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  I was surprised and disappointed when I got home and Emmi wasn’t there. I had left her a note though that said I would probably be late, so hopefully she went to hang out with Zoe. I could see subtle signs in the bathroom that she had been there. Her straightener was on the counter and there was a wet towel hanging on the side of the hamper from the shower.

  I looked at my phone, thinking that I had missed a call or a text, but I had nothing. I sent her a text to let her know I was home and examined the kitchen counter where I had left her note earlier. I didn’t see that one or one for me in its place.

  I looked at my phone again… Still no text back. I closed the open kitchen window and grumbled about it a bit. I didn’t know why women didn’t think of doing things like that before they leave my apartment. They were inviting burglars in. I considered making something to eat and waiting for her to get home. I even went so far as to check the refrigerator and decided we needed to go grocery shopping.

  I grabbed my keys, thinking that I’d go ahead and run down to Lou’s Tavern. If Emmi texted me back they could meet me there. Otherwise, I would probably be back before she was. I found it funny how I hadn’t known she existed two months ago. Yet now, everything I did I thought: What would Emmi say, do, or think? I had never cared that much about a woman’s opinion before… unless you counted my mom.

  When I got to the bar, I was surprised to see how packed it was for the middle of the week. I had to swim through a sea of bodies to get up to the counter and order my beer. While I waited, I looked around at the crowd. I knew quite a few of the girls and guys from school. A couple of girls waved and I waved back. I wondered what was going on for a Wednesday night to draw all of the people. There were way more girls than there were guys; maybe it was a sorority party or something. I remembered a day when that would have been like a smorgasbord to me. Lately though, the only girl I could bring myself to think about in that way was Emmi.

  The bartender handed me my beer and I headed over to talk to a guy named John that I knew from Political Science class. That’s when I saw Zoe. She was dancing with some brunette girl at the edge of the dance floor. If Zoe was here and Emmi wasn’t at home, that probably meant she had come out with her also. Zoe didn’t see me and I didn’t want to go over and interrupt her on the dance floor. She would have gotten pissed at me knowing her. I looked around again and continued across the room. It was dark in there and I’d have to guess over capacity. It was difficult seeing anything. Just as I reached John’s table, I saw Emmi. I stopped moving forward, frozen to my spot and unable to take my eyes from the spectacle before me.

  Emmi was sitting at a high table way off in the corner. There was a group of girls at the other high table next to her that looked like Zoe’s sorority crowd, but at Emmi’s table it was just her and some guy that I had never seen before. His clothes were all designer label. He was sitting and looked tall next to her. He had highlights in his hair and his skin was colored from what I thought was a ridiculous looking spray tan which made me think he should be sporting a heavy gold chain around his neck.

  I looked from his animated smiling face to Emmi’s. Emmi’s face was frowning sternly. She was talking to the guy and was sitting too close for my comfort level, but she didn’t really look like she wanted him to be there. I sat my beer on John’s table and he noticed I had been standing there, immobile for a few minutes.

  “Hey Brax. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off of Emmi.

  I had to ask myself was I okay? I didn’t really know. I had never had the feeling that was starting to inch its way from the pit of my stomach up into my chest and assault my lungs. I felt like a weight was sitting on my chest and it was hard to breathe. Was it pure jealousy? I’d felt envy many times before, but this was different. It almost physically hurt and it caused rage to start boiling up inside of me. I didn’t like the feeling, but I didn’t know what to do about it either.

  I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to be mad at her. I didn’t want to believe she would do anything to hurt me or make me look like a fool. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and looked at it again. Still no text that said, “Hey, I’m at Lou’s. Why don’t you come join me?” That made me feel angrier and I started towards her. The whole time I had things going through my head that just fueled my rage. Was it too much to expect that your girlfriend invite you out with her and her friends? Or could she at least let me know where she would be? It would have been much less shocking and hurtful than to walk in there and find her chatting with GQ who I realized as I got closer had his hand on her leg.

  Who the fuck was this guy?

  That was the defining moment when all power of rational thought had not only left my brain, it had fled from my entire body. I suddenly didn’t care who heard me or who saw me or what kind of scene I was about to make. I stormed up to the table and just before I got there I heard Emmi telling the creep to take his hand off of her leg. Then she saw me and she looked like a deer in the headlights. Good, I hoped she was nervous. The guy next to her still had his hand there.

  “Get your fucking hands off of her asshole,” I said to him first. Then I looked at my “girlfriend.” “What the fuck, Emmi? Who the fuck is this clown?” I was talking loudly and everyone within earshot turned to stare.

  GQ stood abruptly.

  “I’m Emmi’s boyfriend,” he said in his most practiced Rico Suave voice, grinning. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr….”

  Emmi’s boyfriend? That’s funny…. since I thought I was her boyfriend.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Emmi interjected.

  I looked at her then and her eyes were still wide and akin to fear. I could tell that she was wondering what I was going to do.

  “So you let all your ex-boyfriends rub their hands all over your legs?” I said in my most sarcastic tone.

  She visibly winced as if I had slapped her. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have said it because in her defense, I did hear her tell the punk to take his hand off of her. I couldn’t think that rationally at that moment. All I was seeing was red.

  “No, Braxton, listen,” she said, rising up.

  I was the one who got accused of being a player. At least I was honest about myself and I didn’t go around pretending I was Miss Innocent and then going to bars and letting guys feel me up.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Emmi!” I yelled at her.

  The crowd around us was growing, curious onlookers without a life of their own. I stepped back on my heel to turn towards the door.

  “Hey, rebound!” GQ was talking and it stopped me in my tracks. He couldn’t have just stood there with his sissy boy mouth shut. Apparently he wanted me to beat his smug face in because he was still talking. “She’s done with you already. Why don’t you just leave with a modicum of self-respect? She only used you to get me back… And it worked. Here I am.” He reached out for her, like he expected her to come into his arms.

  The smug bastard actually smiled at me. Emmi moved away from him, which helped… some, but I saw all of his perfect, straight veneers when he smiled, and something about that triggered a memory of all those rich spoiled assholes in high school that thought Daddy’s money made them better than me. I had no further thought than that… I punched him, dead-on in the face. It was a punch I would have used on an opponent in the ring, only he didn’t have a mouth guard on and he wasn’t expecting it. He was standing with a wall to his back and when my fist connected with his face his feet actually left the ground about an inch as he flew back into it. He slammed his head before sliding down to the floor in a sitting position. I was still pissed enough that I would have liked to punch him again but a shred of rational thought crept back in.

  “Fucking pussy!” I spat out at him instead.

  My eyes darted over at Emmi and I wished they hadn’t. Her eyebrows came to a point. I turned around so I couldn’t see her face any longer. I was surprised at how much the disappointment in her eyes af
fected me. I stomped past all of the curious on-lookers and out of the bar. After making my way across the parking lot and past my pick-up, I just kept trudging along. I was too pissed to drive so I tried to vanish off into the darkness of the poorly lit street.

  I could hear Emmi calling my name, but I couldn’t make myself stop. I didn’t want to hear her excuses or explanations. The adrenaline rush was gone and now I was just tired. She was persistent though as Emmi can be and she caught up with me at the end of the street.

  “Braxton! Please stop. We need to talk about this,” she said, breathing hard.

  I stopped and caught her gaze. Emmi was the prize for all of the years of being treated like shit and working so hard to get in shape. She was my end game and now it was… tainted somehow. As she stood there looking forlorn with tears filling her eyes, I fought the overwhelming urge to take her in my arms and make it all better. Instead, I went the asshole route as rage was still boiling inside of me..

  “I don’t want to talk to you right now. It’s been a long night and I’ve made some… interesting discoveries about my girlfriend. I’m going home,” I said in my best douche bag tone of voice.

  She took a tentative step back and I walked back towards my truck. She was still calling my name even though she had let me passed her. I found myself wondering if I stopped what she was going to say. I shut my mind to it… I was good at that. Eventually the sound of her voice faded away and by the time I reached my pick-up I could barely make out her silhouette still standing about half-way down the street.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EMMI

  I sat in my room with the door closed and l felt like history was repeating itself. It was Friday afternoon, two days since Braxton made a total scene at Lou’s and punched Trent in the face. Many of his teeth were lying on the floor next to him and his nose bled like a faucet for ten minutes before we got it to stop. I had to go back and help him. I wanted to just keep going once I was outside, but I couldn’t. Asshole or not the guy was bleeding on the floor.

  The cops showed up. Everyone in the place acted like they didn’t know anything and Trent told the cop he didn’t know the guy who hit him. I was surprised at that. I would have bet that he’d want to press charges. I guess he did have at least one redeeming quality. I still couldn’t believe Braxton did it. I could see the rage in his eyes, but until his fist connected with Trent’s face I didn’t believe he was going to do it. I knew that Trent was being an arrogant jerk and before Braxton even showed up I wanted to punch him in the face myself. But I didn’t and that’s what adults were supposed to do, show some self-restraint.

  For the past two days Braxton had been knocking on my door and texting me. All of a sudden he wanted to talk and his texts said he was sorry about the things he said to me. He even left a long-winded voicemail telling me that I was the best thing that ever happened to him and he didn’t want to lose me. He said that he was angry because I hadn’t invited him or told him where I was going. He didn’t find the note until he got home that night. It had blown off of the counter from the open window and under the table.

  It would have been all well and good except that he didn’t inherit the right to know where I was every hour of the day. He was my boyfriend, not my keeper. He wasn’t there before I left and he wasn’t supposed to be home until late as his note said. He had an important fight coming up and wasting his time on me would interrupt his preparations I had thought. I had checked my text messages and I had missed only one and all it said was, “I’m home. Where are you?” There was no mention of him going to a bar and no invitation for me.

  I heard a knock on the front door. I didn’t worry about it because I knew he was home. I could hear muffled voices and then there was a knock on my door.

  “Emmi.” It was Zoe’s voice. I cracked open my bedroom door and peeked out to make sure he wasn’t there and then I ushered her in.

  “Hiding out… again?” she said. She didn’t even try to hide the tone in her voice that said I was ridiculous.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told her. Zoe plopped down on my bed and then laid back, making herself comfortable.

  “Okay. What else is new with you?”

  I scanned my brain for something that had nothing to do with Braxton.

  “I have a photo shoot scheduled next weekend. A car club on campus is having a car show. Want to go with me?” I finally said.

  “Sure, that sounds like fun.”

  “It really doesn’t appeal to me all that much,” I told her.

  It also reminded me of Braxton and the talk we’d had out on the trail that day about his dad’s classic car and how he liked car shows.

  “Nice cars, hot guys… what’s not to like?” Zoe said.

  “I’m just not really into cars.”

  “Well, it will be fun anyway. We’ll make it fun. Maybe you can find a guy who’s not a hot-headed playboy and I can find one who’s not gay.”

  I just ignored what she said about Braxton.

  “So, what’s new with you?”

  “I have a philosophy paper due on Monday and I’ve had a week to do it. I haven’t even started on it yet.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Plato’s allegory of the cave. I have to write a thousand words about it without using the word ‘I’ a single time.”

  “So it’s from the third person point of view?” I asked her.

  She sighed dramatically. “I guess so. The only thing I despise more than philosophy is writing. First of all, who cares what some guy said while he sat alone in a cave like a million years ago? If he did that now, people would just tweet about what a weirdo he was.”

  I laughed. That’s what I loved about Zoe. She could always brighten my mood.

  “True. But, instead of being here laying on my bed in the middle of the afternoon you could be home working on it.”

  “I was. I needed a break. The house is too quiet during the day when everyone is at school or work so I came here for you to entertain me.”

  I laughed again.

  “Oh, of course,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Because I’m just a laugh a minute. I’m kind of a lot like Plato, hiding out here in my cave. I better not see this on Twitter.”

  She giggled. “Okay, but can I at least use it as a comparison in my paper?”

  “Sure,” I told her. “That way me not seeing the light of day will at least serve some purpose. What else is going on? Have you talked to Mike yet about what you found on the computer?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “So… what did he say?”

  “He says the stuff on the computer is not his. He even tried to show me his iPad and said that’s what he uses most of the time.”

  “So does he think it belongs to his roommate?”

  Zoe shrugged. “He says he doesn’t think that Brett is gay and he has no idea why that stuff is on his computer. He said that Brett brings home a new girl almost every day. He did mention that maybe he was ‘too macho’ and that was because he was trying to hide who he really was. If the stuff belongs to Brett, Mike won’t care. But, he’s so curious he probably won’t stop investigating until he has it all figured out. Anyway, after he said all of that we still got in a fight because he tried to turn it all around and be mad at me for snooping.”

  “And you have trouble seeing why that might upset him?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  “It was just natural curiosity on my part and I told him so. He says he doesn’t see it like that. He says that I should trust him enough to respect his privacy and if I had questions about anything I should have asked.”

  “Well… he does kind of have a point. There’s such a thing as trust and privacy Zoe. He shouldn’t have to reveal every little thing about himself. He’s still his own person, with his own thoughts and his own ability to make decisions. Some people just don’t get that.”

  “Are you talking about me, or your boyfriend?” Zoe asked.

  She wasn’t offended. We
had been friends forever and neither of us was afraid to speak our mind.

  “I’m just speaking in general terms,” I told her. “If you were worried that he was doing something that he shouldn’t be, you should have just talked to him about it. Resorting to sneaky tactics or… other things just makes the situation worse.”

  “So I should have thought to ask if he was gay?”

  “No,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Not if he never gave you any reason to suspect it. But what I’m saying is if you just happen to see something that makes you wonder then you should: number one talk to him about it and number two, be willing to accept his explanation.”

  She grinned. “We’re still talking about me and Mike?”

  Frustrated I said, “I’m just talking in general terms here Zoe! But okay if you insist that you need examples of people you know, I’ll use Braxton and I. You yourself warned me not to let this guy get under my skin. He came into this relationship with a reputation that gave me every right to be a little leery of completely trusting him. Yet I never questioned where he was going or who he might see when he got there. That was for two reasons. First, I did trust him to keep the promises he made to me, and second, it’s just not always my business. I don’t own him, right?”

  She nodded, but still looked amused. I was on a roll now and couldn’t stop. I had said all of these things over and over in my head, but this was the first time I was voicing them aloud.

  “I never once thought that he was obligated to invite me everywhere he went. I’m not looking to suffocate him and I don’t believe he needs to be watched every second. If I did, I wouldn’t even want to be in a relationship with him. When you were angry and you thought he was picking up the blonde girl in your class, I could have easily jumped to conclusions, but I didn’t. Instead, I acted like we were in an adult relationship and I trusted him. I took his word that he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  I realized that Zoe was staring at me with enlarged eyes when I finished talking. I waited for her to say something.

  “What?” I spit out when she didn’t say anything.