KINNPORSCHE: TimeTayTem Story

Chapter 8: Fuck You and The Horse You Rode in On

Time

Tae’s marriage revelation felt like death to me. My mind was unravelling at a slow pace. There was no sense of the passage of time – just the slowing of my ragged breathing as I became consumed by anger. Too emotionally spent to do more than drink. The love of my life was devoid of emotion. He was cold, so cold you would think that Tem and I were the enemies. How did we end up here?

I gripped the bottle of whiskey in my hands, eyes swivelling towards the back of my head in a distressing sense of a headache. I cleared my throat as I stood up, just to fall back down on the couch in an unbalanced attempt to walk to the bedroom.

“Drinking is not going to make the reality disappear,” Tem said next to me.

Suddenly I found his voice grating. A sense of Deja vu swept over me, as the ghosts of my past paraded around within, a sneaky reminder that Tae’s decision to marry another man was my fault.

“This is your fault,” I said. “If we hadn’t got together, I would never have lost him.”

He clenched his jaw. “Excuse me?”

“I’m an idiot for losing the best thing that ever happened in my life over good sex,” I went on despite the warning in my head to stop. I wasn’t prepared for the man I would turn into after coming back from the meeting with Tae and Payu. I was nothing but a stick of crayon in the measly hands of a child handled carelessly with a hold too tight. If one was to open me in half, they would find plastic in my lungs and concrete in my stomach. “This is karma. What the fuck else did I think would happen?”

“Watch your mouth,” Tem warned. “I know you’re hurting but that doesn’t give you the right to speak to me as you wish. I am hurting too.”

I scoffed.

“You’re a terrible person,” he threw at me.

“And you’re delusional to believe that whatever Tae feels for you is anywhere near enough to matter. He’s spent more time with that asshole he’s marrying than with you.”

There was poison inside me, and I was desperate to spit it out least it suffocated me. It did not matter where it went.

“I am delusional? You are the one who thinks that his love for you was enough for him to stay,” he spat back. “The only reason he even entertained the idea was because of me. No matter how much you try and belittle our feelings for each other, you have no chance without me.”

“I have no chance with you either,” I shouted. “He’s marrying someone else because I brought you into our life. Are you too stupid to see that?”

“You broke him before I even came into the picture. I know that because he told me so. He would have left you even if I wasn’t in this. You cannot put the blame on anyone else but yourself.”

“But he didn’t leave me, did he? He only left when he found out about you.”

A slightly hysterical bubble of laughter escaped him.

“I'm glad you're finding my misery so amusing.”

“I'm not your personal punching bag." Tem cut his eyes to me. “I am not Tae. It’s not going to be hard for me to walk out that door and never return.”

“Don't flatter yourself, you could never be half the man he was. Most importantly, no one wants you to be.”

He grabbed the back of my head and brought me closer, whispering, “Yet since he’s been gone, you’ve expected me to be his perfect little replacement. What does that say about you?”

“That I love him more than life itself and you failed at such a simple task,” I said. “I traded the man I loved hoping for a better version of him only to find out you were a poor substitute.”