A very short story

I have a lot going on and I have a lot of feelings to get out, so you all get this juicy little tidbit that lives inside my mind.

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The phone hit the table with a very audible thud and a hand reached out immediately to grab it. She needed to stop dropping it so dramatically onto hard surfaces or one of these days it was going to break. Hard habit to stop, though, when things were so often going wrong.

Tucking the phone her pocket, she shoved her chair back from the table and pulled a large wine glass from the cupboard. It seemed like she was stuck in a never-ending cycle. Girl meets boy, boy woos girl, boy abruptly stops speaking to girl. Her friends all pushed on her that it was their fault, the boys, and that it had nothing to do with her. But how could it not? The same thing could only happen so many times before she started thinking ‘It must be me.’ And there was no way for her to know what was wrong so she could fix it because no one would tell her. They’d rather disappear.

Her eyes fixated on the wine as it flowed from the bottle, filling her already oversized glass to the brim. They stung with tears she absolutely refused to shed. It was just another boy, after all. Not a man. He couldn’t be a man if he had so little respect for her. ‘But this one was different,’ a voice taunted at the back of her head. Yes, he was different. He promised at the start he wouldn’t be like those other guys. Life was too busy and they were getting too old to be playing games. And that month had been one of the happiest and most hopeful of her entire life. She was excited to get through the week so she could see him.

Then the pit had started to form, in the bottom of her stomach. ‘You’re just paranoid,’ she’d told herself, despite the fact that her gut had never been wrong before. Finally, after a few days, the truth came out. He was in love with someone else. He didn’t “ghost” her like everyone else had, but she had to wonder if that would’ve been better. She continued to debate this with herself as she took a long, slow sip from her glass. Would it be better to think he just lost interest or met someone else, or to know that he’d played her all along?

‘Yep, he’s a douche.’

It felt like her phone rang the moment she hit send, and she had to smile. Through every terrible attempt at dating and every lie she’d suffered, she could count on one thing. Her friends, the people who really loved her, would always be there the moment she needed them. They wouldn’t fall in love with someone else, they wouldn’t disappear without a word, and they would always tell her exactly what was wrong with her (and what wasn’t). That was all she really needed.