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Amsterdam, January 11, 2022
Andries
Nothing makesme feel more inadequate than not being able to succeed at being a student. All I have to do is sit here and absorb everything that is thrown at me. Being an English major is my dream, and here it’s becoming a reality, and yet, I’m too busy daydreaming about Roxanne. That, and being hungover… on a fucking Tuesday!
I’m falling apart and no one seems to see it but me. Once some of this work is due, I’m sure my prof will also notice, but I’m sure she has better things to do than check up on a failing student who can’t keep his shit together. I’d even planned to give today my all, to make up for the lack of attention I’ve been paying to lectures, but I’m even more useless today than I was yesterday. So much had happened in such a short span of time that I’m still reeling from it.
Dinner with Tatiana had set me on a good path. A reconciliation with Lili, good food, and Tati’s bubbly personality had been a balm on my savaged soul, and I had gone homethinking that I might have the first good night of sleep in a long time.
Then, walking out of the shadows like a wraith, was the one person who I had been trying to keep from my thoughts. Roxanne looked incredible in almost head to toe leather, but where her outward appearance might have served as armor, she was clearly heartbroken and miserable inside. In the harsh overhead lights of my building's lobby, I could see so clearly how much she missed me. It echoed how much I missed her too.
I wanted to throw it all away for her. Every hard-won second of standing my ground, all of the attempts to build up my walls and move on, I just wanted to burn it all down for her, just to hold her in my arms. Just once. But I just fucking couldn’t.
Because as beautiful as she was, as much as I was pulled toward her, she was still running a fucking brothel, and it turned my stomach. Had she come to me last night, telling me she’d quit and give up sex work for good, I’d have folded and brought her upstairs. Mended fences, made up for lost time… I’d have done it all if she had done that one thing for me.
Of course, she has no intention of quitting. Roxanne might have wanted me back badly enough to nearly make a fool of herself, but she’s too stubborn to give up on her… line of work. So I left her there in the lobby, went upstairs, and drank myself sick.
Which is why I’m sitting in class, where my head’s pounding, vision’s blurry, and I’m entirely unable to concentrate. If none of my classmates are kind enough to share notes with me, then this day will be a wash. I’ll get nothing from it besides a mark for attending class. To make things worse, I can’t even go home once I’m done here. Dan secured a realtor in the middle of the night somehow, to show me some properties as soon as class lets out. I’m long, long hours away from being able to sleep this hangover off, unfortunately.
Mercifully, the lecture dismisses early, and besides a few sideways glances from other people in the class, I make it out unscathed. I’m sure I look like death, but there are plenty of students that pull all-nighters to study or complete projects, so my appearance shouldn’t attract too much attention.
Dan picks me up, his vintage car bright red and ostentatious as it pulls into the campus. My head pounds as I climb in, the engine rattling my teeth.
“You look like shit,” Dan says.
“Thanks. You too.”
He rattles off some information about the apartments we’re going to go see, and he wasn’t lying when he said they weren’t going to live up to my current place. My parents must have paid an exorbitant amount to get me into my current penthouse, and they’d no doubt be disappointed to see me leaving it empty for something less luxurious.
Dan finishes up with, “Or, you know, you could suck it up and just stay at your place.”
“Not an option,” I chip back.
“Man, you and Roxanne weren’t even together that long. People don’t break their leases and move because of a breakup. Give it a few weeks before you make any major decisions. Trust me.”
I know he’s right on some level. Probably all levels, if I’m being honest with myself, but if it means I’m mentally weak, so be it. I can’t live like this anymore, with her ghost around every corner and lying next to me at night.
Dan understands what my silence means, and he tilts his head back, groaning. “You’re a stubborn asshole, you know that?”
Stubborn, just like Roxie. No wonder we made such a good pairing. “So I’ve been told.”
Dan drums his fingers on the steering wheel as he fights through traffic, the thrumming of his car making me want to scream from the way it vibrates my skull. It’s a perfect day, as perfect as January can be, with the sun bright and buttery above us, glinting off the river as we pass. Without asking, I open Dan’s glove box and paw through it until I find an old, tattered paper packet of migraine medicine, the kind of packets you can buy out of machines in gas station bathrooms. I tear the paper and swallow the pills dry, their taste bitter on my tongue. Forcing them down is almost impossible, but I manage it. Now there is nothing to do but hope they work.
“Dude, those pills were absolutely expired.”
“Death by hangover or expired pills, what does it matter? Either way I’m dead,” I lament.
“I hope you used this natural sulkiness of yours to write some amazing poetry. Otherwise, it’s just wasted.”
That’s another thing that is pissing me off. Everyone's little jokes about how sad poets write their best work had never been funny, but I had kind of expected there to be some truth in the statement, but no matter how many times I sat down to write, nothing would come out. Nothing except things about Roxanne… bleeding heart narratives about how intensely I love and hate her… and no one wants to read shit like that.
The last option is what I’m doing right now: starting over, completely fresh. Once I leave my apartment and move out, I’ll be able to pretend that Roxanne never existed. Except when I dream of her face, which I’m afraid I might do for the rest of my life.
It isn’t just her face, either. Besides the dreams where I just see her, hold her, and touch her skin, the most common is the memory of our first time together playing on repeat. Giving Roxanne my virginity was something I know I should regret, now that the truth has come out, but I can’t bring myself tofeel that way. My entire adult life, I had sworn to never sleep with anyone unless we were in love, and at that time, I loved Roxanne. I barely knew her, but the obsessive need to make her mine burned like a beacon inside me. I don’t think I will ever love anyone like that ever again, which means, despite all that had happened, she was still the right choice.
The only thing that upset me about losing my virginity with her is that now it isn’t something I can share with my eventual wife. I could never have expected to love someone so desperately, but then never marry her. It fucked with my plans for the future, but who cares? At this point in my life, I don’t believe I’ll ever find love again. In fact, I hope I don’t. It’s a terrible thing, to care for someone so much that they could tear you apart, and make you want to die.
