K. Linde - Take Me for Granted

“In Newark?” he asked incredulously. “You would have never made it back by now.”

I watched Cheyenne shrug. She was lying for me. I would squeeze her if I didn’t feel like a total jerk for cowering behind the door while she fought my battles for me.

“Come on, I know she’s in there. I need to talk to her.”

“I already said she’s not here. You should just go back home.”

“Ari!” he yelled.

I heard his hand hit the door gently to keep Cheyenne from closing it.

“Ari, I know you’re in there! Just come talk to me. Can’t we talk about this?”

I closed my eyes and put my head between my knees. God, I just wanted to run to him. I wanted to see him and have that feeling of completion again. But I couldn’t forget our argument, and I wasn’t ready to have another one. I’d asked for time, and I still needed it.

“She’s not in here!” Cheyenne yelled back. “And even if she were, do you think she would talk to you with all this yelling? Haven’t you done enough damage?”

“I just want to fix this,” he told Cheyenne. “She has to know how I feel about her.”

Oh no, not the tears again.

“Well, if you really care about her, I think the best thing to do is to just back off. She’s stressed. She’s never been in this kind of situation. I told her you were going to break her heart, but she wouldn’t listen.”

I felt the tears trickle down my face at Cheyenne’s words. There was the I told you so that Cheyenne had kept from her lips when I asked her to drive me home this morning.

“So, just give her some space. Maybe after the break, she’ll want to talk to you.”

“I can’t wait that long. I can’t risk losing her, Cheyenne.”

“You already have.”

Her words hit me like a ton of bricks, so I couldn’t imagine what it had just done to Grant. I’d risked so much by getting involved with him, but it felt like I was risking more by giving him up. And this relationship purgatory we were currently hanging in made the agony of a decision even worse.

He hadn’t lost me. I was still his.

My heart and my body called out to comfort him, but I didn’t. My mind was still reminding me of how much he’d hurt me.

“Well, if you see her, then tell her I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I shouldn’t have even let Kristin into my room. I understand how serious it all is, but there is no one else for me. No one. It wasn’t even a thought in my mind. Ari is it. She’s the only girl I’ve ever fallen for, and I’d really be worthless if I let her walk away without a fight. So…so, just tell her to talk to me. I want to make it right.” Grant’s voice was hoarse. I’d never heard him like this.

“I’ll tell her, but I really think you should just leave her alone,” Cheyenne said.

“I can’t. I’ll never be able to.”

Cheyenne sighed. “At least for break. Just think about what she wants for a change. If she wanted to talk to you and make things right, wouldn’t she be talking to you right now?”

“I’ll give her whatever she wants. If she wants silence, I can give her that.” He practically forced the words out. “But I’m here to stay, Cheyenne. You tell her that, too.”

“I’ll tell her,” she said before closing the door. “Well, that went well.”

I shook my head and let the tears fall freely. “I should have spoken to him. He sounded so distraught.”

Cheyenne plopped down next to me and wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder. “I know this is your first real relationship, Ari, but take it from someone who knows…it’s better to let him suffer a little.”

“I don’t want him to suffer.”

“Don’t you? Just a little?”

I laughed, but it came out more like a hiccup. “I just want to put the pieces back together. I feel…God, I don’t even know. I feel like he ripped my body in half.”

“It’ll be okay,” she said softly.

I rested my head on her shoulder and cried.

“Just go away for break. Take some time to think about everything that happened. If you want him back, then it sounds like he’s willing.”

“What if I wait too long?” I whispered the fear that came to me.

“Then, he was never worth it to begin with.”

The only thing I wanted for Christmas was hundreds of miles away and refusing to talk to me. Despite telling Cheyenne that I would remain silent if that was what Ari wanted, I was having a terrible time with it. I’d texted her constantly the first couple of days, and I’d called her more times than I even wanted to admit. She hadn’t responded. I had to face facts that she actually wanted my silence.

I still texted her when I couldn’t bear to let her think that she was off my mind. But even those, I let dwindle to once a day, then every other day, and then every third day.

Guilt infected everything. Guilt about how I’d treated Ari, how I’d talked to her, for not going after her, for not doing enough. Guilt about how I’d treated Sydney, how I’d treated the guys, how selfish I’d been in everything I’d been doing for months…years. I was no better than my old man. That much was becoming a pretty obvious fact. Self-sabotage was the name of the game, and I was the goddamn reigning champion.

Normally, in these situations…well, shit, I’d never been in this kind of situation. But when I got down, I usually overindulged in anything that would make me forget. Everything made me think about her though. I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to smoke. I didn’t have the energy to think about anyone but her, so there was no way I was going near women. A fucking blizzard had ripped through Jersey, so I couldn’t ride my bike. The only thing I still had was my guitar, and her song seemed to be the only one I remembered.

“Are you going to mope around all break?” Sydney asked a few days before Christmas.

I’d apologized to her as soon as she’d gotten back from the ski lodge. She’d brushed it off like it didn’t matter and told me it just ranked right up there with my other bizarre behavior. Really reassuring.

“I’m not moping.”

“You are so moping!”

I just shrugged. I didn’t want to argue with her. I started strumming out “Life Raft” for the hundredth time, and Sydney groaned.

“Stop playing that song. Can’t you just…I don’t know…find someone else?”

My eyes shot daggers at her.

“All right, all right. Bad idea.”

“She just needs time.”

“Has she spoken to you at all since she left?”

I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t consider that she had moved on. My life was hanging on the edge of disaster with those thoughts constantly swirling through them. I didn’t need the push that would send it into a spiral of chaos.

“Look, cuz,” she said, sinking into the seat next to me, “I know this is hard on you, but you need to do something else, something to get your mind off of her.”

“Like what? Everything that I’ve ever done in the past just conjures up more memories.”

“I don’t know. Just do something productive. Go work out or go for a run or go work for Randy again. Sitting here and thinking about her all day is only going to make you depressed. You were never exactly chipper, but this…this isn’t you.”

I ran a hand back through my hair and tried to listen to reason. Sydney was right. Ari was on my mind 24/7 and if I didn’t get myself together, her walking out of my life was going to destroy me.

“All right then.”

Sydney and I drove to Duffie’s, and I smiled at the old familiar feeling at seeing the building. A long line of people greeted us when we entered. The hostess recognized Sydney. They hugged and started talking rapidly. That was my cue.

I wandered back to the kitchen and found my aunt and uncle where I’d always found them before. Randy was busy making pizza dough from scratch while young servers busied themselves around him. Carol was sitting at a cash register, ringing out customers and making change. It felt…homey.

“Grant!” Carol said with a big smile on her face. “How wonderful to see you, honey.”

“Hey, Aunt Carol, Uncle Randy.”

“Sydney get you out of the house?” Randy asked with a knowing glint.

So, he had been behind this.

“Yeah, she did.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

A white apron was launched at my head, and I caught it easily with one hand. I laughed. It felt good to have something to laugh about.

“We have a lot of work to do.”

The pizza place closed at midnight. I stayed after to wipe down tables and refill Parmesan and red pepper flake containers. The steady motion of running the restaurant had kept my mind occupied and had given me a blissful reprieve from my thoughts. When I finished around one in the morning, I closed up shop. Instead of going straight home, I turned and walked out onto the beach.