Too

The cab pulls up to Travis’s house, and the driver won’t take any money.  He tells me to go inside and that everything will be ok.  “Everything ok!”  He keeps saying, as he pushes the cash back into my hands. I call Travis.

“Travis… are you home?”

“What’s wrong.” He can hear it in my voice.

“I’m downstairs, can you get me?”

The part of this I most wish wasn’t true is that once Travis let me in to his bathroom and lent me a pair of oversized pajamas, I continued to try to beg sense into a drunk man for the next two hours, pulling off my false eyelashes on the bathroom floor.  He’s still screaming, swearing in writing, but he won’t take any of my calls.  Or my thousand requests for Facetime to prove I was where I said I would be.  I was doing what I said I would be doing.  I am frantically texting pictures of my face, my feet, the room, Travis, and begging please.  Please.  I don’t understand.  Why are you doing this to me? Please.  Please.  And so many other stupid words and phrases that turned out to just be words strung together that should have meant something but didn’t.

I stayed on that cold floor until four am.  Begging and grasping and completely lost.  I love him so much.  Why would he do this to me?  Why is he doing this?

And then I realize he is doing this because he has been drinking.  And I realize this is never going to end.  And after all that I feel an amazing sudden clarity; and I realize everything that I need to do next.  I send him a message, and I turn off my phone.  I wash my face, and climb into the far side of Travis’s bed, wearing his old sweats.  I tell myself I’m not going to cry there, but I keep crying there, then asking if it’s ok with his girlfriend that I’m there, then crying again, then saying I’m done crying, then crying some more.  He reminds me that the living room is freezing, that his girlfriend is a secure and kindhearted person, and that we’ve known each other since we were eleven.  It’s ok.  I cry some more and tell him I’ll try to shut up, but since I’ve cried so much I think I’ll probably snore.

Travis falls asleep immediately.

Travis snores.

In the morning, when the sun shines in too bright and it’s maybe only three hours later, we get up, because it’s too light to sleep.

“I want to make you breakfast.” He says, because he is a good friend, and because my stomach is empty, and because I have black rings under my eyes and am in desperate need of care.  I tell him that’s sweet, but not to worry.

“I have eggs!”  He yells, before realizing they’re past the expiration date.

“Eh, whatever.” I say

“You really want to take that kind of a chance?”

“I’m feeling lucky.”

I pause.

“Oh fuck it, I’m feeling the opposite of lucky.  I’m feeling a million times worse than lucky, but I’m feeling so terrible that a couple of bad eggs couldn’t make things any worse.”

Travis laughs.

“Everything you say sounds like it’s a quote from a book or a movie or something.”

“I think men fall in love with me because of that and then leave me when they realize I’m an actual person.”

He hugs me.  We go to Ralphs for eggs.

We make and enjoy breakfast.  I hand him my phone as it turns back on and ask him if there was anything not hideous or hateful said as it rings 8 or 9 times, indicating all the texts to wade through.  Travis checks the phone.

“No.” He says decidedly.  So I don’t read them.

About an hour later, another one comes through.

“Everything after last night just left me more confused that ever…”

And confused myself, I read every last hateful word from the night before until I am unshakeable.  And all I do is copy, word for word, the final text I sent before I turned off the phone.

“If you are confused, allow me to clarify.  By the time I come home, I want all of your things out of my house.  I want you to put your keys on the table by the door, and I want you to leave, and never, ever come back.”

He tells me he can’t get there.  He tells me this, he tells me that.  He gives a thousand reasons and excuses but he has a functioning car and his crap in my home so he’d better remove it.  I ignore him.  Travis illegally downloads Catching Fire so I can watch it since my bent up body doesn’t allow me to sit in theater chairs, and surprisingly it turns out that movies where lots of people die can be hard to watch after you’ve just suffered a major loss.  I cry, then say it’s a great movie, then cry, then say I love Lenny Kravitz, then cry some more.

Enough people have died in the film at this point that I’m starting to lose it.  I ask Travis to pause the movie and he does.  He has me covered in blankets with a heater straight on me, but I’m still shivering.  He comes over to pat my back as I cover my face with my hands and start to sob.  The hateful words said to me.  The loss of love I thought would last.  The disintegration of everything I planned around me all over again.  And it’s only because I’m so broke and vulnerable, only because I’ve been ripped up one side and down the other, only because my nerves are raw and my heart is bleeding and my dreams are crushed, do I suddenly whisper in his hear what I’ve been stuffing into corners, hiding under cheerfulness and positive platitudes, afraid to say out loud to anyone for the last nine months.

“Jon died.  Jon died.  I could die too.”

“I’m scared.”

And he holds me.  He holds me like a good friend would.