(no subject)
All sales final. No returns, refunds, or exchanges. No givsies-backsies. No do-overs. No rewind button. Everything must go.
Everyone has something they wish they could take back. "I don't regret anything in life man, it's too short." Yeah, those people? They're liars. Straight up liars. Everyone makes mistakes, and we do learn from them. It takes a lot of pain to learn from a very intricate and well thought out mistake, though. I don't know about you, but I'd sure as hell take the rewind button over "learning from my mistakes." That's the thing about you though, isn't it? You don't make mistakes, you make decisions. You don't take steps backwards, only forwards, even if it leads you to trample right over someone in the process. I should've seen the signs as you were taking those big ol' steps right towards my heart. But I didn't, and now that's a mistake that keeps only one of us from sleeping at night.
You seemed to be too good from the start. Perfect honey hair, and amber brown pools of eyes that peered right into my existence. You kept that lopsided grin around long enough for me to trip and fall right into your hands like putty. You wore those lame but somehow endearing plastic neon colored sunglasses with the black lenses that looked as if they were pulled straight from a nineties hip-hop music video. You loved that I hated them, but still told you that I loved them on you. So you wore them everywhere. You listened to Modest Mouse above everything, and I liked them, but always felt inferior to your music knowledge. You told me stories about how the Mars Volta came to be and how they progressed from one album to the next. You told me that I really should download their stuff because it is so articulate and you can hear every single letter in every single word in every single song. I would just nod along, doe-eyed and helpless, determined to download some of their music just to sate you and so I might feel as musically genius as you made yourself out to be. I told you one of my favorite bands was Taking Back Sunday. I thought I finally had you trumped, as there wasn't much that I didn't know about the band that I had been following since I was old enough to recognize true talent when I heard it. You had stories about them, too. So many things that I still didn't know, and you knew them. I nearly idolized you.
You took me to a hotel room. You brought the alcohol, I brought the hope of something new. I'm twenty years old, you are twenty six. I didn't think you were looking for anything. I mean we had always joked about just getting a hotel room and going at it like bunnies in heat, but I honestly didn't expect you to go through with it. God, at the time, I was so hoping you would. I wanted you to teach me things I had never tried. Show me how to be open and confident and feel sexy. I had my share of partners, but none of them took the time you did with me. None stopped to tell me how beautiful I was, or how sexy I looked on top, or that I could be the one. No one had ever made me feel so perfectly flawed, like everything that's ever been wrong with me was just a tiny part that makes up who I am. You had me, alright.
You laid with your head in my lap, talking about how amazing I was, and I just watched you, twisting your mousy brown locks that had begun to just barely curl at the ends. My heart was inflated and I was sincerely hoping this could be it. You told me you loved me. I felt it there. I felt my brain slam on the brakes. Don't do it, turn back, head for the fucking hills, get the hell outta Dodge! But no, that was just me being afraid again. I was always too afraid to take risks. Fear ran everything, and that's it, I thought. No more of this fear bullshit. I feel it, so I'm going to say it. And I did. I adjusted my glasses and poured out my heart in those three words. You smiled so brightly I asked you for your shades. Then you asked me to be yours.
The next day, we went to my best friend's house. Jon was ever excited to have a guest, especially a special person to me, as he had seen many rough boys I'd brought in the past. This one is good, he told me. This one is a keeper.
Your car broke down. You lived an hour away. I offered to take you home the next day, but you'd have to stay at Jon's because my mom doesn't know you yet and Jon owns his own place. You agreed. I spent another whole day in heaven, introducing you as my boyfriend, receiving approval and compliments from anyone you were around. We held hands and sneaked kisses and tender little moments where you'd grab me by my arm and pull me close just to tell me you missed me being in your arms.
Your phone broke. It wouldn't take a charge. We took turns trying to wiggle wires and finagle loose connections, but nothing worked. Your new phone would be sent to your house, you said. So, I took you home.
An hour away felt like a lifetime. Would I see you soon, I asked. Don't worry about your car, I can come get you. I'll kidnap you. You said that you couldn't make any promises. I made you drive and stared out the window absentmindedly playing with your fingers, wishing the world would stop for just one moment. I didn't know when I would see you again, but I knew it would be okay just as soon as your phone was fixed. I was planning out out next weekend together in my head.
I cried as I drove home that night. Being apart from you suddenly hurt. We had been apart for so long and then we got so close... so dangerously close and I let you in. I invited you right in.
I decided to give you until tomorrow to text me, since you said your phone would be in working order by then.
One day turned into two.
Two into three.
Three into a week.
A week into two.
Then, after so much confusion and anger and sadness and yet somehow still hope, you called. I dropped everything and ran outside to take it in privacy. Well I just wanted to make sure you weren't dead in a ditch somewhere, I explained as to why I called you about twenty minutes earlier. I'd called before. It never went straight to voicemail, never told me the line was disconnected, nothing. It just rang and rang. I knew I was being ignored, but I had come up with a thousand good reasons as to why you hadn't talked to me.
You said you didn't want a boyfriend. It's not fair to you, Bren, you'd said. I have too much on my plate right now, and I can't do that to you. Ever so thoughtful. I was still your little puppet, so I said I agreed, said I understood that problems in life come about and said I wasn't upset. I lied.
I'll talk to you later, my brother and I are going for a movie, you said. I hung onto those words with the last string of my heart that I had. I stayed sitting there on the porch for what seemed like hours with tears stinging my eyes. I took deep, heavy breaths and assured myself that yes, you'd call. You wouldn't let me down like that, you promised. You said you'd never ever hurt me. I tried with all the hope I had left to hold onto your word. I went inside with a cigarette hanging from my lips.
I never heard from you again. It didn't take me long to realize I had truly been played. I wrote you a long, angry, heartbroken email. You probably never even read it.
It took me weeks to get out of the state of pure depression you sprinkled over my life. I went to work, then went to sleep. Woke up, went to work, went to sleep. That was my entire existence. Every song made me think of what you did, and I cried out for you to be broken, maimed, bruised, jaded, anything to make me feel better. I punched the steering wheel and cried curses to God. I would look at your pictures and just ache for the words I wasted on you, the lies that floated from your lips like smoke, the anger that had built inside of me.
I saw you one day while I was stopped at a light, walking down some street, holding some guy's hand, looking at him like he shit out the stars. I wanted to gag. I wanted to pull my car over and chase you down and beat that fucking beautiful face in until it was so ugly you'd never break another heart. I wanted to tear his hand from yours and carve the tattoos from his body. I thought of every vile, hateful, wretched, disgusting thing I could do-
And I honked my horn. You glanced over, and recognition hit those pretty autumn eyes. He followed your gaze, seemingly curious. I flashed you the widest, most brilliant shit-eating grin I could muster, and did a tiny little finger wave in your direction. You blinked and dropped your stupid shades right over your eyes, tugging his hand, pushing him to move it.
The light turned green, and I smirked. You risked a quick glance back over your shoulder and I blew you a kiss. Then I slammed the pedal to the floor and turned my music up to drown out the thumping and crashing coming from my chest.
Fuck that.
Everyone has something they wish they could take back. "I don't regret anything in life man, it's too short." Yeah, those people? They're liars. Straight up liars. Everyone makes mistakes, and we do learn from them. It takes a lot of pain to learn from a very intricate and well thought out mistake, though. I don't know about you, but I'd sure as hell take the rewind button over "learning from my mistakes." That's the thing about you though, isn't it? You don't make mistakes, you make decisions. You don't take steps backwards, only forwards, even if it leads you to trample right over someone in the process. I should've seen the signs as you were taking those big ol' steps right towards my heart. But I didn't, and now that's a mistake that keeps only one of us from sleeping at night.
You seemed to be too good from the start. Perfect honey hair, and amber brown pools of eyes that peered right into my existence. You kept that lopsided grin around long enough for me to trip and fall right into your hands like putty. You wore those lame but somehow endearing plastic neon colored sunglasses with the black lenses that looked as if they were pulled straight from a nineties hip-hop music video. You loved that I hated them, but still told you that I loved them on you. So you wore them everywhere. You listened to Modest Mouse above everything, and I liked them, but always felt inferior to your music knowledge. You told me stories about how the Mars Volta came to be and how they progressed from one album to the next. You told me that I really should download their stuff because it is so articulate and you can hear every single letter in every single word in every single song. I would just nod along, doe-eyed and helpless, determined to download some of their music just to sate you and so I might feel as musically genius as you made yourself out to be. I told you one of my favorite bands was Taking Back Sunday. I thought I finally had you trumped, as there wasn't much that I didn't know about the band that I had been following since I was old enough to recognize true talent when I heard it. You had stories about them, too. So many things that I still didn't know, and you knew them. I nearly idolized you.
You took me to a hotel room. You brought the alcohol, I brought the hope of something new. I'm twenty years old, you are twenty six. I didn't think you were looking for anything. I mean we had always joked about just getting a hotel room and going at it like bunnies in heat, but I honestly didn't expect you to go through with it. God, at the time, I was so hoping you would. I wanted you to teach me things I had never tried. Show me how to be open and confident and feel sexy. I had my share of partners, but none of them took the time you did with me. None stopped to tell me how beautiful I was, or how sexy I looked on top, or that I could be the one. No one had ever made me feel so perfectly flawed, like everything that's ever been wrong with me was just a tiny part that makes up who I am. You had me, alright.
You laid with your head in my lap, talking about how amazing I was, and I just watched you, twisting your mousy brown locks that had begun to just barely curl at the ends. My heart was inflated and I was sincerely hoping this could be it. You told me you loved me. I felt it there. I felt my brain slam on the brakes. Don't do it, turn back, head for the fucking hills, get the hell outta Dodge! But no, that was just me being afraid again. I was always too afraid to take risks. Fear ran everything, and that's it, I thought. No more of this fear bullshit. I feel it, so I'm going to say it. And I did. I adjusted my glasses and poured out my heart in those three words. You smiled so brightly I asked you for your shades. Then you asked me to be yours.
The next day, we went to my best friend's house. Jon was ever excited to have a guest, especially a special person to me, as he had seen many rough boys I'd brought in the past. This one is good, he told me. This one is a keeper.
Your car broke down. You lived an hour away. I offered to take you home the next day, but you'd have to stay at Jon's because my mom doesn't know you yet and Jon owns his own place. You agreed. I spent another whole day in heaven, introducing you as my boyfriend, receiving approval and compliments from anyone you were around. We held hands and sneaked kisses and tender little moments where you'd grab me by my arm and pull me close just to tell me you missed me being in your arms.
Your phone broke. It wouldn't take a charge. We took turns trying to wiggle wires and finagle loose connections, but nothing worked. Your new phone would be sent to your house, you said. So, I took you home.
An hour away felt like a lifetime. Would I see you soon, I asked. Don't worry about your car, I can come get you. I'll kidnap you. You said that you couldn't make any promises. I made you drive and stared out the window absentmindedly playing with your fingers, wishing the world would stop for just one moment. I didn't know when I would see you again, but I knew it would be okay just as soon as your phone was fixed. I was planning out out next weekend together in my head.
I cried as I drove home that night. Being apart from you suddenly hurt. We had been apart for so long and then we got so close... so dangerously close and I let you in. I invited you right in.
I decided to give you until tomorrow to text me, since you said your phone would be in working order by then.
One day turned into two.
Two into three.
Three into a week.
A week into two.
Then, after so much confusion and anger and sadness and yet somehow still hope, you called. I dropped everything and ran outside to take it in privacy. Well I just wanted to make sure you weren't dead in a ditch somewhere, I explained as to why I called you about twenty minutes earlier. I'd called before. It never went straight to voicemail, never told me the line was disconnected, nothing. It just rang and rang. I knew I was being ignored, but I had come up with a thousand good reasons as to why you hadn't talked to me.
You said you didn't want a boyfriend. It's not fair to you, Bren, you'd said. I have too much on my plate right now, and I can't do that to you. Ever so thoughtful. I was still your little puppet, so I said I agreed, said I understood that problems in life come about and said I wasn't upset. I lied.
I'll talk to you later, my brother and I are going for a movie, you said. I hung onto those words with the last string of my heart that I had. I stayed sitting there on the porch for what seemed like hours with tears stinging my eyes. I took deep, heavy breaths and assured myself that yes, you'd call. You wouldn't let me down like that, you promised. You said you'd never ever hurt me. I tried with all the hope I had left to hold onto your word. I went inside with a cigarette hanging from my lips.
I never heard from you again. It didn't take me long to realize I had truly been played. I wrote you a long, angry, heartbroken email. You probably never even read it.
It took me weeks to get out of the state of pure depression you sprinkled over my life. I went to work, then went to sleep. Woke up, went to work, went to sleep. That was my entire existence. Every song made me think of what you did, and I cried out for you to be broken, maimed, bruised, jaded, anything to make me feel better. I punched the steering wheel and cried curses to God. I would look at your pictures and just ache for the words I wasted on you, the lies that floated from your lips like smoke, the anger that had built inside of me.
I saw you one day while I was stopped at a light, walking down some street, holding some guy's hand, looking at him like he shit out the stars. I wanted to gag. I wanted to pull my car over and chase you down and beat that fucking beautiful face in until it was so ugly you'd never break another heart. I wanted to tear his hand from yours and carve the tattoos from his body. I thought of every vile, hateful, wretched, disgusting thing I could do-
And I honked my horn. You glanced over, and recognition hit those pretty autumn eyes. He followed your gaze, seemingly curious. I flashed you the widest, most brilliant shit-eating grin I could muster, and did a tiny little finger wave in your direction. You blinked and dropped your stupid shades right over your eyes, tugging his hand, pushing him to move it.
The light turned green, and I smirked. You risked a quick glance back over your shoulder and I blew you a kiss. Then I slammed the pedal to the floor and turned my music up to drown out the thumping and crashing coming from my chest.
Fuck that.