ETHEREAL

CHAPTER 34

Damien never calls me, so when my phone displays his name, I feel momentarily confused and I just stare at it. I feel like I should pick up, because he would only call me in an emergency, and I hope that nothing bad has happened to him.

"Damien?"

"Skye... Skye, my car got stolen."

"WHAT, oh my god, are you okay?! What happened?!" I feel so frantic that I can't even get the words out.

"I'm fine.. but -"

"Where were you?! Like this happened at your house?!" I can't imagine this happening in his neighborhood, as his apartment is located in a nice, more upscale part of town, especially when compared to my dilapidated, crime-ridden area.

There is a long, awkward pause.

"Uh - yeah." He sounds sheepishly guilty.

"What, like, it happened when it was parked at your apartment? Did anyone see what happened?"

"No." He pauses. "I have to go; I have to talk to the police now."

"Oh - I hope that - " The line goes dead.

Later, he texts me:

Damien:  "they found the car near Route 1 - it's totaled like it was crashed and left there... it's weird - I had parked in Laurel, on Hennessy Bottom Road"

That area of Laurel is extremely sketchy, and I used to have friends that lived there, but they moved immediately after 9/11, when their tires got slashed and a ton of robberies, vandalism, etc. started ramping up. Instantly, I'm fuming that he lied to me, and on top of that, he can't even remember his own lies.

Me: "um, Laurel?! I thought that you said that you parked it at home - in Ellicott City?!"

Damien: "Sorry, it's been a lot. I didn't want you to get mad when I told you, because I stayed over a girl's house"

I blink, furiously, as my eyes well up with tears; tears that dramatically splash onto my phone, like in a redundant teenage drama, and I feel so angry and overly annoyed at myself; for falling in love with someone who will never love me the way that I want to be loved and respected. I reread the text at least five times, because it doesn't make sense to me. I feel senseless. How could he? How could I?

Me: "So you wanted to lie to me instead, in order to gain my sympathy, rather than my anger?! And whose house - why would you have to stay there?!"

Damien: "it was just Mia. I was just drunk."

It is so ironic that he would have his beloved car stolen, crashed and totaled, when he is always threatening me with the same vague phrase, "Karma will get you in the end," and I don't even know why he always chooses to snap back at me with that, when it is actually getting him. I can't help but feel bad for him though, because of how hard he worked to buy that car, and how much he loved it. No one deserves to have something of theirs stolen. Why is he always getting drunk and/or high out of his damn mind, though?!

Damien: "so are you mad? I was just there to talk about us"

Another rebellious tear runs down my cheek, as I think about how he went to someone else to talk about our problems, rather than me, and on top of that, he went to my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, whom he dated immediately after we broke up, and left her after two weeks - after he got what he wanted from her. It feels like the same feeling in which they both tried to see if this would make me jealous, but it doesn't. It just hurts. It feels like a familiar sting.

Me: "You shouldn't have lied to me, I'm sorry about your car, but I don't want to talk to you"

Damien texts me back with meaningless, trite and overused apologies that I know that he doesn't even mean, and I turn off my phone to watch a movie that I had hoped that we would watch together (Winter's Tale) and go to sleep.