We're Breaking Up (December 12th, 2014)
“One.”
“One.”
His count followed mine. Timidly, but it followed. At least it followed. I giggled beside myself and he gave a soft chuckle, punctuated by an ellipses of stuffed up nose breathing. This is stupid, we both agreed, so cliché. I didn’t want the conversation to end. I checked the receiver. Two hours and ten minutes in and I had already told him everything the last month had put on my mind. He didn’t say much in return. He never did. To my paragraph he responded a sentence, usually thoughts and words pasted together by an excess of uh’s and um’s.
“Two.”
“Two.”
More sure this time. More quick to follow. The lightheartedness was dissipating and an apprehensive understanding was replacing it. His voice shifted to a cooler tone -- his strong, eager, innocent voice that I knew well and loved unlike anything else sounded defeated. Maybe my imagination or reluctance to hang up the phone skewed my perception, but maybe it didn’t. Maybe I shouldn’t have doubted myself. Maybe fourteen months was too long for a seventeen year old girl to be teaching and leading and doling out patience to an eighteen year old boy who should have known better than to depend on her. Her opinions. Her decisions. Maybe.
If he had been in my bedroom with me, where I was during the countdown, his left hand would be curled around the doorknob in anticipation of his final exit. I imagine his eyes would be sad. His face would be somber, his shoulders gently slumped. He would cast one last glance at me as the taunting silence of two-and-a-half hung between us. I would stare at him as I re-felt every hug, held hand, kiss, and brush of skin. I would see every memory reflected in his eyes and want to undo the tangled jumble of my jealousy and loneliness and his poor communication and complacency that led us to where we were, me on the futon and him at the door.
We agreed it would happen like this: since neither one of us wanted to hang up first (the irony being that’s how most relationships start, not end) we would count to three and hang up together. It worked so well until the part where we were supposed to say three. There was a stretch of ambiguous silence where one of us could’ve said No, I want this. I want to work harder so we can last longer. This is worth it, but I knew he wouldn’t say that and he knew I wouldn’t say that. The end of our relationship was impending.
My mind grappled with the fractions of seconds that slipped past. This phone call was the door between Past and Future and I stood in the threshold, painfully unwilling to step onto either side. If I went back, I would choose to return to the circumstances that formed my discontent. If I went forward, I would choose to forfeit the security I felt in knowing I had someone to run to. But I’m not much for hesitation.
“Three.”
Telephone static is a soft hum. It’s a silent sound you don’t notice, but when it suddenly disappears you know it’s gone. All I heard was static and it bled through my ear into my brain, having the same effect on my thoughts as a whisk has on eggs. I firmly pressed the receiver to the side of my head, closed my eyes, and listened intently for his throaty breathing. I held onto a fragile hope that he didn’t hang up. Are you there?, he would ask, and the corners of my lips would tug in different directions as a smirk bloomed on my amused face. No, I would tease, although I wouldn’t know why. There was nothing to save, nothing left worth the audacity of flirtation. It would be pointless, so I remained quiet.
I didn’t hang up until the raucous off-the-hook buzzer jerked my attention into focus. I let the phone slide out of my hands and into my lap while my mind thought of everything and nothing at the same time. He hung up. I am finally free of the anxiety he caused me. It’s over. I have no strings attached. It might have been to my detriment, but he became such a pillar for me. I slouched on my futon and tried to imagine how his absence would change my life. The thought didn’t last long, however, because I settled on the fact that it didn’t change much. He is away at college and I am not. Next year I will attend a college a thousand miles away and he will not. I will meet new people and he will too. Situations change our hearts and minds, and the two of us are no exception.
I cried for sixty seconds, no more than five tears. I’m not sure why there was such a lack of emotion as I reflected on the sum of our relationship, although it is most likely credited to my inherent expectation of us parting ways. I wish I knew how he felt and what he thought about post-breakup, but I am also glad that I don’t know. Knowing would perpetuate what’s already ended; but, no matter how much time goes by or how much is forgotten, I will always wonder why, before he hung up, he never said three.