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Seeing only one cup turned upside down next to the coffee maker, that was what did it. That was what drove it home.
It started as a tickle in my nose, like a bug squirming up toward my brain. My eyes watered, but I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was drowning in this wave of loss. I curled up on the bare mattress and bawled.
I’d never sleep in this bed with him again, I’d never curl up against him on the couch to binge watch some series, but even as I sobbed, I realized we’d probably never do those things again together anyway. The us that did those things was dead and gone.
I splayed my hand over the mattress. He’d slept here, but I thought of all the other women who’d been on this bed before me. I wasn’t special. If he’d been notching his bedpost to count his numbers, this thing would have been on toothpicks they’d have been whittled down so far.
What the hell did it even matter?
I was disgusted with myself for feeling all this pain. I mourned him like he was dead. He would still be here if I wanted him to be, and I didn’t.
I decided to give myself another hour. An hour to lay here, an hour to miss him, an hour to mourn all that could have been. Then I was done with it. I managed a few shaky breaths and set the alarm on my phone.
No more tears fell, but I let myself miss him. I remembered how his arms felt around me, the way he smelled, the way he touched me, and then it went sour again. So I turned my thoughts to what it was like before we’d become more to each other. It occurred to me again that all of his cock of the walk attitude was just posturing, just like me. That made me hurt for him. If I could’ve taken that away from him, I would have. If I’d seen it sooner, I’d have known that our demons were too similar to ever play together nicely.
As I lay there, I found myself missing Brant, too. I wanted to call him and tell him about my decision to sell the house. I wanted to talk to him about Chubbalicious. I wanted to talk to him about the quality of life of flea larvae in Guam—I just wanted to hear his voice.
My fingers closed around my phone, and he’d indicated I could call him, but if he really was ready to talk to me, wouldn’t he have sent a text, called, smoke signals, something?
I thought about how hard he’d pursued me, and how I’d rushed into sex with him too. If I hadn’t slept with either of them, I wondered where I’d be. Certainly not where I was, and I’d have never known what it was like to have two insanely hot men who wanted me. If I hadn’t experienced proof of it with all of my senses for myself, I never would have believed it.
When the alarm went off, I swiped to turn it off with a shaking finger. I knew that it wouldn’t be so easy to turn off missing either of them, and I didn’t suppose I had to. I wasn’t in charge of that, but I’d allowed myself the grief. At least for Kieran, so I dried my eyes and grabbed my laptop again.
Going through the pictures that Ryan had sent me were as sharp a blade as any, but this was for Chubbalicious. I was going all in, like I should have from day one. Before I could change my mind, before I could pick myself apart with tweezers and my mother’s mocking voice, I chose the picture of me leaned across Austin, Brant, and Kieran as the landing page.
Above our heads it read: I am Chubbalicous.
I plugged the other pictures into the corresponding item pages and descriptions. I worked until everything was done and ready. All that was left was to hit publish and Chubbalicious would sink or swim, just like me. In a few days, I’d fling both of us out into the ether and see where we landed.
The knot in my belly had unraveled itself and now it was more excitement than fear.
I found I wanted to tell Brant about this as well. We’d planned to celebrate when I was done. A nighttime picnic with champagne and stars. Not being with him wouldn’t stop me from celebrating, but he’d just come to be such a big part of my life in such a short time.
Being around him wasn’t like being around Kieran. Whereas Kieran was intensity and fire, Brant was more like a stone. Not that he didn’t feel things, I knew he felt them deeply, but he was steadier, solid.
I closed the laptop and wandered around the house, trying not to overanalyze everything.
But my mistakes and failures surrounded me. Kieran’s empty room was an accusation. So were the holes drilled into the side of the fridge from when my mother had put a lock on the appliance to keep me from eating when she said I wasn’t allowed. I’d never gotten the cabinet fixed from the last time her last boyfriend had hit her. She’d grabbed onto it and pulled the door loose as she’d fallen.
She’d hit her head and never woke up.
Was it any wonder I’d never thought I could do or be anything while I still lived here? The place was full of bad energy.
