Cliche

Chapter Two

REGRET: The sickening feeling that eats at you from the inside out. It eats at you and it eats at you slowly. Soon enough, it might make you completely insane. It’s the extreme desire to take something back or to take a risk or a chance that you wouldn’t have a second time to take. So if you take a risk and get rejected you regret it and if you don’t take a risk and you will never know how things might have been if you had taken that risk, you regret it… basically, we’re all screwed.

I was awake but I didn’t want to open my eyes and find that it was all a lie. That it was all a clever hoax that my brain created in a frenzy of intoxicated lust, well no, not lust more like in a frenzy of intoxicated insanity or something like that. I was really just a hopeless case of insanity, I had no idea what came over me the night before, but I wouldn’t take it back, not for the world. It might have been the beer, which I suspect had some other, stronger alcohol in it, but I think it was just a risk that I had wanted to take for a while, a risk that I took because I didn’t know that I would have a chance to (or have the courage to) in the future.

No matter what, I wanted to hold onto every last detail of last night; the way every contour of my body fit perfectly into Alex’s arms, how it wasn’t like the perfect, romantic and sweet love making scenes you might read about in one of Nicholas Sparks novels, how our kisses weren’t faultless, they were sloppy and hesitant, how every time we rolled over, Skittles and Milk Duds would fly everywhere.

I opened my eyes and turned around, I was in Alex’s bed, but Alex was no where to be seen. On the desk was a toaster strudel with various curses written on it in icing, which is something that Alex and I had been doing ever since we were comfortable with swearing. I smiled and took a bite into it, savoring the taste.

After I finished I hopped up and got dressed quickly. I walked down the stairs, hoping that there wasn’t an awkward conversation that consisted of Alex asking why I was naked in his bed, with him, because it would be awkward if I remembered everything and he didn’t.

“You aren’t listening to me.” I heard Alex say in a rushed whisper, he sounded aggravated. “I slept with Ami.” I stopped dead in my tracks, staying as quiet as I could. “I think I made an awful mistake.” I felt like I had been slapped across the face and then punched in the
stomach. “I’m sorry Marissa.”

Marissa. Marissa. It took a minute for this to sink in, he was talking to Marissa. As in the Marissa who he lost his virginity to, as in the b***h that broke his heart two days later. He was telling her all this? He was apologizing, to her? He was still in love with her?
Tears started to fall from my eyes and I just ran out of the house, Alex, who was now off the phone, saw me and ran after me. I didn’t listen as he yelled “Ami, it’s not what you think.” And “I can explain.” That what they always said, right?

I just kept on running and after four years on the track team, I knew that Alex couldn’t keep up with me. I also knew that he wouldn’t keep on following me, guys don’t. No matter how much they care about you, they still remain oblivious to the fact that when we run away, we just might want to see will try and find us, that when we say “leave me alone” we don’t really want you to, we want you to stay there and force us into a hug, no matter how much we fight, then we just want you to let us cry into your shoulder.

When I got to my house it started to rain, meaning torrential down pour.

I sat on my porch steps. My eyeliner smeared down my face from a mixture of tears and rain.

Rain, so cliché. It was like a movie – the sad girl on the porch steps, crying while rain poured down. The only difference was that in a movie Alex would show up and tell me that he loves me. In a movie Alex and I would be kissing in the rain by now.

But the sad and real truth was that life was no movie. Alex wasn’t going to show up; he wasn’t going to be madly in love with me. No I was going to sit there in the rain, alone and I would probably end up with a cold. Even so, I didn’t want to get up. Tonight I found a strange calm in the rain; an almost numb feeling. But in the pit of my stomach I knew that the second I walked back inside, the hurt would hit me and I would break, so I just sat in the
rain.

I sat in the rain and I knew that I would break no matter what. I would see Alex on Monday, I couldn’t sit in the rain forever because, well the earth couldn’t cry for me forever. I couldn’t cry for me forever; but I still sat, I sat for hours, even after the rain had slowed to a mist. I think some part of me hoped that this was just like a movie and that Alex would show up and that he would love me.

I already hated myself for becoming this dependant, for becoming such a damsel in distress.