Paint the Town

one way ticket

The cat meowed at the pencil, launching off of the couch with his back legs and attacking it with its paw. He swatted at it until it rolled under the couch completely.

"Carson," Lizzie said, clearing her throat to steady her voice and raise it in pitch. She punctuated his name with a smile.

She couldn't help but think of what her ex-boyfriend turned television star looked like at that very moment, 3,000 miles away and 3 hours behind.

His hair just as it was on the television last week and in the apartment two months ago: short, spiky and blond. The perfect kind of blond that felt as soft as it looked when hit by light. His face devoid of the facial hair he detested and his eyebrows done to perfection.

She heard his footsteps rushed and heavy through the phone. "How are ya, Liz?" he said casually. Lizzie looked around at her cardboard fortress.

Drowning in the belongings and the exorbitant rent that you left me, thanks for asking.

She shut her laptop and slid it onto the coffee table. "I was just about to head to sleep actually," she said sweetly, "But how can I help you?"

The bouncing footsteps continued. "I just wanted to see how you were doing, is that so hard to believe?"

What she wanted to say was; Yes, it is hard to believe. After being in a relationship with you for over three years I came to understand that you rarely cared about anyone other than yourself.

Instead, she put on her smile, tricking her brain into thinking she enjoyed speaking to him at all. "Of course not, I apologize. I had uh, a long day at school."

"You're still teaching?"

"You've only been gone a month."

"Really? It feels like another life ago."

Ouch.

He continued. "I would invite you to come visit, but everything and everyone here in L.A is so fast paced and big, the city would eat you alive. You would hate it here!" he laughed. "Keller is the perfect place for a girl like you, Lizzie."

She felt her airway close up a bit, and she was sure he could feel the burning of her cheeks through the phone.

Keller is the perfect place for a girl like you.

She could ask him to elaborate on what he meant, but she knew that he'd always thought of her as small not only in stature, but in agency. Significance.

Her eyes blinked rapidly as she forced a laugh. "You're right, you're always right."

"By the way," he said, the sound of his footsteps coming to an end, "are you almost done packing up the apartment? I keep realizing how much of my stuff is still there, and everyday I'm waiting for it to appear at my door step, signed, sealed, and delivered," he laughed again, but it did little to lighten the truth in his words. "Even my mom called about her tea set— remember the one she gifted us when we first moved in? I told her she'd have it back in no time, so if that's the first thing you give her, that's fine with me, you know how my mom can be."

The lighthearted tone in his voice made Lizzie's blood boil. He was putting on a clinic on patronization, and if you asked someone as egotistical and manipulative as Carson Wilder, he would shamelessly admit that he was doing an excellent job.

"Of course," she responded, her eyes moving from box to box, trying to remember which one the tea set was at the bottom of, "Tell your mom I will have it to her in no time at all."

"And my things too?"

"There's a box with your name on it."

"You're the best, Little Red," he said, his stride continuing and his voice relaxing a bit, like it routinely did when he was getting things his way. "I'm glad we could chat, I'll talk to you soon."

Before Lizzie could get a last word out, he hung up the phone.

She lied in bed and stared at the ceiling, redrawing her and Carson's paths before they diverged.

When she thought about him she tried not to think about Carson the narcissist, who insisted that his deep pockets of money held happiness too. lnstead she thought about Carson, the boy in her freshman Biology lecture with the greenest eyes and most enchanting smile she'd ever seen. Her friend that walked her to class every morning, turned boyfriend that walked out the door before the ink on the lease could dry.