Exits

“I just don’t get it,” Morgan said, “I don’t see where this is coming from?”

            Mascara had lost its grip on her bottom eyelids and was edging away from her long dark lashes. She slumped her head down, burying it between her knees to keep from showing him that her anger had subdued into a sadness written all over her face in surfacing tears. Sitting on her bed she balled herself up like a kid playing ‘crack the egg’ on a trampoline, wrapping her arms around her shins and clutching her elbows with her hands. The end of day dull dusk light swam through her curtains beside her headboard.

            “Can’t you see you’re breaking my heart?” she asked, looking up at him, an obvious distress call. The argument was heading into unfamiliar territory, into relationship darkness, beyond a battle line where words are said and things are ended. She felt him slipping away. This was the time for corrections to be made. Alternate routes needed to be evaluated. She looked up, her cheeks red, wet, swelling; her vulnerability a waving white flag. Her silk sheets bunched around her like ripples. Her comforter in the soft pastel print duvet cover was pouring off of her mattress and bed frame and onto the hardwood floor. Clothes lay in piles around the studio apartment. A bowl of cold, half-eaten white rice and noodles left sitting on her nightstand and the room smelt like the sweet chili pepper sauce she had put on the noodles. Jack had always wondered how anyone could sleep in the same room they cooked their food in. He would casually pry at her housing decisions,

“I thought society evolved past this.” He’d say under his breath while replacing the rear chain on her bike in what was her living room, closet and kitchen.

This was one of the things that had begun to annoy him about her. Her lifestyle had no rooms, it all happened in one place. That and she basically used her nightstand as her kitchen table, mainly eating meals while watching episodes of TV shows on her laptop in bed.

            She was gorgeous and that counted for something. Jack had always liked going places, mostly clubs and upscale restaurants and watching the eyes of both males and females move all over her like adoring fans. She was fairly petite with cute features. She dressed well, that is too say she looked good but didn’t have a definitive sense of fashion. She mostly wore outfits from high-end labels that were probably picked out by store employees at her request. She constantly criticized the stylistic decisions of those moderately comparable to her own when worn by other women and loved to degrade attire as either ‘too trendy’ or ‘tacky’.

           

            “This just isn’t what it used to be.” Said Jack. He had been thinking of how to escape and leave her apartment but the idea was getting tricky. He imagined himself abruptly turning, storming out the door and taking quick strides down the hallway. He imagined himself opening the two glass panel doors that led to the brick stairway of her building and feeling the cold night air on his face. The taste of freedom. He imagined making a point not to look back. This was probably the humane thing to do. Like pulling off a bandage all at once in one clear and focused effort. She’d hate him. Call him an asshole to her friends. Discuss his irresponsibility to her mom. Every shitty thing he had ever done to her in their two-year relationship would be scrutinized as a warning sign. The time he lost his temper in the car ride to his parents house when it was dumping snow outside and he called her a ‘snobby bitch’ and asked who she had to blow to get a piece of paper that said she had a degree in communications. The time he told her that she needed new friends. The time he forgot to pick her up from work and then forgot again the next day. These were the kinds of things that he’d be remembered for. They’d be underlined in red if he fucked it all up now. He needed his legacy to be reputable. His record needed to be clean. He couldn’t have every guy she was with after him seen as a saint in comparison.

            Also, and probably most important, somewhere deep down where ideas and feelings go to hide, he needed to know he could come back. That she would have him, if he, say, changed his mind and realized it had all been a mistake. If he realized they were right for each other he couldn’t have himself panicking when she didn’t answer the phone or didn’t return his texts. He didn’t deal well with things out of his control.

            So he eased her down slowly. He predicted he had about another hour until she calmed down and he could leave. That was as long as they didn’t hit any snags along the way. If all went well he’d be in his car by 8:00pm and back at his condo by 8:20ish. Plenty of time to finish some of the tasks he had assigned himself for the weekend, it being Sunday night and most of his weekend spent passive aggressively managing conversations to get Morgan and him in the place they were in now. He considered himself a semipro at breaking up with girls without ever really breaking up with them. Initiating subtle arguments and manipulating objectives so the outcome felt reasonably agreeable if not mutual.

            “It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you,” he said, “it’s just that I don’t know if either of us are at a place where we should be doing this. It’s getting so complicated. You don’t have time for yourself and I am always feeling so guilty for not being around.”

            “Guilty? Don’t feel guilty.” She said almost shouting, “Why can’t we just be happy? Jack why can’t things just be normal? Why is it always something with you? Something is always wrong. If it’s not where I work, it’s how I think… I am never who you want me to be!”

“That’s not true.”

“It is! It’s true. Every week it feels like you find something wrong. You always tell me to be less dramatic, but I don’t even know what I am doing. I just lay here at night, I lay here and go over everything I did during the day and try to see things your way, but I can’t, I can’t see what you see. I don’t know what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.”

“And you stand there like this isn’t anything. What? Are you trying to leave? Go! I want you to go!”

“Morgan,” Jack said, “don’t.”

“And I know it’s hard,” her whole face swelled with tears, her words got mashed in her mouth and her nostrils flared, “but relationships aren’t supposed to be easy. Right? I don’t even know who I am talking to? Seriously! How am I the only one feeling any of this? Where are you?”

            “I am right here.” Jack said with no infliction of sympathy or remorse.

            “I know you are literally right there. Don’t say that. Don’t treat me like I am stupid.” The ‘pid’ got lost in a flood of sobs.

            Jack’s patience was beginning to feel tested. He inhaled a deep breath thinking how he needed to leave with her liking him and then released his lungs. He needed her to compare every warm body that lay in bed beside her for the rest of her life to the favorable memory of him. If she didn’t he didn’t see the reason for them ever being together. He’d feel like their time together was wasted. He wanted to win and if she didn’t remember him as something unforgettable and amazing he certainly wouldn’t be winning.      

            “Is there someone else?” she asked, “God, tell me there isn’t anyone else?”

            Her sobs grew louder and their rhythm faster to the point where she couldn’t catch her breathe. Like the blasts detonating at the base of an imploding building her uncontrollable crying set her face into a downward drop, drowning her swollen eyes and bending her features into ruble. Her soft hair falling over her face and sticking to her wet cheeks, running nose and lips.

            “There isn’t anyone else,” said Jack, “I just feel numb and you seem like you could use some time to think.”

            “You feel numb? That’s worse then cheating! I make you feel numb?” She emphasized the word shockingly as if to her surprise Jack had told her that she made him feel something so ridiculous it couldn’t be taken seriously. She pounded her fists on the silk sheets in frustration.

            And usually she looked so pretty.

            A part of Jack considered crawling onto the bed, apologizing, resting his face on her small shoulder and his hand on her thigh. She was wearing these tiny shorts; the kinds that have words printed on the back and barley hide anything. She was wearing a white tank top that was probably two sizes to small. He imagined himself sitting next to her, rubbing the small of her back saying,

           

I want you to help me figure all this out

I just haven’t been sleeping well

There’s been a lot on my mind

            I need you      

            She would cry some more, as they hashed through all of their emotions like guerilla militants with machetes slashing through jungle shrubbery. Eventually they would find common ground and they would fuck, Jack would eat the leftovers he’d put in the fridge a few hours earlier from the hole-in-the-wall Thai place that they had stopped at for lunch and then they’d go to bed.

            I would have to sleep here, thought Jack.

            This left him with two ways to play his hand. By the end of the next hour he could either be done, out, off, alone and free or he could get laid, eat and go to bed without getting to finish any of the chores he had left himself for the weekend.

            “Look,” he said, “I feel like this is out of my control. We need a break (i.e. forever), you need to work things out and I need to get my shit together.”

            “Get your shit together? Fuck you!”

            The room went quiet except for the low hum of the space heater Morgan kept on her dresser, Jack wasn’t sure how to respond to her so he waited. Recognizing that she wasn’t going to finish he said,

            “I don’t know it just feels like we’re forcing this.”

            He could feel himself getting further and further away from her and closer and closer to the frame of her entryway. Inch by inch. Drawing out his exit. Like pulling out a thorn little by little. He turned and looked at the door. It reminded him of Elis Island. The way one small thing can represent so much opportunity.

            Then, for once Jack decided to be the hero. Pull the bandage off all at once.

            “I’m moving,” he said, “don’t bother keeping in touch.”

            He turned, grabbed the doorknob and walked out of the room. He didn’t close the door behind him; he was too busy already moving through the hall and out the double glass doors of her building. He stepped into the cold night; shuffling down the brick staircase he saw that the moon was full. He got into his car, switched on his lights and drove away.