ie

“But then she rang me again today...”

No, no, no.

“And she said she’s confused and doesn’t know what she wants. I think something is wrong with her, hey.”

No. Shit.

She’s a fucking psycho.

“So, I spoke to her a bit, and, honestly, it’s just pissed me off now. I’ll read you these messages.”

He’s going to read me the messages?

I’m honoured he trusts me with that.

“Can you just listen?” he asks, holding my eyes. “Please don’t judge me.”

I put a hand up. “No judgement here.”

I sit quietly as he opens his phone and starts telling me how it went down.

“So, I’ve been trying to just talk to her on the phone. Figure out what’s happening. We’ve been talking a fair bit over the last few weeks. She said she needed that time, I gave it to her, then she ended it, and I went off. Then she came back and confused it all again. It’s doing my head in. So, I told her I just want to talk with her on the phone, but she won’t answer.”

Bitch.

I don’t say that out loud, but I just nod and encourage him to keep going.

“So, basically, I told her to ring me as she was going out. She told me she would. She didn’t. Then she sent a message saying if she talks to me, it will confuse her decision and that as much as she’d love to come back, she is happy and wants to move forward with her life, blah blah blah. I told her I loved her, that I wanted to help her, all the bullshit, but she just refuses to ring me.”

God.

“I just wanted to end it, you know? I’ve gotten to that point, where I just want to end it and move on. She obviously doesn’t love me. I know that. I’ve always known that. Deep down, I knew you were right all along. I just wanted her to say it.”

She is saying it.

She’s said it a thousand times with her actions.

“Listen to this,” he says, flicking to another message. “I asked her to talk. She said why. I said you know why. You know what she said?”

I shrug, eager to know what she said.

“She said, ‘oh, I thought you might be going to tell me you have won a million dollars’.”

My mouth drops open.

That money hungry, selfish, piece of shit. All she cares about is money.

“How fuckin’ wrong is that?” he says, frowning. “All she fucking cares about is money.”

“That’s so disgusting. I can’t believe she said that,” I say, shaking my head. “She should be ashamed of herself.”

“Yeah. So, I’m still waiting to hear from her. I’m not going down there. I can’t. She obviously doesn’t want me there.”

Of course she doesn’t want him there. She’s playing games. Games that will only end in disaster. It’s black and white, in the big scheme of things. She can’t and won’t try and handle her life on her own, so she’s clutching onto the only person she knows will keep coming back time and time again, no matter what she does to him. She’s honest, she lets him go, and then has a freak out when he actually starts moving on, and tries to get him back.

“Can I tell you a story, it might help?”

He looks to me and puts his phone down.

“I knew a girl once, and recently I spoke with her,” I begin. “She was with this guy for a long time but broke it off because she didn’t love him anymore. She did the exact same thing your ex is doing, she kept him hanging, wouldn’t fully end it. I asked her the other day why she did that, why she didn’t just let him go if she didn’t love him. You want to know her answer?”

He nods, focused on the next words that come out of my mouth.

“She said it was because she liked knowing there was someone out there fighting for her, that there was someone out there who loved her and couldn’t live without her. She admitted to having zero feelings for him, but she said she even slept with him again, just to keep him hanging because she liked the attention he was giving her. She didn’t care for him, not even a little, she just liked how he made her feel.”

Roman stares at me for a minute, then says, “Write that down. I want to use that.”

I laugh softly and shake my head. “No way.”

“Please. You just said exactly what she’s doing to me. I want to say it to her. That’s what I want to say when she finally calls me. Please, help me out. Write that down.”

I smile at him and do what he asks.

Glad that maybe, just maybe, he’s finally realising that he is worth so much more than this.

And that woman isn’t worth a single second of his time.

He’s too good for her.

He always will be.

~*~*~*~

I feel good the next morning as I head over to Roman’s for our usual coffee. I’m proud of him for finally seeing what kind of woman he’s dealing with. I’m glad he didn’t get on a plane and go to her, because honestly, it would have ripped his heart out all over again, and how many times can one person bounce back from that? I feel a sense of relief in my chest, too, and for the first time I realised just how much pain I’ve been stuffing inside, trying to squash down.

It feels nice to have a breather from it.

It feels nice to have some hope.

I walk into his house, and he’s on the phone. I pause when I hear a feminine voice coming from the other side. He encourages me in and takes the phone off speaker and puts it into his ear, mouth that ‘it’s her’. I point that I can leave, but he shakes his head and asks me if I want a coffee. I sit and wait for him to finish up his phone conversation and make coffee.

Then he joins me.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realise you were on the phone.”

“That’s okay. It was just her. I think she’s having some sort of mental crisis. She’s just losing it, hey.”

“Oh, that sucks.”

He shakes his head, clearly frustrated and tired. “She said she’s going to the doctor today, I think she needs to. Part of me wants to help her, you know.”

“But you can’t,” I point out.

“Nah, I can’t.”

You can’t help someone doing the things she’s doing. She needs to figure this one out on her own, and she’ll never do that when she is continually using people instead of dealing with her issues.