I fought the urge to run. When Justin left my apartment, I wanted to just get away from everything. I wanted to book a flight to somewhere far away and not have to deal with all this. To spend a week in some paradise where everything is perfect and heartbreak doesn’t exist. To do something, anything, that would take me away from all this pain.

But that’s what I always do and I know that it just pushes the pain to the side and doesn’t actually dissolve it. Running will just make the pain come back full force at some later date when I’m not expecting it.

I fought the urge to run and instead allowed myself to break down in the middle of my apartment. Lola came home two hours after Justin left and found me crying on the kitchen floor. She offered words of comfort but heartbreak has the ability to close off receptive ears and keep any words of reason from them. All I could do was cry. I cried in the kitchen until she convinced me to move to my room where I cried myself to sleep.

I went through the next day a little numb, which I guess I should be thankful for. Numb is better than pain. When you’re numb, you can pretend like nothing is actually wrong and disregard the throbbing pain that it’s covering.

Perhaps the worst thing about the entire situation was that yesterday when Lucy asked me what was wrong, I couldn’t tell her. She never knew about my relationship with Justin to begin with and now there’s nothing to say as an explanation as to why my eyes are bloodshot and why I look like I haven’t slept in days. At that point, when I realized this, I knew that this was going to be harder than I had thought. Only a couple of my friends knew about the situation with Justin and I was going to have to put on a show for them. I had had to hide my relationship with him and now I was going to have to hide my breakup with him.

We were supposed to spend Saturday together. I had finally convinced him to come to this amazing farmers market in the city and we were supposed to spend all day there. I debated just forgetting about it and not going but the thought of sitting in my apartment all day with nothing to do but think was extremely unappealing.

I’ve gone to the farmers market by myself many times before and usually enjoy the time to myself. But today, I couldn’t feel more alone. At any other point, I would have looked around and seen all these people from different walks of life, enjoying the farmers market experience with me. But being freshly broken up with puts blinders on your eyes and all I can see are happy couples all around me. It’s a like a slap in the damn face.

I knew Mitch was over at the apartment with Lola and I wasn’t going to be able to handle seeing them together so after the farmers market, I went to a movie. I have never felt more alone than sitting in that movie theatre all by myself. There’s nothing wrong with people who can be all independent and go to movies by themselves. All the more power to them. But I’m not one of those people and sitting in the back row of the theatre while I watch some contrived action movie was torture.

Okay so in retrospect, the movie wasn’t so torturous as walking into my apartment and seeing Mitch and Lola curled up on the couch watching TV together. Seeing them in all their happy couple glory just makes me realize how I don’t have that anymore. This is all such a joke.

“How was the farmer’s market?” Lola asks, raising her head from Mitch’s shoulder.

I drop my purse onto the floor and give a shrug. “Fine.”

“You didn’t buy anything?” Mitch asks.

“No.”

“Do you want to watch TV?” Lola gestures to the spot beside her on the couch. “We might order pizza too. Want some if we do?”

It’s like I’ve never had to answer so many questions in my life. It’s all I can do to sigh and then begin to walk towards my room, calling out a “No” over my shoulder.

I shut myself in my room and drop onto my bed. My eyes move across my room as I sit there.

Hiding that Justin and I were dating did keep me from putting up pictures of us together around my room in case anyone ever happened to come in and see them. I guess that’s a good thing now because I don’t have to look at how happy we were. But there are still all these little reminders. On my dresser, I have the empty champagne bottle from the night we first kissed. A sweatshirt I stole from him is laying in a pile in the corner of the room. The dozen roses he bought me for my birthday. I haven’t changed the water in a few days and they’re basically dying. I guess that’s kind of suiting.

I really need to go through my room and get rid of all this stuff. I can’t take staring at it. But right now, I just don’t have the energy to do it. Maybe tomorrow.

I sigh when there’s a knock on my door. They better not be trying to get me to watch TV with them. Sitting with them while they’re all happy is going to be absolute hell.

“What?”

My door opens and I turn my head to see Lola come in.

“I don’t want to watch TV,” I say and then see that she’s holding a carton of ice cream and two spoons.

“Mitch is gone,” she states and then plops down on the bed beside me. She tosses me a spoon and I gladly take it. “It’s just us and our two favorite men, Ben and Jerry.”

I smile slightly and the action seems almost foreign to me. How long has it been since I’ve smiled? “I didn’t know we had any ice cream here.”

“We didn’t. I bought some this afternoon.” She pops open the lid and pushes the carton towards me. “I saw you eating that pitiful bowl of rice yesterday when you were upset. You need some actual comfort food.”

I pull out a spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough and stare at it. “This is definitely better.”

Lola gets her own spoonful and she watches me as we eat. It’s only quiet for a minute before she breaks it. “So?”

“So,” I echo back in a sigh.

“How’re you doing?”

I pull my knees up to my chest and shrug. “Fine.” I don’t look at her because she knows me too well and she’ll be able to see through my obvious lie.

She doesn’t call me out on my lie. “I was thinking,” she says instead.

I look at her to see her staring thoughtfully across the room. “About?”

She looks back to me and then I watch her eyes focus on the sweatshirt on the floor. She knows it’s his. “Why don’t you just put everyone out in the open?”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes connect to mine. “You guys broke up and you’re still hiding the fact that you and he ever dated. What’s stopping you from going and telling people?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because he broke up with you, Em!” she exclaims. Wow, she really feels strongly about this. “He can’t get the balls to tell Ben that you guys are dating so he takes the easy way out and breaks up with you! Don’t you want to get back at him just a bit? Why not go right to Ben and tell him that you guys were dating this whole time?”

“I can’t do that to him,” I say softly. “That would ruin his friendship with Ben. I can’t do that.”

“You’re being too nice to him,” Lola says and she has this disgusted look on her face that I know is for Justin. “He’s a complete jerk for doing this. He says he loves you and then just breaks up with you?”

I dangle my empty spoon from my fingers. “It wasn’t enough.”

All you need is love is a lie
Cause we had love but we still said goodbye

“It should be enough,” she states. “You are being too forgiving and just accepting this.”

I feel my eyes tear up and I silently curse myself. I was trying to get through just a few hours without crying. “What else am I supposed to do?”

She falls silent and I feel a small victory. It’s easy to say I’m accepting this but she obviously knows just as little as I do as how to change that. Instead of coming up with any words of advice, she just continues on her rant about Justin.

“You know, the more and more I think about it, the more I’ve decided that Justin and Ben deserve each other. One’s a cheating bastard and the other’s a lying asshole. They can rot in hell together.”

I know that Lola doesn’t truly mean that. She’s just mad that I’m not bad mouthing Justin so she’s picking up my slack. But it’s like, as much as I hate that Justin couldn’t just tell Ben when he was given such a good opportunity to and as much as I hate that I wasn’t enough to risk a friendship for, I can’t not understand where he’s coming from. I know how Justin was raised and I know that he was taught to value his family and friends. And I also know Ben and how hot headed he can be. I know that it would have been major drama if Justin had told Ben about us. And I don’t know if Ben would have ever forgiven Justin for it. I don’t think I was being selfish for wanting Justin to come out in the open with our relationship but I guess I shouldn’t have really been so surprised that he opted out.

Lola’s worked herself up by talking about Justin and she huffs a bit and sticks her spoon in the carton to get more ice cream. She shakes her head and points her spoon at me.

“I think we would both feel a whole lot better if you just said something about what a jerk he is.”

I rest my cheek on my drawn up knee and sigh. “That would probably make you feel better but not me.”

Her head shakes again. “But aren’t you upset, Em?”

A breathy laugh escapes me. “I feel like I haven’t stopped crying the past few days. Of course I’m upset.” Just talking about crying is making my eyes well up and I squeeze them shut, trying to force the tears away. “I’m sad and I’m hurt and I miss him, okay? I’m angry he wouldn’t tell Ben when he could have and I wish he wouldn’t be such a wimp. But I should have expected this and prepared myself for this.”

“You didn’t know he would do this. You told me that he told you over and over that he would tell Ben.”

“Exactly. He told me over and over and I should have gotten the hint that he was never going to. He never puts off things and the fact that he was putting that off should have told me that he wasn’t going to do it. I should have realized.”

“Don’t start to blame yourself for him being a bitch.”

I sigh. “I’m not.” I blink a few times. “This just really sucks.”

Lola pushes herself further onto my bed and crosses her legs at her ankles. “So what about that barbeque?”

I shut my eyes again. I was hoping we were all just going to forget about that. “The barbeque?”

“Yeah, you know the one that you and Justin were planning together for tomorrow afternoon? The one that you invited everyone too? What’s happening with that?”

My shoulders rise in a shrug and then drop. “I don’t know.” I’m hoping it’s off but I feel like it won’t be. Why would we just cancel it at the last minute after everyone’s known about it for weeks? “Maybe I just won’t go.”

“Except those invitations you sent out said you two were hosting it together,” Lola points out. “Might be a little weird if you aren’t there.”

“Should I call him to see if it’s still on?” I wonder out loud.

“Do you want to call him?”

I shake my head in a silent no.

“I can call him and ask,” Lola volunteers.

I give her a humorless smile. “You just want to call him so you can make him feel like shit.”

She shrugs. “So?”

A little part of me wants her to call him and give him a piece of her mind. I don’t want to take that route, but if Lola wants to…well so be it. But the bigger part of me just isn’t ready to talk to him yet and I’d rather she do it. After another moments hesitation, I slowly nod.

“Okay. Call him and ask.”

* * *

A large sigh escapes me as I rest my head on my forearm, which is propped up on top of the grand piano. I had really thought inspiration was going to hit but after sitting here for an hour, I’m beginning to realize that nothing is coming. I’ve stopped trying to come up with a melody and resorted to my index finger crashing down on middle C over and over, the note hitting the air like a gunshot each time.

My eyes are staring at the ivory keys and I’ve never felt so out of it in my entire life. I should find something productive to do but it’s like I can’t even fathom lifting my head and moving from piano bench. That would take far too much effort.

Trace is around somewhere but I’ve told him to get lost so many times over the past few days that I’m not expecting him to want to do anything with me. It’s not my fault though. He wants me to tell him what happened with Emily and I can’t voice it yet. When you just have what’s in your head, you can almost pretend it’s not real. But there’s something about saying it out loud and putting it out there that makes it so real it hurts. I think I’ll live in fantasy for just a little bit longer.

My finger pushes down on the piano again and the same note meets my ears. There’s something almost therapeutic about this. It’s like I have no control over my hand anymore and I couldn’t stop it if I tried.

Or so I thought until my cell phone began to ring. The sudden and unexpected noise caused my hand to jerk and come down on A sharp, the harsh note making me lift my head. The therapeutic value of my previous position now broken, I sigh and reach for my phone. Am I ever glad I did.

It’s Emily. Her apartment number is flashing across the screen and for a moment I can’t even move. I’ve tried calling her a couple times over the past few days but she doesn’t pick up. Not her home phone or her cell. I feel like we didn’t get everything sorted out when I went over to her apartment before and it still feels like there’s some unresolved stuff in between us. And I miss her. I want to talk to her and see her again.

I keep staring at the phone until realizing that it’s going to go to voicemail if I don’t snap out of it. Giving my head a shake to try and clear it, I hit the talk button and raise my phone to my ear. I can’t wait to hear her voice.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Asshole.”

When you’re expecting sweet and instead met with sour it leaves a horrible taste in your mouth. “Lola.”

“Broken any new hearts lately?”

I don’t think I’ve ever had a headache come on so fast. I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a slow breath of air, trying to keep myself calm. “Is there something you needed, Lola?”

“Emily wants to know if the barbeque is still on for tomorrow.”

I perk up at the mention of her name. “Is she there?”

Lola doesn’t say anything.

“She’s right there, isn’t she? Can I talk to her?”

“No.”

“You know-”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Lola bites out. “Hence why I called you. Is the barbeque still on? Yes or no will do.”

“It’s a little too late to cancel at this point.”

“Is that a yes?”

Her condescending tone is setting my nerves on end and I struggle to keep my cool. “Yes. When is Emi-”

I’m hung up on before I can even ask when Emily’s going to come over the next day. With a growl of frustration, I snap my phone shut and stand up, shoving the piano bench backwards and out of my way. As I leave the room, enough curses fall from my lips to turn my mother’s hair gray. Trace looks up from the TV when I stalk into the room and drop onto the couch. I give him a pointed look and with a sigh, he turns down the volume on the television.

“Problems?”

“Lola.”

“She not letting you talk to Emily?”

I never told Trace I broke up with Emily or that it was because of Ben. But he knows me better than I do and he’s figured the basics all out by this point.

“She calls to ask me if the barbeque is still on and hardly lets me get in a word edgewise before hanging up on me. And she outright refused to let me talk to Emily.”

Trace shrugged. “Maybe Emily doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” I say and then have to pause. I don’t know how to follow that statement.

“So is the barbeque still on then?”

I slouch down into the cushions of the couch and drop my head back. “It’s too late to cancel.”

“So tell me exactly how you’re going to have a barbeque that you and Emily were planning and putting on together if you’re broken up and not talking?”

“We’re not not talking,” I say, feeling the need to defend my current relationship with Emily. “She’s upset that we broke up and she’s allowed to be. She just needs some time.”

“Then why are you so pissed that Lola won’t let you talk to her?”

My eyebrows draw together and I frown. “Lola was being a bitch,” I mumble and push myself a little further into the couch.

“So are you at all concerned that Emily is going to go tell Ben everything? If you’re broken up and she’s mad at you, what exactly does she have to lose?”

The thought had gone through my head a few times. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“How do you know?”

I lift my head to look at Trace. “Because I know her and I know she’s not going to do that to me. She’s not pissed at me enough to ruin my friendship with Ben.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes,” I snap. Shit, why does he have to question every single thing I say?

Trace raises the remote and turns up the volume a few notches before turning it back down and facing me again. “I’d just like to state for the record that I think you breaking up with Emily because of Ben is really retarded.”

A groan escapes me. “And I’d like to state for the record that you don’t know shit about the situation.”

He laughs which only serves to put me in a worse mood. “I know enough.”

I snap my head up to stare at him. “What would you say if I told you I was dating Melissa Nelson?”

Trace’s mouth tightens at the mention of the girl he had dated for two years and had broken up with a few months prior. He gives me a glare before focusing his eyes on the TV. “That’s a different situation than Emily and Ben.”

“No it’s not. If I told you I was dating Melissa can you honestly say you would ever want to talk to me again?”

Trace doesn’t respond and continues staring at the television. I sigh and rest my head against the back of the couch.

“The entire situation between me and Emily is my fault and I hate that I did it and I wish I hadn’t had to but I did. It was the only way.”

Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Trace shakes his head and doesn’t reply. I don’t like the silence and I find myself not able to stop talking.

“I should have never gotten involved with her in the first place. I know that. But I did. And I told her I would tell Ben eventually and I honestly planned on doing it at some point. But not right now and you know as well as I do that he was figuring it out. I had to stop it before he actually realized what was going on.”

He’s still silent.

“Ben would react the same way about Emily as you would about Melissa. It would be like the ultimate betrayal. Ben’s one of my best friends. What was I supposed to do? How else was I supposed to fix things without breaking up with Emily? If there was another way, please enlighten me.”

He finally speaks up. “I get it, okay? It just really sucks. She’s one of my friends too, you know. I just think it’s stupid what happened.”

That basically sums it right up and it’s all that needs to be said so I stand and mumble a “Yeah.”

“You need to go shower or sleep or something. You look like shit.”

Leave it to Trace. I should respond but I can’t even find anything in me to fire back at him. Besides, I know I should do what he says. I haven’t showered for a day or two and I probably reek. And sleep hasn’t exactly come easily. If I’m going to see Emily tomorrow, I should probably be a bit more put together.

I opt for the shower first and a few minutes later, I’m standing under the hottest spray of water I can handle. There’s something about being there that completely exhausts me and I find myself slumping against the shower wall. I wish I could stop all thoughts of the past few days from going through my mind but it’s like they’re on this never ending loop of lunch with Ben, Ben coming over, and my break up with Emily. I can’t handle this.

Maybe seeing her tomorrow will help.

We share the sadness
Split screen sadness

Split Screen Sadness-John Mayer
All At Once-The Fray