Page 6 of Diamonds in the Dark
I am speechless and my blood turns to ice. Why had I not checked the caller ID before answering? A sudden wave of nausea rises slowly in my stomach. I am afraid I am going to lose my dinner all over my table just from hearing his voice. This is what hate feels like, I assume.
Words start coming from my mouth, but they seem far away, like I am not the one speaking…I am on the outside listening to myself talk.
“I am fine Edward, why are you calling me?” I hear myself say in a not so polite manner. Why don't I just hang up the damn phone? Why am I talking? I scream at myself as my heart starts beating faster. I feel like I am frozen. My mind knows what it needs to do, but my body is not responding. It’s as if my body has detached from my mind and the signals are getting crossed. “Just hang up the damn phone Gwendolyn!” I scream silently at myself.
“Gwen I just wanted to talk to you.” after a long pause he sighs “I… well, I miss you,” he says. Almost sounding sincere, but he doesn't quite hit the mark for real sincerity, which only serves as fuel to my anger that is starting to peak.
“Edward, this is stupid. I am hanging up.” I spit out in an angry whisper. I feel my body pulling itself back together, becoming one again.
“Wait a minute, Gwen! Please just hear me out. I realize I have made a terrible mistake. I am miserable without you. Please let me come over and we can just talk, and then if all goes well, maybe we can spend the night together and make up. I genuinely want to see you, and I miss you.” Edward says dejectedly, which only serves to feed my anger further.
Is he serious? Can he really believe there is a way to “talk” this out? Honestly, it's not just this one incident and maybe he doesn't realize that. It's the whole toxic relationship. It is the control issues, the flirting with other women right in front of me, the cheating, and even the weekend trips, that I have now come to believe that he wasn't really working or in any meetings. He was with other women. Very rarely does anyone else at the office have weekend trips, and if they do, they take their significant other with them. There are so many things that yesterday opened my eyes too. It's like getting my sight back after being blind for the past five years. No amount of talking is ever going to fix this. It is over.
At this point, I feel myself losing it, I have had all I can take, and my anger is over the top. I didn't know I could be this angry at anyone, and to think he really believes we can “spend the night together.” He has lost his damn mind; I have been hurt one too many times by him. I am not falling for his lies, not this time or ever again. I am not about to go back into this and get hurt all over again. I am not going to wear my heart out on my sleeve for him, not anymore. There is absolutely nothing for us to talk about.
“Listen Edward,” I say slowly. I realize as mad as I am, I am fixing to have word vomit and I personally don’t care anymore what I say to him. Any love I ever felt for this man has vanished. Love doesn't live here anymore when it comes to him.
“Please listen closely to what I am saying so you can understand, because you seem to be a little slow at comprehending things. I want you to fully understand what I am saying to you. I am not one of your many little whores. When you get to feeling froggy, you cannot just come right over here and jump my bones. I am done with you and your childish games. Just because you get horny does not mean you can just prance back into my life as if everything will be okay…nothing between us will ever be okay. We are finished. There is nothing left between us. You killed anything we ever had with your antics. From here on out, you need to act like I don't exist, and you never knew me!”
My voice is getting high pitched and louder the more I go on. My body has started shaking, and that makes me even more pissed at him, that he can do this to me. He has gone quiet, but I can faintly hear him breathing, so I know he is still on the line, so I continue my rant. I want to get everything I am thinking out before I lose the nerve, or he hangs up on me.
“Do you get that Edward? It’s over! Go call one of your other girls. I am sure you have a neat little black book just full of little tramps waiting anxiously by their phones just hoping and praying your sick ass will call them.” I spit out. I hit the little red button on my phone to hang up and slam my phone down on the table hoping I didn't crack my screen. I start crying. I hate myself for allowing him to get to me this way, but I also am praising myself because I stood up to him. I didn't let him pull me back in, which for me is a small victory. All I felt while I was on the phone was hate and disappointment. What I once felt for him has faded into nothingness. Right now, I am proud of myself for the first time in a long while.
I try to go back to what I was working on, but quickly realize that I can’t focus on any of it right now. I am done for the night thanks to Edward. His phone call knocked me off kilter and I cannot think straight. However, I am still proud of myself for how I handled the phone call and decide I have earned myself a nice, long, hot bubble bath before heading to bed. I shut off my computer and take my leftovers to the kitchen and put them away in the refrigerator, wash my plate and silverware, then head upstairs. I pull out some towels from the linen closet and my favorite coconut banana bubble bath from under the sink and start running my bath water. I dump an enormous amount of bubble bath in the water. The aroma fills the room with its strong, invigorating scent that I love. Now, this is a little slice of heaven.
Sitting on the side of the tub waiting for the water to fill up enough that it will swallow me whole once I get in, I feel the tears start to swell up in my eyes. I can’t help it and I do nothing to try to stop them. Why does he keep calling and bugging me?
“WHY CAN HE NOT JUST LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE?” I yell aloud to the empty room, hearing my voice echo off the tile walls.
Why can he not go be a nuisance to someone else, like his secretary that he enjoys humping like an unaltered dog? With that thought, I lose it completely. I begin laughing so hard I cannot control myself. I fall to the floor laughing and sobbing all at once. For a brief second, I think that I really may have lost my mind this time, and I don’t care at this point. It feels good to just let it all out, to just lose myself in the crazy emotions that I have tried so hard to hold back. I feel like, by letting it all out, I am cleaning my soul of all the darkness Edward has left behind. It feels good to just let it all go.
I finish my insane fit of hysteria, blow my nose, and stand looking at myself in the mirror, shaking my head at my puffy, bloodshot eyes, telling myself how stupid I am to let him get to me the way he does. But then I decide, I am not the stupid one, Edward is. He is the one that ruined what we had, if in truth we ever actually had anything. With each passing moment, I am more sure that what we had was only a fantasy in my own head. It looked beautiful and perfect from a distance, kind of like a Monet painting, but up close, it was a confusing massive mess. I was just excellent at fooling myself into believing it was perfect, normal and exactly what I wanted. The truth of the matter, now looking back, I know it was never a healthy, beautiful relationship. Instead, it was dark and full of lies, deceit, and ugliness. Sadly, it took until now for me to see the truth after being blinded by a fantasy of my own making for far too long. In a way, after tonight’s phone call, I am starting to be thankful for Edward tearing us apart. I know now it would never have worked with us. It would have always been like living in a constant black hole of deceit. The longer I have to dissect our relationship, the more I am willing to admit to myself that our relationship was just downright toxic.
The water is finally deep and hot enough. I get undressed and get in. I turn on all the massage jets, letting all my cares drop away one at a time. With the jets, the heat of the water, and the pleasing aroma that has saturated the entire room, I start to relax. I let my mind go free as my body gives in to the relaxation and I start to feel sleepy.
I doze off in my own personal paradise for a while. I jerk awake when I feel water touch my chin. I slid down into the water while dozing and the water has gotten cold. It's no longer a comfortable temperature to be laying in. I climb out of the tub and have chill bumps all over my body. I hurry to dry myself off and slip into my favorite pink silk pajamas and head back downstairs to make a cup of hot tea to warm myself back up before bed. As I fill the teakettle with water, I start thinking about Edward's call again. Damn, he has some nerve, I think, shaking my head in disgust. I quickly dismiss all thoughts of him out of my mind. I am over him taking up so much space in my head. It's driving me crazy and it's pointless to allow it to happen. What's done is done. He is no longer a part of me or my life.
I put the kettle on the stove and sit down at the bar waiting for it to whistle. Asher pops up and takes over my every thought. I allow it to happen. I have so many curiosities about him. I'm not looking for a new man to take Edwards' place, but it's nice to have something else to think about. Asher is a real-life mystery book to me right now. I don't know why I am so intrigued by him. I am absorbed in my thoughts when the kettle starts whistling and I jump, nearly falling off the barstool.
I finish my tea, rinse my cup in the sink, and head upstairs to bed. My body is tired, my brain even more so. It feels as if I am dragging dead weight as I climb up the stairs. I snuggle up in my big bed that almost feels too big, now that I sleep in it alone. I reach over for the book that is sitting on my nightstand. It’s a book I have been reading for about a week. Becca, who works part-time at a local bookstore, gave it to me to “help” me, as she said. It is about relationships, and it never fails to put me right to sleep, it is so boring. She always hated Edward and I think she hoped this book would help get rid of him, but she could have picked out something a little more interesting than this one. It turns out I didn't need a book anyway. Edward did it on his own. I look at the cover and settle on trying to read a little more of it only because the rest of my books are still downstairs in boxes. Becca will also probably quiz me on it. You never know, I might discover something new or learn some lesson from it, but I doubt it. As I start reading chapter two, yes, I have only gotten as far as chapter two in more than a week! A page or so later, I doze off and I never hear the book when it falls from my hand and bounces off the floorboards.
Chapter 8
Asher
I walk into my parent’s house, as always, the door is unlocked, so there is no need to announce myself. They started leaving the door unlocked years ago when Zach and I were teens and we started going out with friends and having social lives of our own. They wouldn't lock it until we were both home and safe. Now they leave it unlocked when they are expecting us to visit. Some things never seem to change a great deal around here. My parents are very much creatures of habit. They don’t want us ever knocking on the door; they want us to just walk right in like this is still our humble abode. Thank goodness they live in a decently safe neighborhood.
The minute I step into the house, I know exactly what Mom is making for dinner from the enticing smells pouring out of the kitchen. She is making my and Zach’s favorite meal. The mouth-watering smells tickling my nose makes my stomach growl. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas and homemade lemon Cheesecake for dessert with her extraordinary homemade strawberry sauce. She sure knows the way to her son’s hearts, or at least mine!
Unfortunately, I know that for her to be making this meal with nothing grand to celebrate can only mean one thing. This meal is not going to be your typical happy, fun loving family meal. Mom only makes this particular meal for two reasons: celebrations, such as our birthday, or when she and Dad have something important to talk to us about that Zach and I are not going to like, but something they deem necessary to discuss. Mom has always believed that if she makes our favorite meal, it will put us in a better mood for whatever blow she and Dad have planned that night. She only wishes that was true. I can only speak for myself, but it makes me irritated when she uses “the meal” to try to sway us.
I go ahead and make my way to the dining room and sit down at the mahogany dining room table that my father inherited from past generations of our family. My great, great, great- grandfather, or something like that, is the one who made the table. I have never paid much attention to our family history, but now I wish I had listened more carefully when my dad would tell us about our ancestors. My dad's side of the family is rich in history, and he always has a story to tell, my mom's side not so much. I don't know if no one kept up with her side's history or what happened, but there aren't any stories to be told as far as I know. As a child and teen, the stories Dad would tell us about his family and its past seemed drab and boring.
The detail in the table is astonishing, hand carved guns that look real, surrounded by swirls of vines that make up the legs. The artwork in it is breathtaking when you take the time to really pay attention to it. You never see detail and craftsmanship like it in furniture that is made this day and age, which is a shame. It also has a buffet he made that matches it. They are one-of-a-kind pieces. It is hard to imagine how much time he must have spent making something so intricate. I wonder at all the people that, at one time or another, have shared a seat at this table with their beloved families. I can almost imagine the laughter, tears, arguments and business that has taken place around this exact table over the years. I can also remember a lot of my own family’s meals that we have shared over the years at this table, the good, bad and ugly.
Mom and Dad walk into the dining room a little while later, carrying dish after dish of piping hot food to the table. It all looks amazing, and the smell is to die for. Zach walks into the dining room mumbling an apology for being late and falls into his chair, the same chair he has sat in since the day we were big enough to sit at the big table with Mom and Dad, instead of in our highchairs. He has always had a habit of being late. I have always been the early one. I guess that's why I was born five minutes before him. I look at him sitting across from me. He looks like death. He reminds me of the zombies you see in movies, only without all the blood and gore. He has lost some weight and his face has a sunken look and is colorless. I can scarcely contain myself, what does he think he is doing to himself? I want to jump up and punch him in the face and yell at him. I want to beat some damn sense into him. Instead, I do nothing. I just sit here in my chair glaring at him and feeling sick to my stomach. Mom starts serving the food and chatting about the day as if everything is just perfectly fine and dandy. This causes another flare in my temper that is already burning bright, but I control myself and just sit in my chair staring around the room at my family.
My dad, as always, is sitting at the head of the table where his dad before him sat. After Mom gives everyone plates full of food she sits down in her seat. It's silent in the room except for the sound of silverware scraping on porcelain as everyone starts to eat. It seems as if no one wants to address the elephant in the room. I cannot remember one meal at this table where it has ever been this quiet. We are all usually talking, laughing and joking with each other or at least having a family discussion. The silence is deafening. This is not the family I left when I went overseas.
