Page 41 of Our Final Encore

“I’m sorry. I just can’t do this, Alex. It’s too hard, I didn’t think it would be, but it is.” My voice cracks on the last word.

He takes another pause. My fingernails bite into my palm, and a silent tear slides down my cheek, my throat closing up the way it does when I need to cry but don’t want to. So many times in my life I’ve held back tears, always believing the situation didn’t warrant them.Someone else has it worse, that’s what my mom always used to say when I’d complain about something. So I learned to keep my emotions hidden, pretend that I was tough and nothing could hurt me. But the entire time, I was broken inside. And now I feel like all that fake toughness is collapsing into itself. All those years of holding it in are coming to an end.

I don’t want to be tough anymore.

“Fine,” he says.

“Fine?” I stare at his blank face on the screen.

“I’m doing everything I can. If that’s not enough, I don’t know what to tell you.”

I snort a humorless laugh. “Everything you can? Alex, I’ve hardly spoken to you in weeks.”

“Fuck!” I hear something crash in the background. Did he punch something? Kick something? That isn’t like him. Alex is the gentlest guy I’ve ever met. What is happening to the man I loved?Loved.

No, I still love him. Even though he’s slipping away from me, I do still love him.

“Maybe you’re right.”

I wipe at my wet face. “What?”

“You’re right. It is too hard.” He sighs. “I’ve gotta go.”

He hangs up before I can reply, and whatever was left of my heart slides right out of my chest onto the floor.

I sit there for a moment, stunned and confused by what just happened. I’m not sure what I expected, but I certainly didn’t expect that.

He doesn’t care.

For what seems like hours I lay in bed, my face pressed against my soaked pillow, until I eventually fall into a restless sleep. I wake up and a wave of anxiety swallows me whole as soon as I come to. My alarm clock tells me it’s only 3:00 am.

I grab my phone, hoping that maybe it was all a bad dream. Maybe I’ll have a text waiting for me from him that will make me feel better, but I know that isn’t the case. This is my new reality and I’m going to have to get used to it.

Knowing that sleep is nowhere close now, I mindlessly scroll through my usual apps, trying to distract myself any way that I can. When I open Instagram my heart drops, and I blink a few times to make sure I’m really seeing what I think I’m seeing.

The first post on my feed is a tagged photo of Alex, a lazy smile plastered on his face with his eyes closed. He looks halfasleep. His arm is lazily draped over Alexa’s shoulder, and her ruby red lips are turned up into a grin. I check the timestamp; posted one hour ago.

I’m going to be sick.

Wiping more angry tears from my puffy face, I block his Instagram account first, then his number. As if on autopilot, I make sure every single one of his social media accounts are blocked. Then I delete every photo of us that’s in my phone, each one causing my heart to break a little bit more, but I know what I have to do.

I have to eradicate Alex Anderson from my memory and move on with my life, as if he were never a part of it. No matter how much it may crush me, I have to forget him.

He’s clearly already forgotten about me.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Alex

It’s funny how quickly life changes. How during your entire childhood you can watch a man destroy his body with a substance, wondering why he cares more about drinking than his own kid, and then seemingly overnight, you turn into someone just like him.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

When I sit up in my tiny makeshift bed, my stomach instantly churns and my head screams at me to lay back down.Fuck, my hangovers aren’t usually this bad.

I guess this is what happens when you combine drinking with pills. I’m not even sure what kind they were, but I was already fucked up when someone offered them to me, and for some reason I didn’t think twice before popping them.

Who am I kidding? The reason is I don’t know when to stop, or how to.

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