You get a lot of stares when you buy bleach in bulk. Those stares are only amplified when your cart has gloves, sponges, and you look like you\u2019ve been through hell and back.<\/p>\n
To be fair, I need it. All of it.<\/p>\n
And I have. And then some.<\/p>\n
But this is my life. Has been for a while now. Always cleaning up another one of Jared\u2019s messes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so fucking proud of you, baller,\u201d he says to me, as I start to correct him on how I hate that name but stop because he\u2019s happy for the first time in months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just an internship,\u201d I tell him. \u201cAnd Jared, it\u2019s an unpaid internship.\u201d<\/p>\n
His smile doesn\u2019t fade as he runs, literally runs, across the bar and picks me up, spilling the drink tray I\u2019m holding.<\/p>\n
I let out a shriek as the regulars in the bar start laughing and clapping. Jared holds me with one arm and somehow maneuvers the laptop to play our song. Or, more accurately, what he thinks is our song.<\/p>\n
\u201cDance with me, Jules,\u201d he exclaims. \u201cWe\u2019re fucking celebrating!\u201d<\/p>\n
The drunks go wild. No one even notices that every time we play \u201cour song\u201d it\u2019s a different one. This go around, it\u2019s \u201cValerie\u201d by Amy Winehouse, which makes absolutely no sense. But neither do we. And neither does love. And you know what? Jared\u2019s right. We\u2019re celebrating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my girlfriend!\u00a0 The fucking ad exec!\u201d<\/p>\n
The patrons cheer and raise their glasses, some of them empty and all over the floor behind the bar. I don\u2019t have the heart to explain to them, as I would later explain, numerous times, to Jared. It\u2019s just an internship. An unpaid one. Which meant we were going to be bringing in less money. Which meant we were going to be seeing less of each other. Which meant our decision not to move in together was going to be questioned yet again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou, like, a serial killer or something?\u201d the cashier asks me.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t answer. I just want to be anywhere but here. Well, that\u2019s not true. I want to be anywhere but here or there, but we need our damage deposit back, so here is where I have to be right now and there is where I needed to be a few hours ago.<\/p>\n
The cashier\u2019s just staring at me. Like I\u2019m a fucking serial killer.<\/p>\n
Why won\u2019t she hand me my receipt?<\/p>\n
\u201cDeclined,\u201d I hear her say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d I ask, increasingly aware of the line forming behind me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour card,\u201d she repeats. \u201cIt\u2019s been declined.\u201d<\/p>\n
She hands it back. Of course it has been, I remember. It\u2019s Jared\u2019s card. There\u2019s nothing left on the joint account. There\u2019s nothing left on his account. I don\u2019t have an account. I reach into my purse and dig again for my wallet. Thank God the tip jar has been kind to us since I started the internship and kept the bartending gig.<\/p>\n
I tell her to keep the change. I get another look. I get the fuck out and head back to the mess that Jared has made of our lives.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me do this for you, Jules,\u201d he says, placing one hand on my shoulder and the other under my skirt. \u201cI love you, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJare Bear,\u201d I giggle. \u201cPublic, hon.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiles. One of his eyes looks directly at me, the other one slightly above me. His lazy eye was one of the first things I noticed about him. One of the first things that made me fall for him, the goofy, romantic bastard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m serious,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to spend the rest of my life with you. And this is, like, a step along that fucking amazing journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s brought up the lease on his apartment three or four times a day since I told him about the internship in the fall. He thinks that we should live together?\u00a0 Fine. We can do that. But he thinks it doesn\u2019t really count unless my name is on lease, which is fucking weird and all sorts of Jared, so I\u2019m about to cave.<\/p>\n
After all, he\u2019s right. We need the money. We need the security. And we are in love. But when he goes all Dark Jared, I just don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to be able to deal if we\u2019re working together, sleeping together, and living together. I know. It\u2019s selfish. But I\u2019m not above it. I need my space. I need my time. And I need my safety.<\/p>\n
Jared would never hurt me, I know that. But his moods, when they\u2019re not altered, are let\u2019s say\u2026 unpredictable. Last time we fought and he wasn\u2019t regulated, he beat the shit out of his best friend. They don\u2019t talk anymore. The time before that, he hugged his cat so hard and so long that it scratched him and he threw it against the wall. It didn\u2019t die, but it also didn\u2019t ever forget. It\u2019s my cat now.<\/p>\n
He kisses me on the wrist. \u201cM\u2019lady, it would make me ever so happy if you would accompany me back to my abode and make me an honest man by signing away your credit score to my alcoholic landlord and joining me in an unholy union wherein we live in sin and copulate like rabbits until we die.\u201d<\/p>\n
This. Fucking. Guy.<\/p>\n
The Uber driver is looking at us through the rearview mirror, smiling.<\/p>\n
I laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes!\u201d Jared yells. He is a child. But damn it, I love him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I get back to the apartment with my materials, I see that Farid, the landlord, has left a note on the door.<\/p>\n
Julie,<\/p>\n
I understand and I am here if you need anything. Don\u2019t worry about rent. Get it to me when you can. And don\u2019t worry about the mess.<\/p>\n
Again, so so sorry.<\/p>\n
\u2013 F.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I take the note, put it into my pocket, and unlock the door to Jared\u2019s apartment. Which I guess was technically our apartment. And now is just my apartment.<\/p>\n
I turn on the kitchen light. I set down the bags. I open up the package with the gloves and put them on. I don\u2019t even bother to change clothes because, as the bus driver pointed out on my way back from the store, I had some blood on my shirt.<\/p>\n
I get to work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou fucking bitch, I will fucking kill you if you leave me!\u201d Jared screams, not understanding that I really don\u2019t have time to fight and I have even less energy. My shift at the bar started 30 minutes ago and I can\u2019t afford to lose this job. Not since Jared lost his after throwing a full bottle at one of our regulars last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not leaving you, Jare Bear. I\u2019m going to work. You know, the thing that we both need to do so we can fucking live here?\u201d<\/p>\n
I should have told him I loved him. I should have told him that everything was going to be okay. I should have lied to him.<\/p>\n
He just looked at me, a moment of what I mistook as clarity. He didn\u2019t say a word. One eye looked so sad. The other one was doing it\u2019s own thing. I read his nonverbals as \u201cGo,\u201d when in reality, he was screaming everything but that in his muddled brain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jared didn\u2019t leave a note. Jared didn\u2019t try to call me at work. He simply went down to Farid\u2019s brother\u2019s shop, pawned my engagement ring, and bought a gun with what little cash we had saved in the Pok\u00e9mon cookie jar on top of our refrigerator.<\/p>\n
I found him in the kitchen. He knew I would find him. He knew it would hurt me. And he knew I\u2019d have to clean it up because he knew I would need the damage deposit if I hoped to keep the internship and hope to graduate after I swallowed my pride and moved back into my parents\u2019 basement. But that\u2019s not what hurt me the most.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the fact that when I found him, I didn\u2019t think he was dead. I checked my phone to see if he had called me or texted me or left me a note about how this was just a big, awful, amazingly selfish joke. I simply held him and looked into his eyes, one looking into the future we would never share and the other missing because he had put a bullet through it. I didn\u2019t call the police. I didn\u2019t call a friend. I just sat there, holding him, until morning.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And now that he\u2019s gone, now that his parents are planning the funeral, now that I\u2019ve been given a week off from my internship, paid, and been offered the management position at the bar starting whenever I want to start, I\u2019m here. Cleaning it all up. Bleaching the linoleum. Wiping down the counter. Salvaging the photos on our refrigerator of our lives together, our happy, crazy, fucked up lives\u2026. And I\u2019m just way too fucking pissed off to miss him right now. I\u2019m too God damn sad to try and plan for a future without him. And I\u2019m too busy to process.<\/p>\n
Because, as I already told you, this is my life. Has been for a while now. Always cleaning up another one of Jared\u2019s messes. But I\u2019m going to take my time on this one. Because as I run through our lives together in my head like a movie, it dawns on me that this might finally be the last time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
His lazy eye was one of the first things I noticed about him.\u00a0 One of the first things that made me fall for him, the goofy, romantic bastard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-jeff-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18490,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18025\/revisions\/18490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}