Burned(30)

Instead of going home to my empty place, I head to the bar. I need to get drunk. Maybe an entire bottle of whiskey will wash away the singed ashes of my heart.

Chapter 11—Eyes on Fire

I CAN’T STOP crying. For over a month, I didn’t shed a single tear about making Jordan leave, not one. Now, I’m sitting on my couch sobbing so hard I can barely breathe while Phina passes me a box of tissues.
“He doesn’t hate you, hon. He’s probably just a little pissed at how it all went down,” she reassures me.
The funny thing is, I can feel in my bones that Collin hates me. I should have never treated him like a dirty little secret and I should have never told him to leave, but I didn’t know what else to do. I knew him and Jordan being in the same room together for even a minute longer would have resulted in bloodshed and I didn’t want the situation to get any uglier than it already had. I didn’t have time to explain to Collin my reasons for wanting him to stay in the bedroom and I didn’t have time to explain to him that I would much rather Jordan leave than him. No time, there was never enough time and now I feel like there’s been a shift in my universe that I’m never going to be able to set right.
Everything between us happened so fast and I didn’t have any time to process it before it all blew up in my face. Did I make a mistake? I jumped right into another relationship, if that’s what you can call it, before the ink terminating the previous one was even dry. I took a chance, I took a leap and I did something completely out of character. It doesn’t feel like a mistake and it certainly didn’t feel wrong at the time. Shit, it still doesn’t feel wrong. Actually, it’s the most right I felt in a long time.
“God, I feel like such an idiot. What the hell am I even doing?” I ask Phina as I grab a Kleenex from the box and dry off my cheeks.
“You’re thinking with your vagina for once instead of your head and your heart. I say it’s a win all around,” she says with a laugh.
I laugh right along with her but shake my head at the same time. “It’s not even that. I mean, the sex is… Jesus, the sex is something I can’t even put into words. But it’s so much more than sex and that is the insane part. I mean, I don’t even know him. I used to know him. I used to know everything about him, but it’s been seventeen years! Why do I feel worse about him walking away than I do about Jordan?”
I let my head flop to the back of the couch and stare up at the ceiling. “I feel this strange connection to Collin, like he was always meant to be in my life one way or another. I never told you this, but I’ve thought about him so much over the years and seeing him again feels almost like we were never apart. We just fit so well and it feels so right, but I felt that way about Jordan for the longest time, too. He was my best friend and I couldn’t imagine my life without him.”
“But he f*cked everything up and threw away your trust,” Phina reminds me. “Trust is the most important thing in any relationship, you know that. Do you trust Collin?”
I sigh and turn my head to face her. “In some ways I do, but I don’t even know him. I mean, I know his family, I know how old he was when he got into his first fight, I know he made honor roll every year in high school and I know he hated the purple cummerbund I made him wear to prom junior year. I know the basics about what he’s been doing with his life since then but what about everything else? Does he still like the same junk food, is Full Metal Jacket still his favorite movie, who did he lose his virginity to and why the hell didn’t he ever get married and have kids? I’ve spent less than five hours with the man since I was seventeen years old and we spent most of that time f*cking like rabbits. Maybe it’s just the thrill of something new and exciting or a way for me to purge Jordan from my mind and my heart once and for all. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak.”