Milayna's Angel (22 page)

“Yeah, I’ll still be around when the group
needs me.”

“You’re… breaking up with me?” Tears pushed
at the back of my eyes.

“Yes.”

A tear escaped and slid down my cheek. I
swiped it away with the back of my hand. I looked at him; the lines
of his face were hard. He wasn’t the loving, caring Chay I’d fallen
in love with. I wasn’t sure who I was looking at.

“Why?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. He stared at me without
emotion.

“You… I mean… we love—”

“I don’t love you.”

And my heart broke. I heard it. I felt it.
Pieces bounced around inside my chest, slicing me to pieces. It was
as if someone took a hammer to it. Up to that point in my life,
nothing had hurt so much as those four words.

I don’t love you.

“But…” I didn’t know what to say. I struggled
to find the right words, to make him understand that life without
him seemed unbearable. To make him understand that I loved him.
Only him.

I didn’t realize I was twirling the ring he’d
given me around my finger. The metal, cool and smooth against my
fingertips, represented everything he was taking away.

“Keep the ring. I don’t have any use for it.”
With that, he got out of the car and walked to my door, opening
it.

I sat for a few seconds, processing what had
just happened—what he’d just done. Slowly, I gathered my things and
climbed out of the car.

My internal self-preservation kicked in, and
heartbreak rapidly turned to anger. I stood in front of him, the
open car door between us. Slipping the ring off my finger, I flung
it at him. It hit him in the face. I smiled slightly when he
flinched.

“Keep your damn ring.” I walked away.

I made it to the foyer before I lost it.
Dropping my things on the floor, I stood staring, seeing nothing,
before I crumpled to my knees and sobbed.

What just happened? How can I face him
again?

His words rang through my head over and
over.

I don’t love you.

They bounced around in my skull like a ball
in a pinball machine. Each time they hit, another piece of my heart
broke. I wondered how many pieces a heart could break into before
it stopped beating altogether. I was sure I’d find out.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat crying on the
cold, wooden floor in the foyer. Shadows moved across the wall, and
the room grew dark around me. Still, I didn’t get up. It wasn’t
until I heard my dad’s key in the back door that I grabbed my
things and hurried upstairs. I wasn’t ready to face anyone yet. I
wasn’t ready to tell anyone. Then it’d be real. If I didn’t say it
out loud, maybe it would go away and things would go back to
normal.

I lay across my bed and cried. My nose ran
and mixed with my tears. I didn’t care. I only had one thought—Chay
and the four words that had just crushed my life.

I don’t love you.

***

My room grew dark. I still lay across my bed
in the same position I was hours before. My mom had come upstairs
to get me for dinner. She knew immediately something was wrong. I
had to tell her. Reliving it, hearing it out loud, was almost worse
than living through it the first time. I didn’t go downstairs for
dinner, and I couldn’t eat the plate of food she brought me. The
thought of food made my stomach churn and bile rise in my
throat.

I just wanted to melt away. Forget the day
ever happened. Stay in my room until the pain disappeared.

A thought occurred to me, and I sat up on my
bed. That must be what my visions were about. The blood, the knife,
it was all metaphorical. He stabbed me in the heart when he broke
up with me. Somewhere, somehow, I knew it was coming. My
subconscious mind knew. The visions were a way to warn me, to
prepare me for the horrible pain. It didn’t work. Nothing would
have prepared me for it. Nothing.

I reached for my cell phone and called my
grams. I needed the purple couch. I felt safe when I snuggled into
the soft pillows. My grandma was an eccentric old lady—angel—the
kind of woman who had a purple couch in a bright yellow and red
living room. Somehow, it worked. It looked cool and I loved it
there, with the sassy purple couch and comfy handmade quilts.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Grams…” I started to cry. Or maybe I’d never
stopped. Either way, I couldn’t get any words to come out, just
sobs.

“Come on over, child. We’ll work out whatever
it is.”

My dad drove me to my gram’s apartment and I
snuggled on the couch, pulling a patchwork quilt over me. I could
hear my dad telling her what’d happened.

“Hmm,” I heard her say. “Let her stay here
for a couple of nights. A change of scenery will do her good.”

***

I lay on the purple couch for days. I didn’t
eat. I didn’t bathe. I barely slept. I just laid there… thinking.
And hurting. Mostly hurting. I felt hollow inside. It was as if he
ripped my very core out. They only thing he left was my heart,
broken and battered. It kept me alive—barely. So I could hurt.
Think. Remember. And then hurt some more.

Sunday afternoon, my grams announced, “Okay.
It’s been long enough.”

I slowly turned my head toward her.
Everything hurt. My eyes ached from crying. My nose was chapped. My
head hurt. My heart hurt. It plodded along in my chest. I could
almost feel it slowly, painfully constricting, pushing my
gelatinous blood through my aching veins…okay, maybe that was a
little melodramatic, but I hurt. My heart was in pieces, and I
didn’t think it’d ever be whole again. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to
be. Chay was all I wanted. Without him, what was the point?

“What’s been long enough?” I wrapped the edge
of my quilt around my finger.

“You’ve sulked long enough. No boy is worth
this many tears.”

Chay is.

“It’s time to get up, take a shower, and
rejoin the living.”

“Not yet.” I sighed and closed my eyes.

“Yes. Now.” She wheeled her wheelchair to the
couch and looked at me square in the eye. “Get up and get into the
shower. I’m cooking something to eat, and you’re gonna eat it. Now
go.”

Slowly, I slid off the couch and forced my
feet to move across the floor toward the bathroom. I concentrated
on putting one foot in front of the other. Just that simple task
was enough to exhaust me. I just wanted to sleep. When I slept, I
didn’t think. But when I slept, I dreamed, and Chay’s face, cold
and hard, haunted me.

I don’t love you.

Flipping on the water, I stepped in the
shower and let it run over me. I lathered my hair with my grams’
lavender-scented shampoo, running my fingers through the snarls and
knots.

I stood under the pulsing water until it
turned cold, and I was shivering. My teeth chattering, I turned off
the water and toweled off, pulling on a thick pair of sweats. I
walked into the living area, flopped back down on the purple couch,
and snuggled under a soft quilt.

“You have school tomorrow—”

I opened my mouth to argue. I wasn’t ready to
go back to school. I wasn’t ready to see Chay.

“I promised your dad I’d get you there,” my
grams said quickly before I could argue.

***

The next morning I got ready for school. I
didn’t try to talk my way out of it. I knew I was lucky my family
let me sulk as long as they did.

My grandmother was confined to a wheelchair.
Unless she was going to wheel me on her lap the ten miles to
school, I had to find other transportation. Luckily, she had a lot
of friends. Mrs. Richardson offered to drive me.

She was an old lady with eyes dull from
cataracts. She drove like a bat out of Hell. I saw my life flash
before my eyes several times during the ride, but somehow, we made
it to school. I wasn’t sure if I was happy about that or not, but I
was relieved that I made the trip in one piece.

“Thanks for the ride, Mrs. Richardson. My
cousin will give me a ride this afternoon.” I waved as her car
bounced off the curb she’d jumped when pulling up to the
school.

I decided I’d ask Muriel for a ride to and
from school while I was staying with Grams. I’d pay her gas,
whatever, as long as I didn’t have to ride with Mrs. Richardson
again. My stress level was already high enough.

I took a deep breath, turned around, and
faced the school building.

I’m not ready. I don’t want to go in there
and face him, face everyone. Maybe I can call a taxi and go
home.

“Hey.”

I turned and smiled. “Hi.”

“Grams said she was forcing you to come
today,” Muriel said. “Wanna walk in together?”

I let out the breath I was holding and
nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Muriel and I walked to our locker together
and grabbed the books we needed. People said
hi
as we passed
them in the hallway. I noticed a few staring a little longer than
normal, but not too many. I should have known Chay wouldn’t have
told anyone. He wasn’t the social type.

“No one knows?” I looked at Muriel.

“Just a handful of people. I’m not sure how
they found out.”

“Well, everyone is gonna know after today.”
We stood outside the door to my first period class. Chemistry. I
dreaded chemistry. Chay and I sat together—we were lab partners.
How was I supposed to face him?

“I’ll see you next hour.” Muriel gave me a
hug. “You’re stronger than this, Milayna. He’s a jackass for
letting you go. No one else in school will put up with his moods.”
She grinned, and I had to laugh.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Of course I am.” She gave me one final
squeeze and walked toward her first period class. She was halfway
down the hall when she yelled, “Colossal jackass!” over her
shoulder.

I could still bolt. It’s not too late to get
the heck outta here. Yeah, right. Just get it over with.

“Milayna?” my teacher called when I walked
into class.

“Yes?”

“Chay Roberts has transferred out of the
class. You and Xavier will be lab partners for the duration of the
school year.”

“Oh. Okay.” I turned and saw Xavier sitting
in the seat where Chay usually sat. My heart lurched and my
breakfast bubbled in my stomach, climbing up my throat.

No, this isn’t right.

“Xavier, do you mind if we sit at your table
instead?”

“Sure. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
He gathered his things and tossed them to the table behind him.

I sat next to him and waited for the
inevitable questioning to begin.

“He’s a fool,” Xavier whispered.

“Who is?”

He let out a breath and shook his head.
“Chay. He’s a fool to leave you.”

“What makes you think he has?” I pulled my
chemistry book out of my bag.

“The group knows.” My face heated from the
blush I was sure covered it.
The group knew. Great.
“We need
to know these kinds of things, Milayna. Otherwise, we can’t do our
jobs.”

I nodded.

I found out later that Chay had also
transferred out of the English class we shared. In a way, even
though it stung, I was glad. That left only one class I had to face
him in. Calculus—as if it wasn’t torture enough on its own.

Walking into class, I passed his desk without
looking at him. I was proud of myself. It wasn’t until I sat down
and looked at the board for the daily assignment that my bravado
faltered. He was watching me over his shoulder, his eyes boring
into me. I smiled coolly and flipped him the bird. His lips
twitched, holding back a grin. I was glad he found something to
smile about. I hadn’t.

By lunch, it seemed everyone in the school
knew our dirty little secret. I heard the hushed whispers as I
walked by tables in the cafeteria, or desks in class. I saw the
stares in the hallway and the looks of pity from people walking
by.

“It’ll get better,” Grams told me after
school that afternoon. “There’ll be new gossip in a day or two, and
you and the idiot will be old news.”

“I hope so.” I curled up on my favorite
couch. I could’ve lived on it forever.

“Take it from me, the wise old woman. I know
these things. High-schoolers are a fickle bunch. As soon as they
smell blood in the water, they start circling, but they can’t
resist another juicy piece of gossip. Soon they’ll move on, and so
will you.”

17

It’d been more than three weeks since Chay
broke it off. I rarely saw him at school and when I did, he didn’t
look at me, much less speak. He came to my house once because the
hobgoblins were running around making nuisances of themselves. He
stood in the far back corner of the yard and watched. He didn’t
come up to the house and when the little red pains in the ass had
their say, he jumped the fence and jogged home without a word.

“So…” Xavier said slowly one morning in
class. “I was wondering something.”

I sighed. “What?” I really didn’t want to
talk. I just wanted to finish the chemistry lab we were working on
and then crawl into the fetal position in the corner of the room
and sleep the rest of the day.

“Have you found your rebound guy yet?”

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to
say, but that definitely wasn’t it. “What do you mean?”

“You know, the guy you date right after a bad
break up. The relationship usually doesn’t go anywhere, it’s just
a, you know, rebound thing.”

“Ah, no. I haven’t found my rebound guy.” I
looked down at my chemistry book.

Please, please, please don’t let this go
where I think it’s gonna.

“Because I could help you with that.”

And there it is
.

“Thanks, Xavier, but I’m not ready to date…
even a rebound guy.”

“Then don’t date me. Just go out with me
Friday night. We can call it whatever you want.”