Why Me?

Chapter Twenty

I Think I'm Headed for a Breakdown

I was beginning to think that I'd finally gotten rid of him. His name hadn't popped up anywhere outside my mind in a little over a week, and his face was just beginning to lose it's clarity in my memory. But he was the sky, and thus he was never going to fall.

He would remain over me, brilliant. It was him who lit up my phone screen once again with a message, one I had been hoping for but was dreading to receive. I knew before I even looked at it that I was going to be faced with one of two choices, and an in-between option wouldn't suffice.

Delilah would have to hear about this or I was going to go behind her back to do the thing she ordered me above all not to do, which was meet with him. This game plan was already laid out like a fork in the road for me as I flipped open my phone and clicked onto the message. It's time for you to hear about Rita.

I don't know what Delilah told you, but there's more to the story than what I'm sure she did. Come to my house at nineteen hundred to talk. Please. I probably read that message twenty times over. It was clear what he meant, but it wasn't clear how I felt.

I knew for sure I was scared, scared to have any kind of interaction with him in fear he would get into trouble. Our little blow up in the middle of that walk last week was enough to get people talking.

I heard rumours that he was obsessed with me, or that he was going crazy and blamed me for giving him a bad reputation. Above all, the one I believed myself, was that he was hanging on by a thread to his job. He was close to being fired, and it was one more slip up that would do it.

I didn't want to be another slip up, the final
one especially, for him. But at the same time, I could feel he needed to get his side of the story out there to me, and that I should hear it. And despite my anxieties...

I stood in a black jacket, the hood pulled tightly over my head, outside of Wyatt's house. I was at the beginning of the walkway, staring at it quietly, transfixed. Last time I was here was a few days before the rumour was spread.

Wyatt and I cuddled on his couch watching crime shows with his dog Byron curled up by his feet. We were so calm then, ignorant of the imminent danger to our relationship. And now... now I was scared to go in.

I was scared neighbors would see me, that maybe someone from the university would be driving by and they would recognize me. And then that would be that, and anything I had left with Wyatt would be history. The front door opened, allowing golden light to flow out from the otherwise still house and bleed into the darkness.

A figure intercepted the delicate display, staring out at me with eyes carrying blue bags. I stared back, feeling as if I were dreaming.

Sometime in the past weeks, I've accepted myself to be lonely and closed off for the rest of my life. I accepted the constant feeling of misplacement and emptiness as my true state. But staring up at him right now, feeling a twisting warmth fluttering dimly in my stomach, I felt a glimmer of my old self. I had hope for the first time in a while, hope that maybe everything would be alright.

"Do you want to come inside?" Wyatt finally asked, his voice slightly hoarse. He cleared his throat, eyes never leaving me. I think he had the same fear I did. If we looked away maybe we'll find we've imagined this. 

I nodded silently, walking up and slipping past him inside. He led me into the sitting room after I took off my shoes, where we sat on the same couch that just a few weeks ago we were so happy on.

We looked at each other in continued silence, me studying him and his exhaustion, an exhaustion that surpassed that of which I first met him in, and him studying me in my new state of being. He cleared his throat again, shifting to face me better.