Maybe One Day

2: One Door Closes, Another One Opens

I turn away from him. I couldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

I did it. On June 12th, I told Christian I thought we should break up. He didn't handle it very well.

"What did you just say?" he asked me.

"I just think that if we were living eight hours away, it wouldn't work out, and that we should see other people so we can just be happy - "

"I don't make you happy? Who is it?"

"What? What are you talking about? It wouldn't work - "

"Oh don't give me that shit, Liv. If I don't make you happy, who does? There's another guy isn't there? This has nothing to do with me leaving next year." He was starting to scare me, how mad he was getting.

"Christian, no! It wouldn't work and, I'm sure I'm not the only one that has noticed we've been drifting apart lately..." I protest.

"Drifting apart? All I noticed was you getting more and more moody. I tried so hard for this relationship to work out! What do I get for it? You dumping me." He gets really close to my face as he says, "You! A junior! You're lucky I ever gave you a chance." He sneers in my face, then turns around.

I paused. "Excuse me?" I was shocked. This was not the Christian I knew. The one who, just last week, spontaneously kissed me and told me he loved me. Was that a lie? Would he really do that? We said it to each other enough times, it was starting to become a normal thing, not a meaningful thing.

"You heard me," he said after a moment.

My vision was starting to become fuzzy with the tears welling up in my eyes. "I - is that really how you feel or are you just mad?" I asked, not knowing if I wanted the answer.

He said nothing.

I tried not to let my voice waver as I said, "I think I'll go now." I calmly got up, wiped the tears from my eyes, and walked out the door.

"Olivia, wait." He called after me. I kept walking, out the door, and didn't look back. And he never ran after me. He never tried to stop me from leaving.

I was running now, running to I don't know where, just running. Eventually I made my way back to the school where my car still was, since we had walked to his house after school. I got in the car and sat there for another ten minutes, trying to calm down before driving home. When I put the key in the ignition and turned, nothing happened.

You've got to be kidding me. I thought. I tried again: nothing.

"Dammit!" I pounded my hands on the steering wheel and tried again. And again. I was hysteric at this point, slamming the steering wheel with all my might. I eventually called my mom to come pick me up, but coming from work, it would be at least half an hour.

I sat in the freshly cut grass in front of the school, and waited. Any other day, any other moment, I would have enjoyed sitting in the sun on a beautiful afternoon like this. But not today. Right now I just wanted to go home and sleep and cry.

I had my head in my hands and was curled up in a ball when I heard bike tires come to a stop.

"Hey, Liv, you okay?" I heard Eli ask. When I picked my head up and he saw I wasn't, he came to sit next to me. "What happened?"

So I told him. Starting with the C on my math final, to Christian yelling at me and our breaking up, to my freaking car not starting, to my mom coming to get me from half an hour away.

At the end of my rant, he simply said, "Come here," and pulled me into him. I leaned against him and cried, not ashamed to be emotional around him. I figured he could handle it. All the while he told stories to cheer me up. By the time my mom came, I was laughing and any sign that I had been crying were gone.