You Can't Break Her

Chapter fifteen: part three | March

March 2005
Bayhollow, Ontario

After five months of seeing Joseph, I grew tired of the seclusion we had embraced. I had friends and family to hang out with and a life to live that didn't include being cooped up forever, and I couldn't handle his jealousy over my friends.

I went out instead of going over to his house one day. As we were walking the field near our bush party pit, Joseph flew by Annie, Shayla, and I on his dirt bike. He made a fast turn and slid in front of us. He got off and walked closer like that's what he meant to do. I'm fairly certain it wasn't.

"What the hell, Ama? You didn't call me or anything," he said as he took off his helmet and put it under his arm. "I would have come out to chill with you guys."

"No, you would have kept me shut away at your house. I can't do that anymore, I need something else." I started walking away.

He jogged closer and grabbed my arm to turn me toward him. "What are you saying? Are you breaking up with me." His eyes filled with tears.

I looked up and focused on what had to be said. "I need something else. You're a great guy, but I'm not the girl for you. We want different things, I want to go out and party on weekends and I can't do that when we're together." I pulled my arm from his hand.

He stretched out his arm, staggering forward to regain a hold. "You can't do this. It's just a rough patch. It's only been five months. How can you know it's not right already?"

I put my hand on his and looked up into his eyes. "I just know, I need space, and you have to respect that. Please don't be upset, I'm not trying to hurt you. Maybe after some time, things will change, but right now, I can't do this." I put my thumb between my forearm and his palm, lifting his weighted limb to move away from him.

He pulled back from me and kicked a pile of sand as he turned and walked to his dirt bike. He lifted it off the ground and stepped one leg over.

"So that's it?" he asked as he stared at his handle bars and put on his helmet.

"Yes. I'm sorry, please don't be mad." I begged in fear of what he might do next.

Shayla had informed me that when he was upset, he did some stupid things. After his previous girlfriend broke up with him, he disappeared for a year and turned into an alcoholic. We started dating a month after he recovered from the original heartbreak. I was prepared for an outburst or a physical altercation, but it looked like a simple and clean break, as heartless as it sounds.

He started the bike and mumbled something under the engines rumbling, then took off into the field, driving so fast I feared if he crashed, it would be the end of him.

We were left in a cloud of dust that forced us to flee the field. We moved into the wooded trail to Shaylas house and stopped to take a breath.

"Did that just happen?" Annie asked while brushing brown sand off her grey shirt. "It was only five months. What did he expect?"

Shayla giggled. "He could already hear the wedding bells, Ama." She tapped my arm and leaned on Annie for support when her laughter grew out of control and nearly knocked her over.

"I don't want to hurt him, I tried to be honest, and he didn't like that very much. It's not like I did it over the phone, I just needed it to happen in an open space with witnesses so he couldn't do anything really stupid." My mind always reverted to safety mode when I was nervous. I needed to assess the situation and be sure he had zero advantage.

"What do you think will happen this time?" Annie looked to Shayla.

"It doesn't matter. He needs to grow up." As she said that, the growl of a motorized vehicle started to approach.

A four-wheeler with Shayla's boyfriend driving and five or six of our guy friends seated around him on the racks that were originally meant for camping and fishing equipment. Most of them hopped off and complained that their butts were numb from the rattling of the bars on the bumpy ride over.

Devin drove up a few seconds later on his own four-wheeler. "What's the problem with Joseph? He almost took me out on my way here. What did you do, Ama?" He smiled, and it made me blush.

I wiped my face with both of my hands partly to hide that stupid effect he had on me but mostly to regain control over my facial expression. "I broke up with him. He's mad, I guess."

Devin winked at me. "I guess his dick wasn't big enough for you?"

I turned to face Annie and made a face and mouthed let's go.

The sound of another vehicle approached. A few seconds later, Joseph pulled up to the group and looked at me. "Ama, I need to talk to you, please. We can work this out. Please just talk to me about this." He pulled me further down the trail, and we sat at the edge of the dirt path.

"I don't think us being together is for the best right now," I bluntly proclaimed. "I understand why you're upset, but I'm not going to change my mind."

He drew in the sand and flicked a rock across the trail with a stick. "I know. I just wanted to spend some time alone with you before it was really over." The stick snapped, and he crushed the pieces in his hand. "I love you, you know that, right? When you said you loved me, I thought you meant it."

The betrayal was severe in his eyes, but for me, words like love were not attached to deeper emotions. They were just letters that we put together to please others, I loved my mother, and she whooped my ass relentlessly. I loved Joseph when I said it. In that time and place, I loved him and everything about him, but things had changed. My perspective had been swayed, and I was looking to get in trouble.