Guy Hater

by Ethan Asher

  The lump in my throat grows larger by the second. Pretty soon I won't be able to breathe.

  “I was going to offer you the job, Charleigh. And I’m still willing to offer you the job, but it seems like you’ve already made up your mind.”

  I nod because I know if I try to speak now nothing will come out.

  Christiana presses her lips together into a thin line and shakes her head. The disappointment in her face tells the story she doesn’t want to speak. She thinks I’m making a terrible choice. She thinks I’m throwing my career away. And at this point, I don’t think she’s wrong.

  “Send Andrea in,” she says, turning her attention back to the papers on her desk.

  I don’t have to look for Andrea because she’s already waiting for me at my desk. “You look rough,” Andrea says as I pass by her and collapse into my chair. “So am I going to have to show Christiana this—”

  "Just go." I point to Christiana's office. "She wants to talk to you."

  “I knew you’d come to your senses.” She leaves a few seconds later, gloating in self-made misfortune.

  I try to bury myself in work, running through the checklist of tweaks that were brought up during the blue tape walk-through, but it only helps for a brief moment. My mind keeps returning to what happened. And then to how I treated Guy. That’s the worst part about all of this. He told me he loved me and I ran away without saying anything.

  I’ve never felt so much regret in my life. It’s so heavy and painful and it follows me everywhere. One second I’m crying, the next laughing—no rhyme or reason to the swift, unpredictable change in emotion. There’s a constant pain in my chest and moments when I can’t breathe and think I’m about to die. It’s terrible but nothing less than what I deserve for deserting the person I love.

  I love Guy, but I let him go.

  He deserves better.

  “Charleigh, dear. Could you run out and grab me a triple Venti, half-sweet, nonfat, caramel macchiato?”

  Okay. It hasn’t even been one week since I removed myself from the running and Andrea thinks she’s my superior. I don’t even dignify her request with a response or even a glance.

  “Charleigh. Dear.” She taps on the top of my cubicle. “Are you alright?”

  I look at her for a brief moment and then turn my attention back to work. I’m finishing up one last email before I head out to Guy’s house to look at a few minor details that Ryder’s finishing up. I text Guy to see if he wants to join, but just like the last messages I’ve sent him, he hasn’t responded. I don’t expect him to either.

  “Well?”

  I hit send and then glance one more time at Andrea. “What?”

  “My coffee.”

  I stand up and grab my purse off my desk.

  “That’s better,” she says as I pass by her.

  I come to an abrupt stop, wondering whether it’s worth my time. It takes only a split second to come to the conclusion that yes, yes it is.

  “Oh,” I say, turning around. “I’m not getting your coffee. I’m not doing a single thing for you because you’re not my boss. And you never will be.”

  Andrea scoffs, folding her arms. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, because do you really think Christiana is going to pick you for Lana’s replacement?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  A scrolling list of reasons unrolls in my head, but I choose to go with this simple observation. “I’m no longer in the running. Who else in this office is up for the job? You. There is no one else, so if she was going with you, she would’ve tapped you for it already. Right?”

  The look on her face is a mix of shock, anger, and a touch of fear. It's a good look on her and makes me feel a tad better as I head to my car. But that miniature high crashes to the ground when I see a one-word text from Guy.

  Guy: Busy.

  I throw my phone into my purse, turn on the radio, and blast it as I try to drown out the noise in my head.

  Busy.

  The single text I received from Guy this past week. Coincidentally, it’s exactly what I’ve tried to be in order to keep my mind from wandering back to him, but it hasn’t worked whatsoever.

  Work has been a mess. Now that my first and possibly final project is done, I’m back doing grunt work for Christiana. Back to doing everything she doesn’t want to do. Back to being on the lowest rung of the totem pole.

  One look at my apartment makes it clear that my life is a mess as well. Empty pints of ice cream, pizza boxes, and Chinese food containers decorate my floor like some modern art interpretation of my depression.

  The only thing that’s kept me going is helping Marissa with her wedding. Now that it’s at Guy’s house, she’s enlisted me as a quasi-consultant. But it’s still not enough to keep my mind from drifting back to Guy and where I left things with him.

  It’s my fault that I’m in this mess, figuratively and literally.

  I wade through the mess of filth lying around my living room and head into my bedroom. With throwing myself into other work, I’m exhausted by the end of the day, so I still haven’t unpacked everything. Half-opened boxes are strewn haphazardly across the room, but I somehow manage to make it to my bed without tripping over something and breaking my neck.

  The only comfort I’ve had is looking over photos of the renovation. Every now and then there’s a picture of Guy, and it makes me smile. But only for a moment. It’s happening again right now. I’m looking at the first photo he sent me: him shirtless and sweating as he poses in front of the load-bearing wall he eventually took down without my permission.

  Even though I was so mad at him for it, I secretly liked that he took the initiative. I wish I could go back to that. I wish I could go back to the time when things between us were fine.

  Marissa: Stop moping.

  I stare at the screen for a while. It’s strange how Marissa seems to know exactly what I’m doing at any given moment. As though she’s bugged my apartment with cameras.

  Actually…

  Charleigh: I’m not moping.

  Marissa: Have you finished unpacking yet?

  I glance around and then respond in the affirmative. It’s a test to see if she really has bugged my apartment.

  Marissa: Send me a picture, I want to see.

  I send her a picture of the only finished room in the apartment: the bathroom.

  Marissa: Wow. Nice shower curtain. Spacious too. How about the rest of the apartment.

  A period instead of a question mark. I know she means business.

  Charleigh: Low battery, my phone’s about to die. Maybe tomorrow!

  Marissa: Don’t make me come over there.

  I take another look around the room. It really is a complete mess. I can’t believe I let this happen. Even though these past few weeks have been extremely painful, I should’ve never let it come to this point.

  Charleigh: Why don't you come over tomorrow? You can see the place and we can get some ideas I had for the decorations.

  Marissa: Okay!

  I need something to jolt me out of this, and plans with Marissa will do just that. I get to work, and in a matter of hours, the apartment is beginning to look like an adult lives here and not a caveman and/or a litter of pigs.

  I start in on the unopened boxes. The first one is packed with some of my stuff from my room back at home. CDs and notebooks filled with random stuff I wrote when I was a teenager. After flipping through all of them and reading a select few entries, I come to the conclusion that it would be in my best interest to burn them in their entirety to spare any unsuspecting victim from cringing to death.

  I set the box aside and open up another. Sitting at the top of the box is the sign that Ryder salvaged from Guy’s house. I’d had it framed with a picture I’d found in my mother’s scrapbook that showed Guy and his parents out in front of the house. I was going to give it to him once we finished the project, but I completely forgot about it until now.

  I take it out along with the card
I was going to give him and set them both down on the floor in front of me. I pick up the card and a picture falls out. It's a picture of Guy and me at the end of kindergarten. We're both smiling wide, and I'm holding the painting that he'd torn up.

  I can't help but tear up as I look at it. Even at that young age, we were able to mend our relationship. Why not now? He gave me that picture, and I forgave him.

  Now it’s my turn to do the same.

  36

  Guy

  Charleigh: Can we talk? I’m sorry.

  Isn’t that what I tried to do? I tried to talk with Charleigh and work through the problem with her together, but she shut me out. And now she wants to talk? It’s like a slap in the face, and I’m not going to entertain such a small gesture.

  I slide the phone back into my pocket and glance at the highway in front of me. It’s almost midnight and the road is quiet. We’ve hardly seen a single car pass in the last five minutes. But to be honest, I haven’t been paying attention.

  No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about Charleigh. Even now, after stowing my phone, there’s an urge prodding me to take the phone out and call her. She’s coming around, it says.

  That might be true, but after the dead air between us, I need something more than a flimsy apology through text. I’m tired of chasing someone who doesn’t know what they want. I know exactly what I want: Charleigh. And I’ve pursued her relentlessly. But I’m tired of running on this treadmill and getting absolutely nowhere.

  I turn to Maddox. He's inspecting the speed gun like it's an alien object, turning it over, tapping on different parts. I'm a little surprised he hasn't tried to take a bite out of it yet. "You up for a drive?" I ask.

  He looks at me silently for a moment, still fiddling with the speed gun. Then he nonchalantly says, “Fuck yeah.” He blinks a few times and then drops the speed gun in his lap.

  “Good, because I can’t sit here any longer.”

  “Where are the speeders and drunk drivers? I need some action.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re this bored.”

  He nods his head. "Yeah. I guess you're right." After a few moments, he slowly turns his head to look at me sidelong. "But we could pull someone over. Tell ’em they were drifting. Could give us something to do."

  I stare at him blankly as I put the cruiser into drive. He shrugs, leaning back into his seat as we head out. We cruise for a while, taking random exits and circling back onto the highway. There’s been absolutely nothing to distract me from my thoughts. Charleigh still owns the inside of my head, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  “Where the fuck are we?” Maddox asks.

  Maddox’s voice jolts me back to reality. Shit. I’d been so focused on Charleigh that I have no recollection of driving here.

  “I zoned out, I guess.”

  We pull up to a stop sign, giving me a few moments to look around and gather my bearings. It’s a rural road with a four-way stop that looks vaguely familiar.

  “Shift’s over. Let’s get out of here already.”

  I hold up a hand to stop him as I look around. He shrugs and then pulls out his phone. It takes a few moments, but when I see the white cross, it hits me hard. The cross is new, freshly painted. Someone's been maintaining it. There's a fresh bouquet of vibrant flowers resting on the ground in front of the cross.

  I’ve done everything in my power to avoid this intersection even though it’s the shortest route back to my house. I hop out of the car and Maddox says something, but it rolls off me.

  The distance is short between the car and the cross, but seconds seem to dilate into minutes as I walk. It’s hard to breathe, and my vision narrows into focus, the bright white cross the only thing I can see.

  When I finally reach it, I collapse onto my knees, the damp soaking into my pants. My throat constricts and it feels like I’m being slowly choked. I reach out and trace the letters of my parents’ names etched into the wood. It’s been nearly fifteen years since that night, but the feelings flowing through me make it feel like it’s just happened.

  Distant memories wash over me in no apparent order. Birthdays and outings. Playing catch with my dad in the back yard. Family dinners and holiday events. Memories that I’ve not thought about in years flood back with such ease and with so much force that it’s difficult to process it all at once.

  “Dude, you okay?” Maddox asks. “You’ve been here for like fifteen minutes.”

  “Yeah,” I say, clearing my throat as I stand. “I’m fine.”

  I walk past him, but he doesn’t follow, standing in the same spot, no doubt making the connection between the names on the cross and me.

  I make it back into the car and start it up. Maddox is silent for once when he hops in. I make a U-turn and just after we pass through the intersection, a white truck whips past us in the opposite lane, blowing through the stop signs.

  It hits way too close to home.

  Maddox pops the sirens and then smacks the dash. “Let’s fucking go!”

  The tires squeal as I make another U-turn and then smash the gas to pursue the truck, which is already just a white dot in the distance. It takes nearly a full minute to catch up to the truck and when we do, it’s clear that the driver’s drunk. He’s drifting from the shoulder and then into the opposite lane.

  He’s completely oblivious to the sirens and flashing lights behind us as he drives for another couple minutes, slowing down, speeding up, drifting and swerving.

  “About time,” Maddox says as the driver pulls onto the shoulder. The car is hardly in park before I’m out of the car and charging for the driver. And when I see the driver’s face, everything blurs around me.

  I see him. I see the face of the driver who smashed into my parents that night.

  I leave my supervisor’s office and head to my desk to grab my things.

  “What’s the damage?” Maddox asks me as I approach.

  “One month unpaid leave.”

  “Unpaid? Shit, man. No admin duty?”

  I shrug. It’s a light punishment for what happened, even though I don’t remember any of it. Apparently, I forced the driver’s side door open and ripped the driver out of his car and tossed him to the ground. Thankfully, Maddox pulled me off him before I could do any physical harm to the man.

  “Where are you headed?” Maddox asks.

  “The guy’s still here, right?”

  “Monty? Dude, bad idea.”

  “Relax. I’m apologizing.”

  “You know the sarge is going to lose his shit if he catches you talking to him.”

  “I’ll take the risk.”

  Maddox shrugs. “Your funeral, bud.”

  I know this is the last thing I should do right now, but it's the only thing I can think of that will make me feel less like a piece of shit. There are four people in the drunk tank, all of them in various stages of inebriation. One of them is having a conversation with himself in the corner, two are asleep, and the last is sitting on the floor with his head in between his knees.

  I tap on one of the bars with my knuckles. Neither of the sleeping drunks moves, while the chatty drunk in the corner glances at me in the way drunks do when they're trying hard to concentrate on something, usually not throwing up. He stumbles toward me.

  “They’re poisoning us, man. The chem-trails. MKUltra. The reptilian overlords are trying to control our minds.” He taps his skull as his eyes grow wide. “Do you have any weed, dude?”

  “Seriously? I think you’ve had enough for all of us.”

  About halfway through my sentence, he gets enthralled with his previous conversation with the wall and heads back to his corner. I look back at the guy who had his head between his knees, and he's staring at me. I motion for him to come over, and after a few moments, he struggles to his feet and walks toward me.

  He's got the telltale physical signs of a long-term alcohol abuser. Redness the extends across the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. Puffy and bloated and
overall just rundown. I see his kind a lot, but there's something about him that's familiar, and it's not because of our interaction earlier.

  Neither of us talks. I'm trying to figure out why I have this strange feeling in my gut and chest while he's waiting on me. He won't make eye contact with me as he sways slowly, trying to maintain his balance. I move my head to get a better look underneath his dirty, ragged hair that frames his patchy beard. Even now he still reeks of alcohol.

  Finally, he turns, and when I see his eyes, the realization hits me. I’m looking into the same set of eyes I kept seeing every night for years after my parents’ accident, but now they’re set in a younger face. The man’s son. Monty.

  "I'm sorry, man," he says, grabbing the bar. He bites down on his lip. Shakes his head. "I'm a fuck up. Plain and simple." He snorts. "Like father, like son. This shit's in my blood. There's no escaping it."

  I don’t even know what to say at this point. I’d always wanted to confront the man who killed my parents, but he died long before I had the courage. And now that I’m face-to-face with his son, I don’t know what to think.

  He looks at me for a brief moment before looking back down at the ground. “I don’t know, man. I’m sorry.” He turns around and heads back to the same position he was in when I arrived.

  I stare at him and can't help but see a part of me. I was angry and lost and incapable of escaping the downward spiral brought on by my parents' accident. He's in the same spiral, but it's lasted his entire life. It's all he knows.

  “It was Charleigh’s idea.”