The List
Chapter 11
By: Erynn*Alice
I walked into the gallery quickly. I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with Heather’s babble or Gaylord’s self absorbed chit chat. I just wanted to work, finish work, and go home.
No, actually, I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere else. If I went home I’d have to give Eric my answer. If I didn’t go home, I’d run into Billy and have to tell him something really horrible.
Something really, really horrible. I was falling apart. I couldn’t breathe. Everything was moving, except me, I just stayed put while everything around me morphed and changed and got fucked up.
I cheated on my fiancée with one of his projects. I deserved a million bad things in no particular order. I wanted to die, to be put out of my misery just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it all.
“Love fucks everything up, huh?” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned around quickly and starred at Billy. He looked lost and sad and lonely. I wanted to die. I wanted to die. I wanted to be dead.
I swallowed my emotions, realizing that death was the worst solution. “Billy,” I started. I wanted to cry and run into his arms and just run away. I couldn’t cry or move or anything. I felt paralyzed standing there in the middle of one of the showrooms.
“Listen,” he moved closer. I tried to move so that I could be closer. I couldn’t. “Eric told me he knows about us.”
I nodded. Words? No, words were impossible.
“Did he do that to you?”
I shook my head. “I fainted and slammed my head on the counter.”
“Did you really?”
“Swear. My counter is all dented and bloody. I swear to God.” I was surprised that my words actually came together to form rational sentences. I didn’t know I possessed the power at that moment.
“Are…are you guys, you know, still together?” He stumbled over his words and looked back and forth from me to the ground.
I sighed. “Love fucks everything up.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
I don’t know what I mean! I don’t know! I don’t know! I just want it all to be better. I just want to burn that list. I just…I…don’t know.
The words were gone again. I shrugged and walked over to the bench, realizing that the pictures on the wall were mine. I hadn’t really noticed which showroom I ran into when I walked in the gallery, I just wanted to hide.
I looked around nervously. There was nowhere to hide. No where at all.
“Jace, he’s your fiancée.”
“I know.”
“If you love him,” he paused and took a deep breath. “If you love him, you should be with him.”
I kept quiet and felt the emotion sweeping over me. There wasn’t a single word in left in my vocabulary. I felt like a circus sideshow.
I knew I loved Eric. I knew I loved Billy. I loved them both differently and there was no way around it. I was so completely stuck, so completely lost. I didn’t know which way to turn. I just wanted to run away.
So, I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. Before I could get a word out to stop him, he turned and left. He left me sitting there in the middle of my showroom, feeling so alone.
“He can’t love you like I can.”
Eric’s words echoed in my head. Over and over again. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run after Billy and ask him where we were going, if he loved me, if he could love me better than Eric, if he was everything the list said he was.
I couldn’t move.
I did nothing and felt so helpless. Gaylord poked his head into the showroom, but quickly walked away, sensing I was would implode at the next human voice that reached my ears.
I grabbed my purse which I had set at my feet and walked calmly out of the gallery. My shoes clicked against the wood floors as I picked up pace, eventually running. I hailed a cab after I had gotten a significant distance away.
“Where to, miss?” the cabbie asked. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I should tell him to take me home, or to Billy’s, or to the studio, or maybe back to the gallery. I finally decided and told him the address to Baelee’s townhouse in the classy Upper East Side.
I walked up the steps to the big red front door. She answered.
“Baelee,” I sighed in relief. “I need to come in.”
“Of course.” She ushered me into the house with her arm around me. Tears began to cloud my eyes. She asked about the scar on my forehead and I explained to her exactly what had happened. I told her about why I fainted and what happened and why I was crying. I spilled my heart for an hour and a half.
I reached for my purse and pulled the evil list out. “I want to burn this thing. I never want to have to see it again. Never. It’s the source of all my problems.”
“We should do it outside. I don’t want my house burning down.” I nodded. She grabbed her lighter and we walked out into her tiny backyard.
I glanced over the list a final time and then set the lighter at the bottom of the page, setting the paper ablaze. I dropped it onto the grass and watched it turn black and disintegrate.
I knew the destroying of the list wouldn’t solve any of my problems, but at least it wouldn’t create more. I was already so lost and confused, I didn’t need one more item on the list glaring back at me and making me question whatever choice I made on who to stay with and who to let go.