heartbreak and wrecking balls
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Cam had been listening to the neighbor and her girlfriend fight for months and it never appeared that she could be the victim. As their ceiling was Cam’s floor, he was privy to the myriad of arguments that erupted and the banging, screaming and breaking of things that usually ensued. The neighbor was the bigger of the two; with hair cut high and tight and cargo shirts as her usual uniform, Cam assumed she was the aggressor. He was wrong.
They sat together among the remaining items her ex and family didn’t take in their U-Haul ambush on the following Sunday.
She shook her head, It’s just fucking heartbreaking, you know? It didn’t have to end like this. So dramatic. She could have just been a grown-up.
Cam nodded. After his own divorce, he remembered the sentiment. The look in her eyes echoed sadness but also anger and confusion — the look that comes when someone you think you know, someone who claims to love you with such ferocity that their life would be unimaginable without you, proves to be someone you don’t really know at all.
Cam gazed throughout the apartment. Among the trash and debris, it appeared that someone had run through with a wrecking ball in one hand and a net in the other.
There were obvious items missing and others coated with dust left behind, creating a haze of abandonment. Proof that at the end of love, it becomes every man for themselves. You’ve got to take what you can and run like hell, dodging smoke and bullets and pain whenever possible. Not everyone is so lucky. Some don’t get out of the wreckage quite so unscathed.
Cam sat across from his neighbor, their beer bottles sweating profusely at the stale heat in the apartment.
Are you going to stay here tonight? he asked, not really expecting a positive response considering the bed had been removed from the apartment, as had the toaster, the TV, the cables for the cable box (but not the cable box itself?) and other various nonsensical items.
No, I’ll be back tomorrow to put stuff back together and just….move on, I guess. She shrugged.
What else could be done?
Put your shit back together and move on, Cam agreed.
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