

Why?

I have an urge to write. Every morning I’ve been writing back to him. I have the poem nearly composed in my head. It’s murky, and sad, and reveals secrets that I was, for once, ready to reveal.

I was going to give him the last piece of my puzzle too.

But he never shows. And I can’t write the poem anywhere else but in our book. That’s the only place it belongs. The only place it could possibly exist. So it sits up there in my head like a black cloud hanging over me. Like a threat. Like a menace. Like this is an omen of something very, very bad.

And unlike the last time he made me angry, I have no urge to break things. It’s like I don’t have the energy I once did. Or the… anger. Or whatever it was that was fueling my darkness.

I am ready to step into the light but the light is gone.

The stupid clock is gonging off the hours and when it gongs off eleven tones in a row, I make a decision.

Fuck it.

I’m going to meet Jordan.

I get dressed. Put on my scarf, my gloves, my hat, my coat, my sunglasses. I call for the cab and I wait outside for it to come.

I actually wait outside.

And when it does come, I get in and find it to be stifling hot because stupid Denver is having one of those sunny days in the dead of winter, like it’s prone to do. Maybe, if I don’t play my show and get over this bullshit, I will move somewhere colder. Somewhere the sun refuses to shine?

I fantasize about this. Someplace far. Like Alaska. Or Iceland. Someplace where the darkness is welcome.

But then I recall some lesson from childhood. That the sun never sets in the summer in those places. And then I feel like the whole fucking world is against me for some reason.

Why?

I have to take off my gloves and my scarf because I’m sweating underneath all this garb. And even though I really want to take my hat off, I don’t. And not because I want to stay covered up, but because my hair is a mess. I didn’t really pay much attention to it when I was leaving and… and today I will talk to Jordan and I don’t want him to see me as the woman with the fucked-up hair!

I pay the stupid cab driver using the stupid machine on the back of the headrest, and get out of the cab, slamming the door behind me, and stand there, looking up at the stupid coffee house and the people outside, and I wonder, maybe for the first time, why a guy as beautiful as Jordan comes to this stupid place every goddamned day?

Are there not better places? Less busy places? I mean, is the goddamned club sandwich so goddamned good here that these people can’t find somewhere else to eat one?

I push my way inside, probably rudely, but I don’t care. I’ve been coming here all week with a goal in mind and every day I’ve been denied. And this day, of all days, is not a day for denial.

I can’t take it. I really can’t.

So I stand there, combing the place, looking for Jordan, and who do I see?

Fucking Mike.

But I take a second look at fucking Mike. Because fucking Mike is already sitting with someone. A woman who is not me, obviously. And fucking Mike glances at me, then averts his eyes.

Averts his eyes.

Like I am someone not worthy of being seen.