GOODBYE

The next day at work, as

I was bravely attempting to eat lunch with some of my more boisterous and obnoxious

male coworkers, one of the more brazen and better looking of the bunch started to

talk in annoyingly painful detail about what he had done the previous night. To my

astonishment, as well as most or all of my male coworkers I’m assuming, he cockily

grinned from ear to ear while eagerly informing everyone at our table and within

shouting distance, how he had repeatedly fucked Diana inside of her hotel room. He

left very little to the imagination with his bullshit of a story as he got pretty

graphic and descriptive when he bragged about Diana performing oral sex on him,

among other things, as well as what positions they had tried throughout their triple-

x-rated, sexual rendezvous. He smugly described Diana as being quite the little

partier and drinker as he cockily leaned backward in his chair, probably itching for

the chance to blindly take and answer questions from the stunned but mostly envious

crowd of onlookers. How I restrained myself from punching him or even reaching

across the table to slash his throat with a steak knife I’ll never know, as I

wholeheartedly wanted to kill him for making Diana sound like a slut in front of

everyone, especially since I knew he was lying. I just knew he was. He had to be.

Diana would’ve never done anything like that I kept telling myself, she just

wouldn’t have, she wasn’t like that. The mere thought of Diana having sex with him

made me sick to my stomach, though I didn’t let it stop me from picturing him

bending her over and pulling her hair back as he relentlessly and aggressively

fucked her doggy-style while she screamed and begged for him to fuck her over and

over again until he finally blew his love for her inside her willing and eager

mouth. I couldn’t help it. My fear got the worst of me. Although I still held out

a glimmer of hope he was lying as I started asking questions about the layout of her

hotel room in order to give me a better indication as to whether or not he was

telling the truth. Unfortunately and quite sadly, everything he described to me was

exactly how I remembered it. He had definitely been inside Diana’s hotel room.

When Diana serenely approached

me at work later in the day, after she had arrived early to work the second shift at

the restaurant, I asked her if she enjoyed her longer than normal rest the previous

night. Without any sort of hesitation or admission of guilt on her behalf, she

positively and enthusiastically told me how much she needed and enjoyed it. But

there was something in the indirect way in which she said it to me that made me

question her honesty as she looked away from me without ever making eye contact. So

for the remainder of the late evening and early night, I acted like a prosecuting

attorney and painstakingly questioned and probed my fellow male and female coworkers

until I had finally come to a satisfactory conclusion and judgment on her highly

questionable story. I had heard enough eyewitness testimony and firsthand accounts

to realize Diana had lied to me and even though I couldn’t prove she had sex with a

waiter named Alex, I at least knew she wasn’t alone last night in her hotel room.

Considering how she was willing to sleep with me almost immediately after we met, it

shouldn’t have come as a complete and utter shock to me, but it did. I naively let

myself believe she might’ve actually liked me when my gut instinct kept warning me

something wasn’t right between us. No matter how much I wanted and needed to hate

Diana for lying to me, I just couldn’t... I loved her too much.

Later that night, as I was

getting ready for bed inside my grandmother’s human animal shelter of a residential

house, I lackadaisically glanced at myself in a bathroom mirror and noticed my

facial acne had started to come back something fierce. In fact, the very next

morning before I left for work, my facial skin had deteriorated so severely and

swiftly overnight I considered calling in sick until my ever worsening condition

improved. But if I called in sick I contemplated, I couldn’t see Diana as I so

desperately wanted to. My dire predicament put me in a quick depression that

morning and as sure as the sun rises, I hatched up a Wild E Coyote-like plan to see

if Diana truly cared about me for once and for all, as if she hadn’t already made

herself perfectly clear on the matter.

My idiotic plan was to have my

grandmother drop me off about a block away from the restaurant after my work shift

had already started so I could convincingly walk into work and tell Diana of a

supposed auto accident I’d gotten into. I was hoping Diana would feel compelled and

obligated to spend a little more time with me after work since I didn’t have a car

and seemingly no way to get home. Surely she would offer me a ride home or at least

stay with me until I found one I thought. So as I walked into work somewhat

fashionably late but not late enough to get fired, I intentionally ran into Diana

almost immediately upon entering the restaurant and began telling her of my supposed

accident. The more and more she repeatedly asked me if I was hurt, the better and

better I began to feel about our relationship. She really did care I thought…she

really did care.

With everything going as

planned and as the middle of the workday quickly approached, Diana and I casually

talked about her impending departure for home the following day. As we did so, she

pulled out a tiny piece of crumpled paper from the inside of one of her beige,

pants’ pockets and showed me what she had written on it. Diana had apparently

gotten my phone number from somewhere and was grinning from ear to ear when she

showed it to me. This was the sign I had been looking for I thought, she indeed was

interested in me as a boyfriend after all. Even her friend Randy managed to fuel

the flames of my confidence later in the day after she notified me of Diana’s

growing interest in moving out to the western suburbs of Chicago, which just so

happened to be a lot closer to where I resided than the two hours she currently

lived from me. To top things off, Diana even informed me tomorrow wouldn’t be her

last day working at the restaurant as she would be coming back later in the week for

another brief period of time. Excellent I thought. This would buy me the time I so

desperately needed for my face to clear up and to prevent her from seeing just how

bad my facial acne could get. Everything was finally turning out the way I had

hoped and it was only a short matter of time before Diana and I would officially

start dating I wishfully speculated.

Then about two thirds through

my workday or thereabouts, Diana and I sat together at a table booth and began

talking about my supposed earlier auto accident. Diana had asked me if I was hurt

for what seemed like the thousandth time and after I said no, she shockingly stood

up and bolted out of the front of the restaurant and into the passenger seat of an

awaiting car. From what I could see, she took off with another female to go God

knows where to do God knows what and she had done so without ever asking me how I’d

be getting home or offering me a ride. She never even said goodbye. It was the

last moment we’d ever spend together at the restaurant.

Sad and depressed beyond

belief, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and never come out. Every

time I thought we were getting closer and she wanted to start a relationship with

me, something happened to make me doubt it. I walked alone and in the dark for more

than five hours on my way home that night, on what ordinarily would have taken me

thirty minutes to drive, stopping only to eat a Denny’s restaurant in the wee hours

of the morning as I pathetically tried to drown my sorrows in an oversized glass of

badly stirred, lukewarm chocolate milk. Since I was too tired and lazy to continue

my one man pity parade all the way back to my grandmother’s house, I decided to take

an expensive ride in a rundown taxicab, from a driver I awakened in the Denny’s

parking lot, the rest of the way home. I was so dazed and confused that day I had

no idea what I was doing or going to do. All I really wanted to know was if Diana

liked me enough to date me? Why I couldn’t just come right out and ask her how she

felt about me like a normal person would have done, was a mystery to me. I hated

this shy, wimpy, and pathetic part of myself.

Looking back on it, I never

asked Diana if she wanted to go out with me because I already knew what her answer

would be. Her actions alone spoke loud and clear on the matter although I refused

to listen or take notice of them because if I did, my fantasy of us living happily

ever after would have been destroyed forever. I pathetically hung my entire self

worth and value as a human being on whether or not Diana liked me.