“Mm.”
The confused grumble of a noise reverberates around the quiet room a few times, before a second, more appreciative, “Mmmm…” escapes the lips of a slowly reawakening gorgeous boyfriend of mine as he comes back to consciousness.
Laughing, I place a hand on his chest. “Wakey, wakey, sleepyhead.”
He groans slightly, stretching his arms upwards. “I thought you promised to only use that sentence when speaking to a person below the age of ten or, you know, Trace.”
“Thought I’d make a special effort for you.”
“Thanks.”
Giggling again, I wrap the sheets around my chest and kneel up in the bed. Everything has gone perfectly. Justin came back home last night, jaw-dropping ensued, and then we…oh, I’m not even going to attempt to describe it, it would undermine the breath taking-ness of it all.
We’re back to normal, we must be: no one can have that amazing sex and still be a little frosty with each other. I mean really, if I had known that losing a few pounds would have such an effect on Justin I would have stopped eating Oreos to cheer myself up every time I saw that commercial about dying children in Africa. It was as though, in his eyes, I was this irresistible goddess who he just couldn’t keep his hands off and damn, has it made me feel wonderful.
Justin cracks open one eyelid wearily. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because I’m happy, silly,” I tease, crawling over him and placing a kiss on his lips. “And you are amazing.”
He smirks. “Well, that we already knew.”
“But last night you were super amazing,” I smile, dropping my lips to his again. “I’m so lucky to have you as a boyfriend.”
He doesn’t respond, but instead props himself up on his elbows and moves his back to the headboard. His eyes quickly dance over my smiling figure, still sitting on his lap, and a thoughtful frown etches itself in his brow, as though the situation in front of him needs analysis. “You’re acting very…different.”
I laugh. “What, I can’t pay you a compliment?”
“No. That’s not what you do. You insult me and make a sarcastic comment about my hair.”
Rolling my eyes, I smack his chest. “Stop being grumpy.”
“Stop being weird.”
I release another laugh, although something in my stomach begins to flutter nervously. “I’m not being weird. Maybe I’m just…changing.”
“Into what?”
I give him a quizzical look. “Um…this?”
Justin’s mouth shuts tightly, and he raises an eyebrow. “Want breakfast?” he asks, skillfully swerving our conversation around to avoid any of the approaching tension.
“Sure,” I reply happily, rolling off of him so that he can get out of bed. After he halfheartedly tugs at the sheets, his version of ‘making the bed’, I grab his hand and pull him down the stairs, relishing in the feeling of his palm against mine.
Perfect.
“I’ll put on some music,” I announce, letting go of his hand to attempt to tackle the ridiculously complicated sound system in his living room as he heads towards the kitchen, rubbing his stomach and mumbling something about eggs and bacon.
Now really, who would want to put in sixteen different CD’s at the same time? “Okay, what do we want? Some Michael Jackson? Some Jay-Z? Or what about our own Justin Timberlake?” I call out, running my fingers down the length of the CD cases Justin had anally organized in order of genres.
“Cat?” comes the confused shout of Justin; the one he makes when he can never find his keys.
“Yeah?” I reply, sifting through the CD cases, musing over putting on some Nirvana.
“Where the hell is all the food?”
No, Nirvana’s a little too heavy at ten in the morning. “Hold on a second,” I balance the cases carefully on a table in the hall, wait for a moment to see if they fall, and then hurry to the kitchen. “What do you mean?” I ask, my eyes scanning the kitchen surfaces.
“Where’s the food?” Justin repeats, one hand on the refrigerator door and the other on his hip as he stares at me enquiringly.
I shrug, blowing air into one cheek. “I just went shopping yesterday, there should be stuff in there.”
“You went shopping…” he bends down and reappears a moment later, brandishing a cabbage, “for this crap?”
“It’s actually not that bad,” I defend, pointing to the cabbage, “once you get past the taste.”
“Cat, since when did we eat cabbage? Or…” he trails off, motioning towards the fridge, brimming with the ingredients I needed to make this Caesar salad only without the horribly fattening dressing. So technically it was just going to be leaves in a bowl. “Salad-y shit.”
“Robb’s been pretty strict with just about everything I’ve put in my mouth lately,” I shrug, waiting for Justin to make some sexual innuendo referring to last night.
“I’m sure Robb’s had quite a few suggestions, but that doesn’t mean you can only live on vegetation for the rest of your life.”
“Justin, stop being so dramatic,” I roll my eyes, lightly hitting him on the shoulder as I pass him. “Just make some toast or something,” I add, tossing the bread in his direction.
“But I wanted eggs and bacon.”
“Well I want a twenty six inch waist, but we don’t all get what we want, do we?” He smiles wordlessly and tears at the plastic bag surrounding the loaf of bread. Banging the cutlery drawer shut, I grab an apple from the fruit bowl and start to peel it carefully with the knife, settling myself against the counter to start conversation. “So, tell me about LA. I got too sidetracked to ask you last night,” I blush.
He smiles again, his eyes lighting up as though he’s about to bound into a long, interesting description of his time there. “It was…fine.”
I glance up, waiting for him to elaborate. ‘Fine’ is a reliable reply when someone you don’t know asks you how you are, or when your mother asks their daily question of, “So, how was school?”. It can’t possible sum up the events of an entire month. What about one of those funny anecdotes that Justin is always full of? “You didn’t do anything interesting, didn’t meet any new people?”
“Nah, not really.” He pauses and raises his head to look at the wall, a smile coming to his lips. “Oh, there was this one time…but I think you had to be there.” With this said, he drops his gaze back down to the bread and puts two slices into the toaster, silence enveloping us again.
Even if you did have to be there, I still would have laughed heartily at anything he said just to fill the quiet in the room. “Did you see lots of your old friends?”
“Yup.” He pulls out the carton of orange juice, gives it a shake, and pours some out in two glasses, offering me one.
“Thanks.” I carefully slide the knife underneath the skin of the apple, my eyes scrutinizing Justin as he leans against the counter, looking at a spot on the floor. “How were um…the shops?” Oh, good one.
“Er…you know…the same,” he mumbles.
“And um…Chris, he’s…cool?” Now really, when was the last time I had to resort to using the word ‘cool’? 1997?
Justin shrugs, scuffing his feet together in boredom. “Yeah. Always has been.”
My items of conversation may be about as exciting as the E! True Hollywood Story of Ronald McDonald, but Justin could at least make an effort to talk to me. I would have thought that after a month I deserved something a little more than “yeah”, which is occasionally promoted to “yup”: the official word to use in awkward conversation when you can’t think of anything else to say. God, it’s like talking to some antisocial teenager.
“Is anything wrong?” I blurt out directly, my hands dropping to my side, the apple in one and the knife in the other.
He glances up in surprise, his eyebrows rising. “No, of course not.”
“You’re very quiet.”
“Well, I’m…” he shrugs, before draining the last of his orange juice in one large gulp. “Tired, I guess.” His strong arms push himself away from the counter and he places his glass in the sink, wiping his mouth with his spare hand.
“Are you sure?”
“Yup,” he nods, looking at me for a moment with a fake smile, as though expecting me to believe it and think everything’s peachy. And maybe I would have believed him, had he not used the forbidden, ‘yup’.
I pause, fear pooling my stomach. The fear that things aren’t going to be as smoothed over as I thought they were. The fear that this break hasn’t done anything but give us a brief timeout, and now we’re back in the ring again. The fear that all my hard work to make myself a better, more attractive person in an attempt to wash away the old, lying Cat has achieved nothing at all.
“Justin, if something’s wrong, just come out and say it.”
He frowns, tilting his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
I place the apple and knife on the tabletop exasperatedly, letting out a desperate breath of air. “What the hell has gotten into you? You’ve gotten more withdrawn as the morning’s progressed and we only got up ten minutes ago.”
“Cat, I haven’t done anything,” he says defensively, holding his hands up innocently.
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry, am I supposed to be understanding these cryptic messages?”
“I’m saying, Justin, there would be more use in me attempting to engage a brick wall in conversation rather than you,” I reply coldly, folding my arms crossly over my chest. “We haven’t seen in each other in over a month, and all you can manage are monosyllabic answers whenever I attempt conversation?”
“Why are you bitchin’? What, do you want me to describe every minute detail of my trip?”
“That would be nice.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he says simply, rolling his eyes. “What is it with your insane need to be talking all the time?”
“And what’s with your insane need to be so goddamn difficult all the time?” I shout angrily, feeling my cheeks burn in annoyance.
“Don’t turn this into an argument.”
“Don’t make it one.”
“Well what do you expect? You’re jumping down my throat first thing in the morning acting like you’re my freaking mother! Back off.”
“See? In the past two seconds, you’ve said more than you have since I saw you last night.”
“Is that the point of this?” he asks wryly, his eyes narrowing satirically. “You’re bored, so you thought you’d piss me off enough to argue?”
“All I’m saying is that I don’t understand why you’re being so cut off with me. Why can’t we just talk?”
“We were talking, until you started your stupid harassment.”
“I am not harassing you!” I exclaim defensively, my hurt being overridden by my vehement anger.
“Yes you were, Cat,” says Justin, his eyes lighting with a violent rage so suddenly I step back in fright. “You just never know when to stop.”
I try to regain my courage in the face of his dominant figure. “Excuse me for trying to make this relationship work!”
“How? By pissing me off, by never leaving me alone?”
“I just want things to be back to normal!” I shout, feeling tears creep up to my eyes. “And we’re never going to get there if we don’t even talk!”
“You think I don’t know that?!”
“I think you expect it to be easy.”
He snorts sarcastically. “Well, I’m not the one who fucked things up by keeping secrets in the first place.”
I suppress a scream of frustration. “So we’re back to this again? Because you know what, Justin? I’m getting just a little sick apologizing for it! After all, I’ve only said I’m sorry what, a million times?”
He shoots me a hateful glare of contemptuousness, as though he doesn’t have time for my dramatics.
My bravery starts to mount. “How long am I going to be punished for this, huh? Just…” I let out a groan, fighting the urge to pull at my newly-cut locks, “get the fuck over it!”
“Oh, because it’s just that simple!” His hands run through his hair agitatedly. “God Cat, it’s like you have no concept…no feeling of remorse for what you did.”
As I try to think of a reply, a sudden feeling of tiredness washes over me, and I know we’ve had this argument before. “I can’t keep apologizing for this Justin. We’ll never get anywhere if all we do is dwell on this.” I breathe deeply, trying to calm myself down enough to speak rationally. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from everything that’s happened, it’s that we have to talk to each other.”
“Maybe now you can feel how I felt,” he says, bringing his voice down to the same deathly tone as mine. “For over a fucking month, Cat, you kept things from me!”
“By doing it to me do you think that you’re making things any better?” I retort, throwing my hand up at him to state the obvious. “Don’t try and scare me with your twisted form of reverse psychology.”
“I’m already scared enough on my own,” he says spitefully. “You think I don’t wonder whether we can ever recover from this? You think I like not being able to talk to you any more?” He voice rises with every sentence, until it’s almost a shout. “You think I don’t worry I might not love you any more!”
For a second, the room absorbs utter silence. The honks of a few cars on the street below and the general buzz of New York begin to faintly drift through the kitchen’s open window in the stillness, and I remind myself that this city is never silent. Everyone down there, too busy with their own lives to notice that mine has just been turned upside down. No one cares I’ve just have my heart broken into thousands of little jagged pieces.
A cry builds up in my throat as my lips trembles, but I refuse to break the stillness with a sob.
“What?” I choke out in an oddly calm sounding voice.
He glances up at me, a scared look in his eyes, as though he didn’t really mean to blurt those words out. “I…I just don’t know about us any more, Cat.”
Before I can help myself, a wail of grief passes my lips, and I quickly clamp a hand over my mouth.
Justin’s eyes lift to the window, his brow furrowing, as though he is confused. “We were stupid…so stupid to think we could ever repair ourselves and get things back to how they were.”
“But, but we can--”
He continues, as though he hadn’t heard me at all, still captivated by the still blue sky picture pouring through the window panes. “We’ve never really known where our relationship was going, Cat…that’s what made it so exciting,” he laughs slightly. “But I think I always knew in the back of my mind that it was special.”
He turns from the window, fixing his eyes on me. “That we would probably spend the rest of our lives together.”
His voice sends chills down my spine. I feel as though I’m suspended above a cliff on a very thin thread, and with each word Justin says, the thread becomes weaker and weaker. Eventually, it’ll just snap.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel like that any more.”
And I fall.
“Why not?” I manage to croak out through my dry throat, my hands balling into little fists and clutching at the cotton material of the T-shirt hugging my body--Justin’s T-shirt.
He shrugs. “You’re not how you used to be. You’ve changed.”
I try to turn away to hide the sobs overpowering my body, but nothing can be done to shield the emotions racing through my body so suddenly. Justin respectfully looks at his feet, blinking furiously.
After a few seconds of choked cries, I manage to compose myself enough to turn around and face him with renewed anger. “How did you figure that one out? You’ve not even seen me for a month!”
“But even before then,” he explains uncomfortably, not meeting my eye. “With the whole secretive, detached thing…and now the whole losing weight kick, you’re just not the same.”
“That is completely unfair!” I exclaim, folding my arms across my chest as a few tears leak down my face. “I lost weight for you.”
Justin looks up at me, shock written on his face. “What? Why the hell would you do that?”
I let out a bitter laugh, shrugging excessively. “I don’t know. To make it up to you for everything that had happened? To make you want to sleep with me again?”
He frowns at me, his brow creased in uncertainty. Slowly, he shakes his head. “That’s exactly what I mean. The old Cat would never have done that. She wouldn’t have sacrificed herself just for me; she would have slapped anyone that would.”
“Oh, but the new Justin sure as hell took advantage of her last night, didn’t he?” I inject angrily, humiliation mingling with shame inside of me. “You didn’t have the same moral protests then, did you!”
“Cat, this isn't easy for me either!" he says heatedly, scowling at me. “But one of us has to admit it isn't working."
"Then how come last night--"
"Last night was a mistake. Neither of us were thinking clearly; if we had been, then we wouldn’t have just rushed into it like we did.”
“Over a month’s wait wasn’t enough for you, Timberlake?” I ask bitterly, tasting the tears on my lips. “God, you really hate me, don’t you?”
“No,” he says sternly, making a move forward, as though he wants to console me in some way. I step back. “I do love you Cat, God you have to believe me when I say that. It’s just…what you’ve become, well I…I barely know you any more. And you don't know me.”
My breath comes in short gasps. “I changed for you, so that you would find me more--”
“I don’t mean physically,” he brushes off impatiently, shaking his head. “Before all of this, you would never have let what happened last night happen.”
“Oh, so now I’m a whore?” He groans and shakes his head, but I continue before he does. “Don’t patronize me, Justin. If this is over, then just tell me it is. Don’t bullshit me into hoping that one day we’ll get back together.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose tiredly. “I don’t know. We’re just so…messy, nothing makes sense like it used to.”
“You’re giving us up because we’re messy?” I bark incredulously, the soft tears running down my cheeks contrasting with the harshness of my voice. “But we’ve always been ‘messy’!”
Justin’s eyes shine with tears, and he draws a trembling breath. “We just don’t fit together any more.”
I bite down on my bottom lip firmly, feeling the sting of pain momentarily help me forget the tearing feeling in my chest. “Well, it sounds like you’ve already pretty much made your decision.”
Trying to preserve any dignity I might still have, I brush the tear tracks from my face with the back of my hand, straighten my back, and walk out of the room, hearing Justin call after me.
“Cat,” his fingers close around my wrist as I climb the stairs, tugging me back down to the landing. “Look, I think that all happened a little fast. Let’s not be rash about this…”
“Let’s,” I reply firmly, snatching my arm away. “As you’ve said Justin, you don’t have faith in our relationship, our future, or me. What’s the point in wasting both of our time?”
I want to make him hurt. If only I could make him feel half of the searing pain wrenching through my body, then maybe he would try and take back all the hateful words he has said.
His hand falls, cutting the last strand of our relationship, and I walk upstairs confidently, every moment expecting to hear his voice calling me back down again, apologizing and telling me that he loves me...but he doesn't.
I pack my bags.
Story Tags: Be the first to add a tag to this story
