The Right Guy at the Worst Possible Time, Part III
Romantic Soliloquies
After I told my parents about Charlie’s ex girlfriend and her daughter, they were not afraid to express their concerns.
“He’s just got a lot of things going on in his life right now that you should not have to deal with.”
They weren’t wrong. Probably the only time I will openly admit that I should have listened. I didn’t though because I (or at least I thought at the time) was irrevocably in love. In fact, I pitied my parents for obviously not feeling that way about each other the way I felt about Charlie. I would never have dreamed of leaving him.
“You are loyal to a fault,” my mom would say.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom. I can’t just leave when he’s going through a hard time. That’s not fair. What else are people in relationships supposed to do other than be there for each other?”
Things Got Weird
Charlie told me from the beginning that he sometimes needed time to himself. Who doesn’t need alone time every once in a while…? So, I didn’t think much of it when he needed time after the paperwork arrived from the court confirming he was the father of his ex girlfriend’s little girl. Not to mention his mother had just died. It was almost as if his ex girlfriend had timed her reappearance.
A month went by. One evening I was out walking with my dad when it occurred to me that Charlie and I hadn’t spent any time longer than 15minutes together in weeks. I couldn’t remember the last time we had gone to the video store or were affectionate with each other. Seemed like every time we made plans together, something at the last minute would always come up:
His car has an issue
He picked up an extra shift at work
He wasn’t feeling well…
His cousin had shared with me that Charlie had a pill problem. I didn’t believe her. Just the week before Charlie had told me himself that he did in fact have a problem. He told me he stopped when things started getting more serious between us…
That Night
I finally decided to confront Charlie after he’d canceled plans with me. I’d had enough at that point. I missed my boyfriend. I missed sex, being held. I missed talking to him.
When he didn’t answer my call I was angry. I got in my car, picked up a few twisted teas from the gas station, and drove over to his house. Up the few steps, I knocked on the door.
No answer.
I could see his phone on the kitchen counter when I peaked through the door window though.
He never leaves his phone so I knew he was home. I jiggled the handle. The door was locked. Knocked again…
“Why aren’t you answering the door?”
I called again watching through the door.
Still no answer.
So I decided I’d wait for him in my car. I cracked a twisted tea.
“If he’s not home, he will be soon. Or if he is home he’s gotta come out at some point to talk to me.”
After a little bit in my car, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Babe, I’m not home. Sorry I missed your calls. What’s up?”
That’s odd. He said he wasn’t home, but I saw his phone inside…?
I got out of my car and marched back up to the door. Peaked through the window again, the phone had somehow moved from its place on the counter.
“Bullshit, Charlie! I know you’re home. I saw your phone on the counter earlier. What or who are you hiding in there?”
I kept banging on the door. I thought the worst was happening and another boy was cheating on me. Tossing me aside like that beat up rag doll just like my High School Hottie had.
Charlie finally answered the door only opening it to poke his face out. Further making me believe that something/someone was in there that he didn’t want me to see.
I asked if we could spend some time together. I told him I was hurt that we’d only had hardly 15minutes at a time with each other in weeks.
He agreed to spend some time together. Said he knew he had been disappointing me lately. He then squeezed himself out of the door to come talk to me outside.
“What are we going to spend time together outside?”
“Yes, I don’t have much time. I haven’t been sleeping, and I have to work tomorrow.”
“Are you cheating on me? What are you hiding?”
Charlie rolled his eyes at me.
“No, I’m not cheating on you. I just need time to myself.”
I couldn’t believe it. He wanted more time. I’d given him all the time in the world. I couldn’t understand why he would want to be alone so much if he wasn’t cheating.
I tried to get a running start to the door. I knew he was hiding something and I had to know what it was. He chased me up the driveway. Tried to pull my hair so I would get inside, but I managed to push through the door to get inside.
Expecting to find another girl, what I found was much worse.
The Secret
When I finally got inside, I stood in the living room stunned. The house smelled like a dead cat and three packs of smoke a day inside with all the windows closed. The carpet was melted all around the couch and coffee table with burns. I stormed over to his room… There was no one else in the house.
When I came out, taking another look around… All of his mother’s craft candles were burned. She’d been collecting them for years he once said. They were in all kinds of shapes and colors. I couldn’t believe Charlie burned them.
The tv was different... Smaller. His PlayStation was gone, and his DVD collection was much slimmer than it was the last time I was here. I noticed the tin foil on the counter and thought he must have just made a freezer meal because I could smell the burnt aluminum…
Down the short hallway into what was his mother’s room — the door was open, all of her things were scattered over the bed.
“What could he have been looking for in there?” I thought…
When I finally looked back at Charlie, he was glaring at me like an angry bull. He just had his hands in his robe pockets and yelled:
“There. Are you satisfied now? You got to come in and now you gotta go. Now.” He snapped his fingers and ushered at the door for me to leave.
I didn’t move. I demanded answers.
He stomped towards me. I tried to make myself as heavy as possible. I begged him to talk to me; but he dragged me to the door. I struggled and kept asking him:
“Why? What is going on?!”
Charlie tried to push me out of the door. I was crying and tried to kick him to make him stop so we could just talk. I just wanted to know what was happening.
Struggling made him more angry. He slammed me against the wall. His dominant hand wrapped around my neck and his forearm crushing my sternum. I could feel the strength of his fingers squeezing my neck more tightly and each vertebra pressing against the wall behind me.
All I could do was look at Charlie’s eyes. They were black… Lifeless... I knew that Charlie wasn’t there anymore… This thing, whatever it was, that was hurting me was someone else entirely. This was not Charlie. And, looking at this broken thing made my heart break.
I felt a pinching pressure as I tried to gasp for air.
“I’m going to die,” I thought.
The moment Charlie ‘woke up’ I could see it on his face. It was like a lightbulb went off in his head. He finally let go of my neck. I collapsed coughing as I tried to breathe again.
He scooped me up from my puddle of tears and threw me out the door. He threw my keys as well as anything else I had left behind.
I screamed and cried. I couldn’t understand what was going on, or what in hell had just happened.
“This isn’t Charlie,” I kept thinking.
“Is everything ok?” a neighbor shouted.
“Yes, I’uummmm, fii-ne,” I stuttered back. Still crying so hard I could barely remember how to talk.
I shook off the pebbles that had embedded themselves on my face and hands. I needed to find my phone. It was dark now, so I crawled along the driveway to feel my way around.
“Who am I gonna call?”
I couldn’t call my parents. They would just freak out.
“Missy, I’ll call her!”
I didn’t have her number. So I called Charlie’s sister, Tessa, and asked her to pass the phone along.
Missy was Charlie’s cousin who had become Tessa’s legal guardian after their mother died. She and I had gotten to be close and knew how frustrated I’d been lately feeling like Charlie was phasing me out.
I knew she was the right one to call.
Not long after we hung up, she, her husband, and brother were coming down the driveway. While the guys broke into the house, Missy and Tessa sat with me in their car. They held me while I told them what had happened.
A few minutes later, we could see Missy’s husband coming out. He wiped his face as he approached the driver’s side window.
Missy rolled down the window.
“The house is a mess, he’s been selling anything he can find for drugs. Charlie didn’t want to admit it, but we knew something was going on. We sat him down and kept asking him what he was on. He finally said he’s been messing around with heroin and bath salts.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Charlie was doing… heroin…? … bath salts…?”
To be continued…
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