Mismatched

Ch. 15

It had been two unbelievably long days since I'd last seen Riley, under the streetlights outside of the restaurant.

I wasn't handling the space well. I had texted Riley that same night, apologizing again and letting him know that whenever he was ready to talk, I'd be here. I'd gotten no answer. So the next day, I texted again in the evening saying that I was thinking about him and I hoped he had a good day.

It was truly sad and pathetic, but I didn't know what else to do.

I'd already gone through all the stages – my guilt turned to hurt, my hurt turned to sadness, and my sadness turned to anger. Not at Riley, of course. No, anger towards Bea for not being able to handle rejection.

Lesley tried her best. She showed up yesterday to the store with a cupcake and a coffee, attempting to talk me down from the insane ledge I was on. She reminded me that it was because of all my lies that this happened, and there was no one to blame except myself.

But when I laid alone at night in the dark, it was the venomous tone of Bea's voice as she'd spoken to us that kept me up. And maybe Lesley was right, maybe I was looking for someone else to blame so I didn't have to accept what I'd done. But Lesley should have known me well enough to know that nothing could stop me.

So, I rapped loudly on Bea's door at a quarter to eight in the morning, with no coffee in sight. Just because I knew the morning wakeup would annoy her more than anything else.

The door swung open, and she looked very different from the last time I had seen her. She was a mess, with last night's makeup smudged on her face, and she kind of smelled. She'd clearly done some midweek drinking.

"What could you possibly want?" Bea snapped, clearly unimpressed, which made me smile in return.

"I want to know where the hell you get off."

"Where I get off?" Bea scoffed, rolling her eyes and taking a step back from the door in disbelief.

"I was fine, living my life peacefully. Then you knock on my door, make a show about taking me on this date, walk away, and I'm left wondering what the hell happened," Bea started, speaking so loud and so fast that I couldn't have gotten a word in if I'd wanted to.

"Then I see you on the street with that guy, and it all makes sense. You're gay. Fair enough. But what I can't figure out is why you came down here and knocked on my door in the first place?" Bea rattled off, like she was mapping it all out while speaking.

I stood there, momentarily perplexed.

"I-I... I'm not gay," is what I eventually came up with.

"Seriously? Is that why you came down here? I'm not going to tell anyone, Nate, if that's what you're concerned about. But you've lived here long enough to know that if you're going around town holding hands with another man, people are already talking. It just hasn't made it back to whoever you're worried about yet. But it will, it always does," she said, her voice going to a sad, faraway place at the end, almost like she was reliving her own story.

"You're... not going to tell anyone?" I clarified, and Bea looked like she wanted to punch me in the face, and I was 90% sure she might.

"Is that all you heard?"

A moment of silence passed between us, and she seemed to be contemplating whether to just slam the door and give up on the conversation altogether.

"I guess I also owe you an apology," I said sheepishly.

I did unintentionally use her to try to get over my feelings for Riley. For the record, I did think she was smoking hot and on any normal day she would have been my dream girl. But something about Riley had me captivated in a way that made everyone else feel so irrelevant.