No Vacancy

The Narrator says...


He wrote her to say he'd been thinking about her.

She had been thinking about him too. For months she had been stewing over the very idea of him, playing images of him over and over again in her head, trying to figure out what part about him she'd come to hate so much. The mental reel made her feel sick to her stomach sometimes. The kind of anxious stomach ache a middle-schooler gets each morning before they face those long hallways. Why was she so angry at him? She repeated the question to herself several hundred times a day, and each time she got the same answer... "I don't know."

And now, he wanted to talk about it.

The coffee shop was the the same way they'd left it, but she felt odd and out of place there now, sitting across from him in broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses. She felt guilty the moment she sat down and immediately wished she had chosen someplace else to meet. Somewhere with less familiar faces and darker corners to hide in.

He was quiet and awkward, staring at her, waiting for her to start the conversation, as usual.  The steam from the coffee in front of him billowed around his body, seemingly foreboding of some explosion that was about to emerge from his silence. Always a catalyst seeking the right chemical to ignite some inspirational molecule within him. He can never fucking finish what he starts, she thought to herself. He abruptly sat back in his chair and looked away, as if he'd suddenly been smacked across the face. She had never really noticed the way his chin disappeared when he turned to the side, until now.

He looked down at his lap, "How have you been?" he asked, because he didn't know what else to say.

Should I give him the long or short answer to that, she wondered. She quickly decided she didn't really want to answer the question at all, and said, "I've been fine. Busy and trying to keep myself out of trouble." She let dissatisfaction settle into the lines on his face before asking, " You?"

"Same," he said nonchalantly, as if to leave the word dangling in the air above her like bait.  Thus, concluding their small talk.

"I don't think we can be friends anymore."  She said it without provocation. The elephant that had been standing politely in the corner was now sitting on top of the table between them, obstructing their view of one another.  And it wasn't moving.

"Why?" he asked.  His tone hinted that he already knew the answer, the word rolled off his tongue like the car on a roller coaster.  It was on a set track, that word could only end up in one place, screeching to a halt.

She was bombarded yet again with that perplexing question, only now she was face-to-face with it,  trying not to stare into grey eyes that were always a little sad. The pressure was on and it was time for her to own up to the feeling she didn't want to admit to.  This was it, the deep end. She probably couldn't come back from this. Just say it already, she thought desperately.

"Because you hurt me. And now, I want to hurt you back for it," she said as honestly as she knew how. The truth bit her and gnawed away at the lining of her stomach.

He swallowed hard and looked ready to throw up.

"And it would be so much easier if I didn't care about you," she continued, "because then I could  just proceed as usual with revenge. I could, ya know, be friends again, play nice as if nothing happened. Pretend things were chummy. Hate you underneath my breath while giving you bad advice," her eyes stared off now, she was looking in his direction, but it seemed like she couldn't see him anymore.  Not able to see into her eyes made him feel confused and lost in the conversation.

"Maybe I would even tease you. Seduce you, again. Charm you and make you feel like you're home. Fuck you, only to fuck with you later. I wake up craving it at night. Remembering the way your body felt between my legs with your head on my stomach, and what the curls of your hair felt like as I ran my fingers through them. That beautiful hair. You purring like some stupid housecat!" That last word seemed to snag in her throat.

Her voice got louder and her eyes started to well up with tears. He breathed hard at the sight of them. Was he remorseful for them, or angry at them?

She looked away from him, she was so ashamed of the truth. Through gritted teeth she said, "I dream about that night now. I dream I say something like 'I love you' and don't mean it. That I lie to you, willingly. And when I wake up, I still wish I could. Because I want you to feel betrayed, as I feel betrayed."

Her tears spilled down her cheeks. She bit her lip before taking a deep breath. She calmed down. Almost too calm, he thought. She stared down at her lap, and he stared at her till he couldn't anymore.  He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back with a sigh.

He heard her neck crack.

When he looked up at her again, she was staring directly at him, her eyes the grayish green color of the sea before a storm hits.  "I believed you always knew this about me, how predatory I am. I thought you loved me anyways, even loved me because of it sometimes. And that made me love you back. I never wanted to hurt you because I trusted you. Trusted you enough to be myself. I care about you, and I realize now how silly I've been for it. But, you were my friend."

The silence nailed that last word, friend, to the table. Like a permanent reminder. A mark that will never wash away.

"The truth is I am both good and bad. I am both, Louis. I am a creator, and a destroyer. A hunter and a protector. I was both then, I am both now. And so are you. In the end, you CHOSE to see only the enemy in me, and turned me away as such when I really needed my friend.  For whatever reasons, maybe you were upset with me about something and didn't have the balls to tell me, so it was easier to just write me off as some horrible mistake you'd made. I don't know, I still don't understand it. And I don't think I can forgive you for it."

He felt the end of the ride approaching. He was arriving at his destination. Soon, he would have to exit to his left, and go home.

"All I can do now is warn you, while I still care enough, to stay away from me. It hurts me too much to be around you, and you can't trust me because of it."  She was eerily calm, her tears drying on her cheeks as she said plainly, "You wanted to paint me as a villain in your life.  And it worked. Because that's all I want to be to you now."

She stood up from the table, she was really going to leave him there.  Her hair curled around the sides of her sunglasses as she slid them onto her nose. He realized it may be the last time he ever saw her eyes.

He held his breath. She held hers, and whispered.

"Goodbye."

When he exhaled, she was gone.