In Gainesville I have made some good friends.
They're pretty cool. They're bulletproof chicks.
"You're a fuckin jem, Lauren Snell."
Will he wake up one day next to her and realize that?
Madison: "I'm leaving right now." I didn't even have to explain or cry out for help, she just came over at ten o'clock at night to watch me drunkenly ramble, shake, smoke, and drink more and more. When she walked in, I instantly felt calm seeing her long hair that had become so familiar to me, or her eyes covered in thin bangs. She got a bag of frozen lima beans to ice my bruised knuckles. And drank a beer so drinking alone wasn't so lonely. And we just listened to Modest Mouse, sat in silence, and took in what was happening around us, what we couldn't control.
Aleacia was the first person who heard my hysteria, my pain, my very reaction to the hole being drilled into my chest. Empty heaves of my throat trying to expel the memory of him on my body, all over it, inside of it. "He told me he wanted other people Aleacia, he could fuck someone else." I couldn't form words, because his words never made sense, and Aleacia just listened. She had heard all she needed- "I'm coming to stay the night with Bentely. Okay? I'll be there around 11." And I didn't need to thank her, because she knew. "Get it all out now while it's fresh." So I did.
I just couldn't stop gasping for air. I found myself on the floor in this fit of a tantrum, wanting to rip my hair out at the roots. I kicked and cried and punched and gasped and still, nothing. I threw my phone. There was never going to be a call from him apologizing, or a soft knock at the door where he awaits behind it with anxious finger tips to grab ahold of my waist and tell me, "everything will be alright. We have each other, and that's enough." That was the way things were before, when he still loved me, cared about me, wanted me. When he still looked at me and felt a fire in his groin, his eyes.
I took the last swig of my warm, cheap beer. Madison looked at me with raised eyebrows. "You're really going to be drunk all week, aren't you." It wasn't a question.
I just looked at her with dead eyes and laughed a cold, hysterical laugh.
We both knew the worst wasn't over yet.
