Mr. Mafia Man

Chapter XXVI: The Breakup

After leaving the Yakuza headquarters, Nicolas quickly packed me up and sent me back home. I didn't even get to say goodbye to his sweet grandma, who placed some food in my hands and handed me an index card with her telephone number on it before I was pushed out of the door. I don't know what type of stick Nicolas has up his ass, but it seems to be a pretty big one because he hasn't said a word to me since we landed back home.

Some pretty unbelievable things happened on that plane ride home and when I say unbelievable, it is not in a good way. If you can believe it, that bastard Nicolas decided that it would be a perfectly delightful time to tell me that he didn't think that we were going to work out and that he was breaking up with me. Okay, this is fine, everyone has those times where they just don't want to date someone anymore, this is perfectly understandable, but couldn't Nicolas have picked a better time to break up with me than a three-hour plane ride after I had just escaped from a hostage scenario?

The entire plane ride I kept wanting to break out in tears (even though we had only been dating for a couple of weeks?) and kept having to hide my sniffles with either a sneeze or a cough, making Nicolas and the flight attendants move further and further away from me. When we finally landed, I collected my luggage and quickly hopped back into my car to drive home. I didn't look back once.

But now that I am home, the apartment feels different. It is no longer the safe haven that I always thought it to be. A place where I could launch myself into the couch crease with a bowl of Froot Loops and zone out for several hours. I felt uncomfortable sleeping here knowing that my betrayer had slept on the other side of the apartment, even if all of Tiffany's stuff was moved out.

I knew the moment that I stepped in the place that I never wanted to come back again. The lease was up soon anyway and without Tiffany's help I could never afford it in the first place. I suppose once I get the safety deposit back I will be able to find a good small place far far away from all of this drama.

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The days had passed faster since I wasn't dealing with mafia drama all the time. I got a smaller, crappier apartment on the more questionable side of town, but it was one that I could afford without a roommate, and was the furthest away that I could get away from Nicolas' mansion.

University was in session, so I had plenty of school work to occupy my mind, and the rest of my time was spent working extra shifts at a coffee shop that I had recently gotten a job at. I need the money to pay the bills anyway, and the employee discount was pretty killer. There were a few regulars that were pretty cute, and a couple even asked me on a date, but I always refused. No one could compare to Nicolas, and I just wanted to practice living a normal life for a bit before I took on the commitment of a boyfriend.

I guess secretly, way deep down, I was hoping that Nicolas would come crawling back to me, begging me to take him back, but the longer I went without seeing him the fainter the dream grew. The turning point for me was the day I deleted and blocked his number, and then sat on the couch (still working on wearing a crease into this one, Tiffany owned the one with the good crease) eating Ben & Jerry's and watching The Princess Bride for the rest of the night.

It's funny: I got an apartment by myself specifically so I could bone random guys all the time, but the only guy who has ever stepped foot inside the apartment while I lived here was the exterminator to fix a roach infestation problem. Yeah, I know, normal problems for a normal girl huh. I bet Nicolas doesn't even know what a roach looks like over in his high and mighty mansion.

I developed a hard and fast routine: Work every day from 5:00 AM to 12:30 PM, and then go home. I would grocery shop on Wednesdays, because that's when my local grocery store would have their sales, and I've been trying to save up money to move to another city. I'm graduating in May and I can't stay here forever. I was on one of said grocery runs when I ran into someone that I never wanted to see again.