In Ohio, Stones Bleed

Twenty-two-year-olds write the worst love stories.

René and I’d broken up a week ago, like the ten times before this, not because we weren’t in love, but because… reasons.

I didn’t want to see her alcohol rosined cheeks, her pretty in a white tank top and pleated flowing skirt. So, why did I come to this party if I knew she would be here? Because I wanted to prove to her and to everyone else in our social circle, “It’s real this time. So real, I am not even going to talk to her.”

I used to tell people I dated, “See this heart? It’s a stone. You can’t hurt stone. No blood pumps through a stone.”

I’d point to my right pectoral when I said this. Then I’d take my fist and shape it like a heart. Forearm straight up to the sky, thumb placed firmly against the curled first finger. Each knuckle a step down until the pinky. Take it with my other hand, “This thing holds no feels.”

What’s true when you are eighteen you repeat when you’re twenty-two.

Atom, my best friend’s brother, my housemate and co-worker, with his pierced face and dreadlocks stood with me in the driveway. Everyone we worked with had been invited and we’d all invited a smattering of our venn diagram of acquaintances.

100 people or more, and then… only one is on my mind.

Atom adjusted his hoodie and started forward.

“Everyone in that house sounds drunk,” I told him.

“They better be! I pre-gamed this, bitch.”

The occupants already there were stumble drunk on the porch. Glass-eyed and woozy in the stairwell, drunk. Long line leading up to the bathroom, drunk. Boasting about being an entrepreneur in Columbus, Ohio, drunk. Solo cups filled but still in line for the keg in the kitchen, drunk.

The kitchen was where I spied René.

Saw her first, through the throng. Caught her eye. Tim was flirting with her. Hand above her shoulder, leaning on the wall next to her.

Tim was a sleazebag. The kind of guy who’d performatively kiss a man because he was into titillating certain women with specific predilections. A political hack, a writer, journalist, tall and connected, funny, and meticulously put-together.

“Hey! Boyd.” Helmut, the guy I thought René might be dating now, was rolling a joint in another room behind me. He was slunk, sunk low in a couch that had lost all its springs. The legs had been cut off. Presumably so when drunks invariably rolled off during the night, they’d do less damage to themselves. He lit up, took a puff, then handed it to me.

I called a pair of people I didn’t know over to form a circle around him and a friend of his who was passed out on his shoulder. “Here,” I handed the roach to my left without partaking.

“Dan, listen,” Helmut said, his eyes half-closed, “none of your friends are going to date René. She’s your girl, you’re her boy. No one is going to get in the way of that. No one could.” His smile as wide as my frown.

The entire night was a blur of conflicted thoughts.

Trying to catch her eye. Missing her. And immediately telling myself I didn’t. I didn’t care, it wasn’t my business.

When I care when I shouldn’t care, the emotion of care, the emotion that breaks my will, it vibrates in my chest. Hypocrisy and dissonance makes me nervous-shake like a dog. Like I have to twist and kick the bad energy out. Like it’s a wetness I can splatter against the wall.

Meanwhile, strangers and friends keep telling me, “I want to find someone who looks at me the way she looks at you.” And the sick feeling of emotions outside my control would seep back over me.

I told them, “I don’t care.” Asked them to, “Let it go.”

It wasn’t about me, or what I wanted, it was… I got the bad vibes from Tim. Tim seemed like a two-face. She shouldn’t be with a fake, a fraud, someone so broken. It’s not about me. It’s not about what I want. What I miss.

My jealousy. Raging and insecure.

“Is Tim secretly cool?” I kept asking people, as if their answer would absolve me of my feelings.

If I were wrong about Tim and he was just cool. Then I wouldn’t care who she’s flirting with.

She danced all around my periphery. She’d pirouette in red, low-rise Chucks — the color complemented her freckles. Her freckles were more prominent when she was toasty. When she mingled and was mingled with. Tim popped in and out of her orbit, kept her glass full.

He had so many friends here — who invited him? He knew the owner of the house.

Trying to give myself some air, I found Atom, getting sick in the backyard.

“Take me home!” he moaned.

I didn’t want to leave her. “What if she sleeps with Tim?” I didn’t mean to ask that out loud. I just hadn’t done enough reconnaissance.

Atom was projectile vomiting. “Dan, Tim’s cooler than you. Take me home.”

Atom was sick in the bushes in the back. But before that, he’d been lost all around the house. Could barely walk. Seeing him lose it, I realized all these people had been telling me to find him. I’d just been so scattered, I’d shut it out.

“You drank too much. Just get some water and bread,” I offered.

“I’m not drunk,” and between chunks, gasps and wheeze he added, “I’m sick. I’m drunk. But I’m also sick. Very sick.”

I asked Helmut and my neighbor Clint to watch after the saint-like-pixie. Promised Clint a ride home if he did me the solid. “Don’t let her do anything stupid.”

Both boys assured me they wouldn’t. But they were so out of it. Could they be trusted?

I ran to René but she cut me off, “Dan! Atom is looking for you.”

Her smile. Damn her smile. “He’s sick, I’m taking him home.”

“You can’t leave, the party is so fun.”

She was so drunk. Fucking Tim. I’d never seen her this drunk.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “I have to go home. I will be back. Stay safe. Be safe.”

“You be safe!” She teased.

I swore under and over my breath as I drove Atom home. Ninety on the highway and Atom was back to our apartment complex. Amazingly, without destroying the backseat of my car. Once we were inside, I got him into his own bed and ran him a bowl to throw up in.

Then I jumped on my computer to do a quick Google search: “Your ex is going to sleep with someone else, what should you do?”

Revenge porn was the internet’s unhelpful answer.

I drove 110 on the way back.

She was gone. No one had seen her.

Helmut was passed out on the couch so I enlisted my giant of a friend, “Clint. I think she’s with Tim. I think she’s in the host’s bedroom.”

Clint sprung to action against my protests, “Let’s think about this, we shouldn’t intervene. She’s our friend. My best friend! I’m her friend. We are friends now.”

As he bounded up the stairs three at a time, over and around the drunks, my words bounced off his back unheard. Then as he searched for the master bedroom, he remained unfazed by my wait-wait-wait she’s her own person attitude.

In one motion he turned the knob and kicked the door open.

There they both were, fully dressed. Save for her shoes… which she’d set neatly by the foot of the bed. She was big spoon to skinny Tim who had his hands clapped underneath his cheek, like an angel in prayer because he’d let her have the only pillow.

I didn’t scream, but I should have called for bandages. Pressure to the wound. The verdict was in, it was a bright-bright red that colored me in. That stone heart had cracked, leaking all over my shirt. I missed her so much. But…

I wasn’t saving her. She was Belle but I wasn’t her handsome Beast, I was Gaston. With a team of ninjas and villains all helping me ensnare a princess who hadn’t seen the real me yet.

Clint scooped her up. She slung her sleepy arms around his neck. Whispered, “My hero!” And as we exited the room, “Oh, my shoes.”

“We’re here to save you. We’re here to take you home,” Clint told her as I snagged her red Chucks.

“Home? No… that doesn’t make any sense.” Her eyes were closed again.

Clint whispered in her ear, “Back to Atom and Dan’s.” A mile on her angelic face as she slept cradled in his arms.

Sleeping on his lap all the way home. How could she be so tired? I didn’t know.

Once parked, Clint carried her into my apartment, set her into my bed. Tucked her in. Touched her forehead, told her, “Sleep well, little one.”

We shut the door to my bedroom, and I offered his drunk ass a walk home.

Under the waning moonlight he said, “Dan, do right by that girl. She’s the one.”

I grimaced, “I can’t.”

“Then, hold her tonight.”

We walked in silence back to his apartment, and I in loneliness on the way back to my place.

There, I slipped into bed to be her big spoon. She woke up for just a moment, to kiss me, one gentle press of lip to lip.

We didn’t get back together that night. But maybe, just maybe, that moment was enough to stop the stone from bleeding out.

This is a true story. Or as true as I can muster. After screwing this relationship up, I wandered the US in search of my moral compass and a diagnosis that’d explain my special sort of stupid…

I’ve been lucky in love and friendship. She continues to be one of my best friends. Someone who stayed with me through thick and thin while I figured my shit out.

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