Maybe Matt's Miracle(11)

My breath stutters from me. I close my eyes and inhale through my nose because I feel like I’m going to throw up. I force my eyes open and walk to the door. It’s all I can do not to put my foot in his ass and kick him through it.

“Can…um… It’s really important to April that we have your blessing.”

“You didn’t need my blessing when you f*cked her,” I say. “Why do you need it now that you knocked her up?”

“She feels terrible about the way things happened,” he says.

“Good,” I bite out. “She should.” She should hate it. She should hate herself because she fell into someone’s arms while I was getting shot full of chemo and almost f*cking died.

“She’s not a bad person,” he says. “She just made a mistake. We both did.”

“A mistake happens once,” I explain, holding up one finger. “Not dozens of times.” And those are only the ones I know about. “After the first time, it’s a choice, not a mistake.”

“She just didn’t know how to deal with the situation.”

“You mean like standing by my side?” I hold up my hands like I want him to answer. But I really don’t. Not at all.

“I’d like us all to be friends again,” he says. He’s almost pleading. And it would make me laugh if it didn’t make me want to cry.

“Never gonna happen,” I say. I open the door and motion for him to walk through it. In two seconds, I’ll start to count to ten.

He brightens for a second. “Hey, Paul was telling me you’re seeing someone.”

Paul did what? “So?”

“So, I think that’s great. I’m happy for you.” He claps a hand on my shoulder and squeezes until I stare down at it, contemplating how I’m going to break each of his fingers. He jerks his hand back. “I think you should bring her to the wedding. It’ll be like old times. What do you say?”

I just glare at him.

“Well,” he says, smiling as if he’s solved world hunger in one night. “I’ll be sure April sends you an invitation. We’d love for you to be there.”

The little devil on my shoulder taunts me. “Hey, how did April feel about your f*cking her best friend?” I ask. Rumors are fun, when they’re not about you.

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “That was a mistake.”

“You make a lot of those, don’t you?” I ask.

“I’m human,” he says. He hitches his waistband higher.

He’s a human with no morals or conscience. Can’t say April didn’t get what she deserved with him, though.

“If you come to the wedding, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that best friend thing to her.” He looks everywhere but at me. I point toward the hallway, and he goes in that direction.

I don’t say anything more. He waves as he goes out the door, and I slam it behind him. It hits so hard that the walls vibrate. Paul comes out of his room.

I get another beer from the fridge and repeat my opening procedure, singing “Score!” in a vehement whisper when the top sails into the trash.

“You okay?” Paul asks.

“Fine,” I bite out.

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Fuck you very much.”

Paul heaves a sigh.

“How much did you hear?” I ask.

He winces. “All of it?”

I go and sit on the couch, not saying anything that’s in my head. Truth be told, I would be tearing shit up if Paul wasn’t here.

“I can’t believe they want you to come to the wedding.” He snorts.

“Why did you tell him I’m seeing someone?”

Paul grins. “Seemed appropriate at the time. Bastard was being all smug, telling me how wonderful his life is.”

“So you made up an awesome life for me.”

Paul shrugs. “Didn’t seem like it would hurt.”

It does f*cking hurts. My life might be lonely, but it’s mine. It’s all I’ve got, and when you’ve come close to losing your life like I have, you appreciate every single thing about it.

“Are you going to the wedding?” Paul asks.

I shrug. “Don’t know.” I play with the tassels on a pillow, wrapping them around my finger over and over.

“Maybe it would be good closure,” he says.

“It’s already closed.”

“It’s not.”

I lean toward him. “You want to talk about closure, Paul. Then let’s talk about you and Kelly. Let’s talk about the fact that you’re still f*cking your baby mama, even though you’re both f*cking other people, too. Let’s talk about closure on that, shall we?”

Paul presses his lips together. Then he gets up and goes to his room, closing the door softly behind him. He doesn’t punch me, which is what I deserve. He just walks away. I think I hit way too close to home.

My heart aches for what I just did to him. But it was the only way to get him to drop it.

Closure. Fuck closure. That wound is still open and festering and painful and raw and so damn irritating that I don’t know what to do with it. Will it ever get better? I don’t see how.