There Must be Some Misunderstanding

I guess you could say that our relationship was good, that is we enjoyed each other’s company and looked forward to seeing each other during the day for even a brief hello or a quick roundup of the day’s events.  It was comfortable, nothing serious with no real commitments other than bringing a brief bit of joy and happiness into each other’s lives; or at least that is how I viewed it.  It was done the right way, the way it should be in order to have the hope of blossoming into something more serious, something with commitments and responsibility on both ends, the friendship and trust was the foundation and felt unwavering and solid.  This is, of course, my recollection of how this relationship was unfolding and because of my growing emotional connection blinding me to the actuality of the situation; I began to conjure up delusions of grandeur which, in part, directly resulted in the collapse and possibility of any future with her.  If it wasn’t to be so then she didn’t do a very good job of deterring me from being drawn into her world, allowing myself to become a fixture of relief and solace to her doubts of self worth and agony of mediocrity.  And I was the white knight who played the part to perfection, building her back up with positive reinforcements; always harping on her amazing talents because at the time I truly believed she was amazing and could do anything, and her smile shot confidence into my soul which allowed me to conquer my own demons.  I became a motivational junkie to her ever present questioning of personal decisions and by using her trust I began to hone my craft to perfection, always finding the right path to her heart, the right combination to unlock that smile which I craved nightly.  This I thought would be enough, and in time was enough to allow her to see me for what I had become, not only a friend and a confidant; but the man who was sticking by her through the rain and the shit and the filth that life throws at you. The kind of stuff  that can make so many other wayward passengers on your journey retreat to higher ground, to not stand tall in the mouth of the beast.  I reveled in that challenge, and truly gained a measure of satisfaction in my own life, narcissistic as it may be, of taking credit for someone else’s happiness.  There were the times she would slip into my room late at night to lay next to me, to be held by me and to fall asleep in my arms whispering how peaceful this made her feel.  The way she would hang on me in front of other guys trying to gain her attention or other girls after mine, and to me it felt as if I had an impenetrable shield protecting me from the backlash of the world around us.  Gradually I began to slip out of the life I knew, the friends I had became ghosts in my foggy past and all I could see was the blinding white brightness of the future in front of me and this one thing should have scared me.  As a man who bases his life off of rational decisions, who can always see ten miles down the road and all the possible pot holes and caverns that you can fall into, I became romanticized into only seeing the good in the now and not staying true to my instincts.  What I failed to realize at the time was all of this, all the feelings, the emotion, the talks, the sex was merely a manifestation of my own longing for an idea or dream or maybe a god damn escape from the grind and pressure and scaring that had taken place over the years while I held up my iron clad exterior.  And I was fed up with it, all of the stress and comparisons and expectations I put on myself for success in all aspects of my life, I was at the breaking point and gladly ushered in a new era of forgiveness, not only from her but for myself.  She didn’t care if I tried to live my life to dominate every single thing I pursued and in time she allowed me to learn that it was alright to forgive myself for my own shortcomings, to let the failures and insecurities fall to the wayside and to move on; to gain what I could and take a new perspective on not achieving the highest standard every time.  This is what enthralled me with her; this was her hook in me just as my hook in her alleviated the self doubt she battled daily and in every single aspect of her life.  We brought comfort to each other’s lives and in retrospect this is what caused the fatal rift between our harmonious unions.  That and my inability to cope with the changing scenario of our relationship; to commit an act of sure fire relationship blasphemy, to reveal my true feelings first. 
         The night we both made first contact, when we both realized in our heads that this thing could have a chance, the seeds of friendship and passion laid, was simply referred to by us and the friends involved as tequila night.  Hanging in my room the semester before with my roommate and some other members of the team playing video games and talking about the upcoming weekend I was interrupted by her, standing at my door inviting me over to have a drink.  We had both lived on the same floor the whole year but never really got to know each other.  Basically this was a Tuesday night, I had classes in the morning yet here was this beautiful tan athletic freshman girl standing in my room with a bottle of tequila asking if I would like to enjoy the company of her, and some other characters, for an evening of storytelling and drinks.  I quickly excused myself from the group as cool and smooth as possible, not to look too desperate for her attention, yet eager enough to show I was interested.  The night became very hazy as within the first hour five or so shots had been taken by everyone in the room.  Spirits were very high and everyone was laughing and regaling stories of past conquests on and off the athletic battlefield when the story of her best friend came up, of why she carried his numbers around her neck.  There had been an accident, she started.  One involving a drunken teenager on a weekend in Fort Lauderdale with a bunch of friends and teammates, and a car which had no designated driver for the evening.  As she continued the story fleshed out, and now there was a tree with the same car, which didn’t have a sober driver, wrapped around it and bodies slew over the marshy grass in the cool breeze of the November night in Florida.  By this point, the mixture of Cuervo and heartache brought her smooth tan cheeks flush and the deep brown pools she intently used to study my expression began to fill with tears as she courageously marched on with her story.  Another couple of shots and limes and now I was reciprocating the pain of a lost friend.  And be that as it may, my story was not from the heart but rather from the depths of the evil lurking in the back of my head which only consumed me with the feeling of arrogance in the sight of this weakened beauty.  Quickly I conjured up a story equally horrific of a fictitious boy who I called friend, for lack of a better term, whose diagnoses of leukemia shook the foundations of my under developed emotions and thrust me into adulthood as I stood by helpless, as the cancer ate him alive.  The sheer devastation on her face from the dramatic and vivid detail of my own encounter with death, although quickly created through bits and pieces of my past carved over with generous doses of grandiose fiction, brought us both into a whirlwind of emotional chaos that only we understood as the rest of the room simply looked on in bewilderment to the train wreck they were privy to see.  Tears flowed freely and the hurt we both felt, yes I played the wounded and emotionally damaged to perfection, was eased by the knowledge that we had each other, for that night we were not alone and in the darkness and pain of our memories we were the two closest people on earth.  Everyone began to disappear and the emotional connection turned into physical as we embraced.  After this the fog overtakes us and in the deepest recesses of my memory I still can only gather snapshots of the ending of the evening; her face down in the toilet, her roommate holding her hair back and yours truly flying up and down the stairs in a belligerent state hollering for some kind of closure to the evening and not in the slightest bit realizing that my fabrication had no effect on myself but had caused catastrophic damage to this girl all in the name of trying to get her in the sack.  The next morning brought hangovers and headaches to all parties involved with the promise that no longer would we engage in this self destructive behavior when our responsibilities were to be given elsewhere the next morning.  Classes were missed and deadlines were pushed back but through the clouds and the aftermath the connection was forged, all be it in deceit, and the relationship began.
    Fast forward to the following semester, we decided to meet up one Thursday night around nine pm at her dorm room two floors below mine.  It was still early October and our athletic seasons hadn’t started yet, although we both had endured a rigorous pre season routine which left both of our mindsets focused on the task ahead.  I could feel something in her voice that made me sense that she was a little off tonight, and though she embraced me as always I was informed of the reason for the celebration.  From her description a guy on her floor, who she had become friends with, was celebrating his birthday and asked if she and her roommate would like to enjoy his company.  I was not made aware of this situation until I had arrived.  She was sitting by the blender on her bed wearing a tight blue short-sleeve polo shirt with jeans and her hair smelled of strawberries and her eyes and cheeks had been touched up with mascara and a light base of foundation (which I didn’t think she needed).  She was almost sparkling when I entered the room and her roommate introduced me to the man of the hour.  His stocky build was not much bigger or taller than mine and his long flowing curly hair and a scruffy look that reminded me of a homely man hiding under a box in the corner of an alley, shielding himself from the wind and rain.  He shook my hand and although I could sense he was sizing me up, I felt no threat from this kid whatsoever and began to enjoy my drink as I took my rightful place next to her.  The drinks of the night were screwdrivers and a special bottle of one hundred proof southern comfort for later on.  Shots were taken and drinks were mixed up and I began to learn about this new guy on the floor whose interest in her was more than a friendly hello around campus.  I could sense who he was; the subtle charm, the underlining meanings and the arrogant swagger were all too familiar.  People tend to have a hard time sensing when a monster is in their presence, usually until it is too late.  But I knew very early in our meeting that we, in fact, were one in the same, and beneath our surface and charm and charisma, was a darkness not spoken of aloud.  His intentions were no different than what mine were only a semester earlier except now I had let the emptiness subside and fill with the compassion and trust I had placed in her.  Suddenly, as he was captivating the two girls with stories of family wealth and distant travels to faraway places, I came to the realization that I was no longer the formidable suitor to harness her emotions and certainly not a worthy enough adversary to this pseudo-prophet with his Bostonian accent and street smart bullshit.  What seemed so obviously transparent to me about his demeanor was slipping by her undetected and now, using exact techniques I had honed over the last half year, was within striking distance of eliminating me from the picture.  If this was a war he had battle field advantage being only shouting distance from her, new artillery of stories to charm with and most importantly, was the next generation of equipment compared to my out dated charm and overused slogans.  I was helpless, fighting an uphill battle I was losing ground on every second but I stubbornly continued to push on, knowing that there was something more at stake than just my reputation and almost immediately a chill ran up my spine as I realized that I wasn’t really doing this to protect my ego, this was about turf warfare and what mattered to me the most.  She mattered and now I had put a premium, not only on her pussy, but on her emotions that I was not going to relinquish without a fight.  His smugness was beginning to fill the room which left it hard for me to breathe, let alone formulate a plan of attack.  Franticly I jumped at the alcohol shelf and began mixing one bottle of liquor with another with no coherent rhyme or reason behind it.  Questions flew in from all parties available wondering what on earth I was producing and in my manic state I couldn’t respond very soundly, simply assuring everyone that the next drink would be special for the birthday boy.  A little SoCo, some vodka, orange juice for coloring and a dash of coffee brandy (which was nearly gone so hey, why not?).  Blend it all up and pour and now you have a recipe for humiliation.  Let’s test the kids tolerance, see if he can really hang with the big dogs; I mean he was in the presence of the only standing survivor of Tequila night.  The drinks went down surprisingly smooth and a call for another round was in order.  Soon the girls were more than buzzed and it was almost ten thirty.  We begin to discuss food as a means to keep the alcohol flowing and to give everyone a little break from the torrid pace that was set earlier in the evening.  With everyone in agreement we begin to head up and for some reason I take off ahead and find myself alone by at least twenty yards.  Maybe the alcohol is hitting me more than I thought, and as I wait on the side of the street for her I nearly slip into a psychotic state as I see her skipping up the hill, holding this kids hand, smiling and laughing as they pass me by and she grabs my arm.  I am in such a state of shock she practically knocks me over the curb and I almost fall and she helps me regain my composure.  Her roommate can only look at me and from what I remember, sighs and walks past me as if emotionally disappointed in me for allowing this to happen or simply indifferent to the fact she is obviously not getting any attention tonight.  The food is picked up and eaten and the walk back to the room is silent and I have not said much other than asking the birthday kid about his plans and intentions for the year.  He has easily picked up on my sarcastic tone and proceeds to give me a line of bullshit on how he wants to change the world and give back and I want to shoot myself for giving him the opportunity to one up me again.  This allows her to initiate yet another deep and meaningful conversation with him that I am no longer able to manipulate and my grip on control is slipping farther and farther away and into my alcoholic state. 
         We return to her room and her roommate starts to gather her things together to call it a night and I pour everyone another shot, forcefully demanding the night not end so early and how awful hosts we would be to let the new guy not at least get drunk on his birthday.  A bottle of Dr. Mcgillicuddy’s is found under a bed and once again the irreverent mixtures continue and now she is passing on the drinks and I am left to drink it to myself.  In my anger and rage and lack of better judgment I finish off the blender filled death wish and now have the conversation turn to me.  Needing the boost I begin to answer the basic questions about whom I am and where I am from and take some playful ribbing from her as we share some inside jokes that let me see the smile I’ve been missing all night and leave our new friend out in the rain for a while.  But just as I feel the tides shifting back into my favor I catch his cool demeanor and non-challant attitude towards the copious attention she throws at me and watch it not even faze him.  I lose; I can’t win because he doesn’t care enough to engage me tonight.  Maybe he feels his strike will come when I am nowhere to be seen, or maybe, horrifically, his plan is just this; make me into the over eccentric bad guy and for him to play the savior who understands and can relate to the craziness that people can bring into your lives.  All this time I had been waging war on this guy whose ultimate intentions was to take what was rightfully mine right from under me, all the while he had stayed calm and reserved, letting me build myself into frenzy.  No, no, no.  I was visibly upset and didn’t hear the question being directed at me as I simply got up and walked out of the room.  No words were said, nothing needed to be.  She caught me half way up the back stairwell and grabbed my arm and asked what was wrong.  Tired was a good enough reason as any but she wasn’t buying it, and pinned my hips on the pillar sticking out of the wall.  Her hips were on mine and my hands made it to her waist and she smiled, kissed me and asked for my company back in her room for a little while longer.  My sight was becoming blurred and my thoughts were hallucinations manifesting in front of me yet I took her hand and walked back to the room where, he was now moving on to her roommate, which released a wave of tranquility over me.  I must have been blowing all of this way out of proportion; I mean why should I need to sweat this guy? I win, always have and always will.  Then, out of nowhere I was blindsided.  The bricks which build my ego and life up as high as the sky started to jar loose and fall from the heavens, clipping me on the way down.  It was inevitable, self destruction was in my nature.  As we returned to the room, our new friend, whose attention was now on making late moves on the roommate, (and who had finally succumbed for the time being to my heavy onslaught) made a comment which shouldn’t have evoked the reaction he got from me, but I couldn’t simply let this carbon copy asshole get away with one more smug comment.  Something along the lines of tracking me down and needing to put a tighter leash on me for my erratic behaviors.  She laughs and he laughs and I can easily let this slide but I don’t.  In a rush of furious rage I begin to sarcastically call him out for what he really is, sighting the bullshit all night and the lies and the “snake in the grass” methods he used to weasel his way into our evening.  She immediately snapped at me and he was thrown on the defensive, not used to verbal or possible physical confrontations.  I was told to back off, that it was all in joking and that no one was seriously angry with anyone but I wouldn’t let it go, and just as I was about to unleash the rest of my onslaught, he stood up and politely excused himself from the room, claiming he meant no harm and that he was very appreciative of the evening she had given him.  He hugged her and she apologized for my behavior and he said he would be seeing her later which led to me pursuing him outside into the hallway.  His hands were up in a defensive manner while I was screaming now at the top of my lungs for him to back the fuck off of my girl, that he didn’t know her or our history and that I knew exactly what he was doing.  Around this time in the evening, midnight I believe, the heavy blanket of blackout fell over me and the rest of the events took place in snapshots.  I was dragged into the nearby bathroom by her screaming and crying for me to stop acting like this; that I didn’t own her and she had the right to be friends with anyone she chose to.  I was now incoherently drunk, and in between screaming and crying hysterically I made it a point to tell her to go fuck herself and that I had more feelings for her that I should have told her about earlier.  We were both physically wrecked on booze and emotionally wrecked on feelings we couldn’t explain, and yet I felt like the only one betrayed that night.  A window was smashed and there was some blood and I found myself crawling up the stairs in the dormitory to reach my ultimate goal, which was my bed.  I didn’t make it very far (still one floor away) when I was found by my roommate and good friend draped across the stairwell, shirt off and bleeding, sobbing in a ball of chaos, and carried up the last flight in my bloodied and drunken mess.  I was mumbling the whole way, I fucked it up, I fucked it up and no one knew what had happened just that my body was in shambles and I sounded like I had went through hundreds of torturous rounds with the electro shock machines.  Soon after being tossed in my bed for the night I was able to feel the cut on my head and taste the blood which turned my stomach and had me holding on before I puked all over myself.  There was no one in the room and it was dark but I could hear voices outside the door.  As I made my way on my hands and knees whimpering to have someone open the door, I found my roommate talking to the birthday boy outside.  He was obviously explaining the situation to him before anyone tried calling the cops or reporting a mugging and they both looked at me, one in fear and one in disgust as my roommate picked me up and asked if I needed to vomit.  I shook my head, or just let it bob up and down, I can’t remember, and he asked the man whose arrogant and smug demeanor put me in this precarious situation if he would help carry me to the porcelain goddess to prey.  I wanted to throw a punch, I wanted to tackle him and smash his head off the brick walls but instead I fell limp in their arms and buried my face waiting for sweet release and hopefully relief that maybe I would wake up tomorrow and realize it was all one horribly vivid dream. 
         A loud bang from out my window and the voices of many passing through the corridors outside my room jolted me to conciseness.  Quite violently my head began to throb so hard I could keep pace with my heart on each thump and I slowly opened my eyes only to be blinded by the light in my room, forcing my head under the pillow.  What the hell happened last night? Did I do what I think I did?  My stomach aches almost as horribly as my head and I think to myself; at least I haven’t vomited all over the place.  I notice the waste basket sitting next to my bed with no bile floating in it and thank God, only to roll over to the opposite side of the mattress and drench myself in what seems to be gallons of human stomach trash and then the smell hits me.  My eyes adjust to the light and I notice, through my blurred contacts, that in fact I have puked all over myself and my bed and what looks like the wall too.  My roommate is still passed out across the room and I slug my way out of bed to strip the sheets and toss them in the bathroom until I can clean up and gather my senses of what happened to me last night.  There is a trail of blood leading to the showers, stained in small pools of black on the maroon carpet and when I enter the stalls, the smell of death consumes my nostrils, which leads me to vomit again in the toilet- not much, maybe a cup- as I rack my brain trying to relive the details of exactly what, or who brought me to this.  As I go to leave I catch my reflection in the mirror and am shocked-no, bewildered- as to why my face is colored red and how exactly I received the large gash on my forehead.  I look like victim number 2 in some cheesy B- rate horror flick.  I decide I need a shower before any cleaning is to be done and plan my trip to the cafeteria to ultimately load up on water and fruit, as to somehow quell the poison that has corrupted my body.  One shower later and I feel weak.  My body is shot from over exerting itself during the regurgitation stage of the evening and morning, and now I can barley hold my head up without tipping over sideways while I walk back to my room.  I sit down to the computer and notice I have four messages, all received between two and five in the morning, all from her.  I know what they say even before I open them and knowing that I still hesitate before clicking the box to accept the message.  You fucking son of a… Click.  I can’t even bring myself to read them, to see an inanimate line of thought on a screen that was forged in the depths of disappointment and anger.  I feel light headed when, coincidently, the very familiar snapshots from an event that takes place during a blackout come flooding into my vision.  A bathroom.  Tears.  Anger and hysteria.  That feeling when you know you’re well past breaking but completely and utterly broken.  Mentally broken.  The pain comes back, this time all over my body and I have to double over due to the severity of it rushing through my muscles.  This isn’t the pain one would feel from a hangover, no matter how severe, no this was a very different type of anguish; the kind only you can put on yourself.  That deep down burn when you know you’ve fucked up royally, when the embarrassment you feel for your actions outweigh even the most altruistic reasoning behind them.  I want to cry, I want to scream and put my face through the computer monitor, but instead I just sit there and stare off into space; past the blinking screen and through the wall to another realm where I learn to keep my mouth shut and cut my losses.  It’s defiantly over; no possible way to salvage what we had (or even the possibility of friendship?) and I am coming to terms with that slowly.  It’s thinking about the first contact we need to have, the awful awkwardness of it and even as the hangover begins to subside, (slightly) I still feel the need to vomit at the thought of what I have coming to me.
         It’s roughly eleven fifteen and I am lying on my back in the common area feeling the room spin around me, even though my eyes are still shut, and finishing off the last of the Gatorade that was left in the fridge.  I’m thinking now that, essentially, if I had just kept my dumb fucking mouth shut… Damn, what the hell was said in that bathroom?  I remember a lot of tears and crying, on both ends, and can’t seem to place the exact whereabouts the protruding wound on my face came from.  My roommate comes out and sits next to me, laughs and asks me to explain to him why I was such a wreck last night.  I don’t even know where to begin when he mumbles something under his breath.  I sit up to take another sip and look at him, waiting to hear what he said and sure enough it was what I thought.  “It was her”.  I tell him it’s all really foggy and the tail end of the night has escaped me forever, destroyed in the millions of brain cells I’m sure I killed only ten hours earlier.  He tells me that most of the glass and blood have been cleaned up by the janitors this morning and that no R.A.’s have been able to identify that it was me who was the destroyer of school property and he feels very confident that they will not run any DNA tests on the blood spatters that trail up to our floor.  I ask him how am I ever going to deal with this, deal with seeing her and having to explain my actions.  I know for damn sure I would need an explanation, no demand one, but as I think of something meaningful (not necessarily truthful) to tell her the excruciating pain returns and I have to close my eyes hard and erase any thought of her for the time being until, once again the hurt subsides.  He convinces me that after a good meal my mind will feel right again and my body will begin to cooperate.  I’m hesitant to leave the floor, let alone grab some food and put my face on display to the student body, just in case she is there.  Would she make a scene? Throw a fit, or would she simply ignore my existence?  All are very plausible options although the latter would really perforate deep, and be very hard to get over.  I bandage my head and throw a hoodie on, trying to cover as much of my damaged ego as possible, and we make our way up to the dining hall; with me creeping and sketching the whole way across campus. 
         It’s a bit warm out for a hooded sweatshirt and I notice that I look a bit out of place sifting through the line outside the cafeteria and so far there is no sign of her.  I am told to relax, that nothing bad will happen even if I see her because of how crowded lunch is today.  I fill up four glasses of water and grab a handful of grapes and sit in at the back tables near the windows which overlook the west end of campus, and provide an optimum level of cover from the entrance.  Nearing the end of my lunch I am now surrounded with an army of confidants and easily blend into the mode of the table.  The water I had has now cleared the last of the cobwebs in my mind and I am thinking clearly for the first time all morning, which brings a smile to my face as I engage the group.  No faster than I had begun to feel my spirits rise did I have them come spiraling down at an alarming rate as I was now able to see, entering the luncheon with the very familiar cast of characters from last night, was her.  I immediately lowered my head down and could feel my heart pounding through my chest cavity.  I began to sweat, my anxiety surged and the deep rooted emotional embarrassment I had been fighting off most of the morning returned in a wave of terror that cascaded over me, nearly consuming the entire table as I franticly planed an escape from my edible tomb.  My roommate nudges me but I don’t respond to his playful ribbing of the situation and feel my best option is to simply excuse myself from the table and run home.  While I make my way past the table, inquiries from all parties available fly in and I do my best to deflect them as I keep my feet moving forward, and eyes scanning the entire room looking to hone in on her whereabouts.  I make it halfway across the room using the excuse of stomach sickness as the most likely reason for my departure, although no one is really buying it and I’m sure my roommate is filling in the rest of the table on my indiscretions from the previous night, when I spot her heading right for my direction, leaving me no reasonable way around short of hopping over tables.  Instinctively, I latch onto the back of the girl in front of me and use her as a shield as we both now squeeze through the crowded room and as our paths are about to intersect, I jerk my body sideways-back facing her- and slip by undetected (or so I think) and can actually feel our shoulders rub together which causes me to press through the rest of the crowd.  Through the faint backdrop of conversations I think I can make out a, “Hey wait,” as I glide my way to freedom, unharmed and unaware of any casualties in my path.  The pain returns, this time heavy and thick as it rises through my body but the newly released endorphins and adrenaline allow my muscles to fight through as I am now jogging back to my room. 
         A few days go by and I have been able to successfully hinder all attempts to contact yours truly by imploring the help of everyone around me, as well as the usual dropped cell phone calls and the instant message deletes which have become a standard in all relationship breakups.  Through my constant eluding and evading I have still yet to come up with a plan, a course of action to take in order to alleviate the situation at hand and, along with the remorse I feel for allowing myself to become so subjected to the emblemizing farce of emotion, I begin to doubt the affects my conscience has on me.  And as I sit in my room, sheltered and hiding from this blasphemous act, this social faux pas, this unforgivable sin; a moment of clarity hits and I take a deep breath and feel the weight release from my muscles.  During this incredulous self revelation I begin to understand the severity of my actions and allow myself the dignity to overlook such atrocities, knowing that, in time all will be forgiven.  It was time to finally be accountable for the actions I have taken and own up to my destructive behaviors.  It is only a matter of time until we are forced to come to terms with what exactly took place and, possibly more importantly, why.  Wednesday evening, the same Wednesday which brought us tequila night and the possibility of hope would be the night which ends the disillusioned nightmare of which the last couple of days had been.  A little after seven or maybe eight at night, as I was reviewing the evolution of modern ethics in roman times, not realizing I had been staring at page two hundred and thirty four for the past hour, a very familiar knock came to my room.  I looked up, the door slightly ajar and could see the same beauty that had graced me with her presence no less than a year ago peering through at me, sullen look drawn to her face as she requested permission to enter.  Once again my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach, the brow of sweat crept down my face as I simply motioned for her to enter, too paralyzed to speak just yet.  My roommate, unsure of what to say or do, picked his awe struck jaw off the ground and began to exit the room, fearing that the firefight may catch him with friendly fire.  She stopped him and requested my presence in her room as to keep this as private as possible.  I mumble something to the effect of being right down and she, still hoping to make eye contact with me, allowed myself to gain composure before embarking on this frivolous yet mandatory conversation.  I enter the room slowly, maybe afraid of booby traps or a trap door but regretfully, I won’t get off that easily.  I feel as confident as possible and allow her to begin. 
She is mad yet looking extremely good.  Her hair is what I notice the most, very straight as it flows effortlessly over her shoulders and teasingly across her cheeks and corners of her mouth.  She starts by telling me how upset and disappointed she is that I would act that way.  She pauses, waiting for a response but I don’t budge, I begin to feel myself backing out of the original agreement I made with myself only hours before.  She continues, pointing out specific and explicit details which have completely escaped the emptiness of my mind and, for all I know could be completely made up but judging by the distraught look she exudes, I’m figuring its all true.  Many of the details are shocking for me to hear for the first time and because it is first hand I have nowhere to go to process the emotions I should feel, only the remote hope that she, in her own intoxicated blindness, has mistaken exact wording and can only through hate portray me as the evil she has.  The room is growing tighter around me, my ears are on fire and I am desperate for an escape.  I stop her suddenly and, with my most sincere tone apologize for any pain or hurt I caused her.  She looks at me perplexed and stutters, as if I have suddenly derailed her attempt to kick me down a level.  Doesn’t she know I can do that on my own?  She tells me that she has always felt like I was holding back some emotions for her but she was too embarrassed to bring it up to me.  She wanted to spare my feelings, that all I had was a little crush that couldn’t be reciprocated the same way I needed it to be.  The dagger which took down Caesar could not have pierced as deep as her painful, truthful statement.  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and allowed the comment to materialize within me.  The plan had changed and now I could not hold back from eliminating the hurt that she put on me.  I smiled, sly, devilish and quickly corrected her as to why I lost control of myself that night.  Not over a silly crush or any emotionally charged idea of heroism; which in fact was exactly the cause of action, but because I didn’t want to lose my place in line.  My words began to intensify as I was now removed from myself, watching like a spectator on the sidelines as the sheer macabre of it all enveloped the room.  I quickly moved to the subject of her feelings towards me, of why she insisted on being around in the company of a person such as myself.  I demanded answers on why she said the things she did under the covers, in the dark and away from the world.  Did it even mean anything?  How could my one act of emotional upsurge counteract the months of blatant lying she had been doing.  What normal man could stand up to such an onslaught and not end up exploding in such a manner as I had.  My emotions were now frayed but my voice stayed remarkably steady, just under a yell as I shut the door behind me.  The tears started to come and now she begins to defend herself, not meaning to lead me on in a false direction, trying to put the blame of my actions on her now but I won’t allow her to ease out of this.  She apologizes for her not being open about what she wanted and blames this on a lack of communication between the both of us.  She asks if the past has meant anything to me and I have to bite my tongue from revealing the altered and jaded lies which brought us together in the first place.  Instead I end the conversation in the most destructive way possible because I am no longer able to stop myself from hurting her.  She tells me that she doesn’t want to lose a friend and I almost snicker at the idea of anyone staying friends after something like this.  The last couple months, I tell her, were nice and very comfortable but, honestly, I am not going to lose sleep if you and I never speak to each other ever again.  I want to be hurting so bad inside right now but as the words trail off of my tongue and into her ears for her to process, I feel nothing.  It is as if I have taken all of my pain and suffering and thrown it into her and now, in the seconds it has taken her to process my inhuman comment about our history, she crumbles beneath the weight of my disgust for her now.  I watch her sit down, eyes locked into mine as she now loses herself in the ultimate form of rejection one can feel as you come to the realization that, in fact, your importance to another was nothing more than a fleeting afterthought.  I am called a monster, an asshole and then something that seeps beneath my icy exterior and into the void beneath; she tells me that she knows I am lying to her.  That there is no way I really feel like this because she has seen me at my best, true and loving, and refuses to believe that she couldn’t mean anything deeper to me than a fleeting fuck.  The awkwardness is now left the room and for the first time we are speaking openly and honestly with each other about the one thing which has stayed so taboo over the past several months.  I am taken off guard and scramble to find an answer to extinguish her flame of revival when she tells me to admit what is really bothering me.  For me to come clean and reveal my true feelings once and for all, for her to hear, from my own lips, what has kept me disgruntled for so long.  Many times in life we are put to a choice, a fork in the road where one path will be very hard but will ultimately lead you to the clarity you have been looking for and the other will appear to be the easy way, a lot less peril to go through and the road is smoother but this will inevitably leave you empty inside.  The answer was so simple it became scary, almost too horrific for me to take.  I studied her sitting in front of me, my leg had been shaking for some time and I forcefully had to make it stop, not trying to cover up the fact at all and began to choose my words very carefully.  I informed her that I was sorry that I allowed myself to act out in a way that was detrimental to our relationship not because of some crush, although I tell her I did like her, but because I was merely trying to protect her from the bullshit I knew our birthday friend was using.  I begin to stall again.  Furthermore, I tell her, my only regret is allowing her to see me in such a weakened and vulnerable state.  She cries some more and tells me it’s ok for me to feel like that sometimes but I cut her off.  I begin to explain that everything I have ever told her was for her benefit and not mine, that if she could take away something good from my rhetoric, it would be enough for me because I didn’t necessarily believe anything I had said.  This was a lie but I was now on a roll.  I say to her that I know she will start seeing this new guy, possibly dating him and she tells me that it is none of my business.  I smile, nod and continue, detailing her deceitful nature.  When I am finished she is not only emotionally broken down to nothing but knows I have now crossed a line which may not ever be forgivable.  I can feel the heat coming off the flames of the bridge I have just burned down and yet again she offers me one last attempt to redeem myself, for some sort of salvation so she won’t have to remember me as a monster; this destructive force.  She begins to nod and wipe the tears away from her eyes; her face still tan is now red, heat almost rising off of her, and her eyes puffy from rubbing the salty liquid away and succumbs to the notion of my utter apathy for this conversation only to request that we still remain friends after all of this gets sorted.  All I have to do is say yes and I will be forgiven for all of the horrible things I have said to her, to be able to be around her and to possibly gain a deeper meaning for her friendship. Looking back now I know I probably could have salvaged a friendship from the wreckage but the stigma of that night would hang over me and probably be used against me.  I look intently through her eyes, reach out to grab her hand, although she resists at first, and slowly ease out the words… If that’s what you really want then we can.  I offer a very forced smile and excuse myself from the room only after she can stand up and give me a hug.  I am dead weight in her arms and offer no emotional comfort to her then open the door to catch a couple girls huddled outside the room pretending to pass by as I make my way back to mine.  This is the last time her and I will ever speak.