Soft Words, Hard Feelings

It was the way he sat down that tipped me off. 

Harry usually sat down with a flop. With his long limbs and his puppy-like curly blond hair, he landed in even the most proper environments with a full-bodied bounce. Every surface he came in contact with was made of clouds. But not this time. 

This time, Harry lowered himself onto my cheap, Ikea couch with a hesitance I’d never seen before, like a kid being sent to the principal’s office. Except the kid in question was thirty-two and sold insurance for a living. 

He flinched when I asked if I could grab him anything from the fridge. I panicked when he said he didn’t want anything and needed an excuse to leave the room, so I slipped a bottle of Gatorade from the not-yet-refrigerated-24-pack and brought it with me. He avoided making eye contact when I came back and sat across from him. 

I assumed he was struck by my own formality, by my cagey, buttoned-up responses. As he should be! Harry had all but moved himself in over the past three years. His toothbrush sat next to mine, his Xbox was perpetually plugged into my TV, his mom stayed with me when she visited. He was the only one who showed up to my first open house as a freshly-accredited realtor last year. We’d held each other after watching Atonement, crying and naked, on the couch he was slouched on at that very moment. 

And after three years of constant texting, calling, Facetiming, he’d gone radio silent last week. It was only after my fifteenth unanswered text did I get a message from him asking if he could meet me at my place to chat abt somethin imprtant. 

I had been moments away from filing a missing persons report and that was all he had to say? 

We sat in awkward silence as I sipped from my room-temp Gatorade. The late afternoon sun streamed through the window behind me and burned the back of my neck. A fly buzzed between us as I drank, landing abruptly every once in a while on my bare knee. 

I finally broke the silence, and asked how he was doing. Immediately, I felt my cheeks burn. How was he? This was a man I knew so intimately I could have told you the exact times he’d shit, shaved, and showered that morning. And I was, what, making small talk? 

God, he even smelled different. The usual, minty-fresh scent from his mouthwash was smothered by something woodsy and musky. It made me want to hurl. 

He cleared his throat and replied in a soft, shaky voice. He was fine, he said. A bit tired from working late the past few nights. 

Working late? My eyes narrowed. This was my second tip-off. 

Harry hated his job. He clocked out at 5 p.m. on the dot every night and refused extra work and overtime, no matter how low his bank balance was. (And with his affinity for knick-knacks and Chinese takeout, his bank balance was always low.) But I kept my mouth shut, and nodded politely as he wiggled his way out of explaining why he was staying late at work and instead began rambling about his roommate’s new foster kittens. 

As he chattered about the cats’ love of his shoes and complained about the smell of the litter box, I turned over that new piece of information in my head. He was staying late at work. This man, who had lectured me time and time again about never giving The Man any more time than was absolutely necessary, who had once chided me for answering a call from my boss on a Saturday–he expected me to believe he was willingly staying late? 

I was missing something. But what? 

I asked him how long the roommate would have the cats for. Harry said he didn’t know. The kittens were a few weeks old and would be ready for adoption any day now. I nodded. Another lull. I asked him if they planned on keeping one, and Harry said no. One of his co-workers, though, had visited and was planning on taking one. He said her old cat had recently passed and she was looking for a replacement. 

Cool, I replied. He nodded. Another lull. 

This was starting to get annoying. There was clearly something he needed to get off his chest. Whatever it was hung between us like a swollen balloon, stretched thin from the air pumped in from each vaguely-answered question. 

I wondered if something horrendous had happened to him. Something traumatic. It would explain the flinching, the hesitancy, the outright attempts to steer the conversation away from anything too prodding. My stomach dropped. Oh, my sweet, sweet Harry. Was that it? 

I leaned forward and clasped my hands on top of my knees. I spoke softly, so as to not shock him into retreating. You know, if there’s something difficult you need to tell me, I started. 

I didn’t need to finish my sentence. Immediately his eyes brightened and his shoulders sagged, and I felt the balloon between us deflate. Yes, he said, there was something important he had to tell me, something difficult, something I needed to know. But he just couldn’t find the right thing to say. It was too difficult to say out loud. 

Which gave me an idea. I ran down the hall to my room, and dug through the heap of random papers, clothes, and discarded mail that accumulated on my desk. I unearthed a sketch pad and a couple loose ink pens, and ran back to the living room. 

I plopped the pad on his lap after ripping off a few pages for myself. I scribbled onto one of my pages. Hi, I wrote. I think this might be easier than talking. He nodded and smiled, then began writing. 

When I was a kid, my parents put me in therapy after I almost got hit by a car crossing the street. I didn’t get hit, and honestly, I barely remembered the incident at all, but that didn’t stop them from signing me up for an eight week block of sessions with an absolutely ancient therapist who smelled like old leather and rotted fruit. And every Tuesday at three-thirty p.m., I spent forty-five minutes with Dr. Wendelson drawing pictures on a sketch pad and getting lectured about the importance of defeating your subconscious ego. And while nine-year-old me didn’t really get it, current me thought it couldn’t hurt to try.

I sunk back into my armchair and watched him write, much more at ease. Not with whatever Harry was about to tell me, of course. I’m sure whatever he needed help admitting was harrowing, and probably traumatic. Maybe he’d taken shrooms and had a deep-seated childhood memory reveal itself. Maybe his identity had been stolen and was embarrassed to admit it. Maybe he’d been assaulted at work. 

I clenched my fists. The last one made the most sense to me, it would explain why he was staying late at work. Maybe he was being coerced by his new boss? He’d mention something about him a couple months ago. His name was Devon, or Denny, or something like that. Harry had mentioned he was a bit of a hard ass, but had unexpectedly taken a liking to him recently. The blood in my cheeks rose. 

Harry would be an easy target. Despite his hard stances on worker’s rights, in practice, he had a hard time standing up for himself. He could be very agreeable, and being a tall, pretty, white boy, he might not have had any experience with someone trying to extort him for sexual favors before. 

I would burn down Harry’s office before I let this potential harassment go on. 

My chest was about to burst with fury on behalf of my still-scribbling boyfriend, so I grabbed a pen and one of my leftover papers and wrote. 

The pair of us finished at the same time, and as I held up my paper, he held up his. 

Mine said: I WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT YOU <3 

His said: I’M BREAKING UP WITH YOU :( 

I blinked. Was I having a stroke? He shrugged and frowned apologetically as he read my paper, then he quickly jotted something else down on a fresh sheet. 

SO NO HARD FEELINGS? 

My jaw dropped. No hard feelings? I laughed, tears welling in my eyes. I was about to go to war on behalf of this man, was seconds away from making a plan to commit arson, and he was dumping me. 

Before I could ask any questions, before I could wrap my mind around what the hell was happening, Harry’s phone rang. He answered it, chipper and bright. Quickly he said yes, he’d be out in one second, then said the five words that made my world screech to a halt: Yes Dev, I love you. 

Dev? As in–? 

So not only was Harry dumping me after ghosting me for a week, and not only was he already saying the L-word (which took him a full year of dating for him to say to me, by the way), but he was leaving me for his boss. His male boss. Part of me felt relieved at the thought, at the idea that, hey, at least he wasn’t leaving me for another woman. Was I still upset? Yes. But, at least this really had nothing to do with me, just more to do with Harry needing space to explore his sexuality. That I could live with. That I could understand. 

And then the doorbell rang. Harry’s eyes widened as he leapt from the couch and sprinted to my front door. Knowing that was probably his boss-slash-new-lover, I ran behind him, and caught him right as he cracked open the door. I wanted to see this man for myself, not to harrass him and shame him for sneaking around with the man I loved, but, in actuality, to give him my blessing. To pass the torch, so to speak. I would let him know that while I was upset, I do consider myself a progressive woman, and would step aside to allow for this union to pass. Love is love, right? 

Harry’s wiry frame blocked me from seeing what he looked like, but I could hear him whispering, telling this Dev to go wait for him in the car. 

But the person that responded was not a man’s voice. At least, it didn’t sound like one. I elbowed Harry in the ribs and forced him aside. The door swung open, and standing in the threshold was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. 

She was nearly six feet tall. Taller than Harry. Legs for days and clad in a black power suit that paired perfectly with her waist-length black hair and her pillowy, ruby lips. She looked like fucking Cher. 

This was Devyn Von Blair, Harry informed me. His boss and, yes, his new girlfriend. 

I stood there in the doorway, gaping at the pair of them, at the modelesque woman who stood before me, while I stood there in my Hello Kitty sleep shorts and a stained family reunion t-shirt from twelve years ago.

I didn’t realize I’d gone radio silent until Harry gently nudged me out of his way, and slid his arm around my replacement. I stayed quiet as he mumbled his goodbyes, and let me know that he’d come by another day to pick up his stuff. He gave me an awkward kiss on the hand, and the pair of them disappeared down the hall, him latched onto her arm like a kid clutching his mother. 

I shut the door and let the shock settle over me. 

I had just been dumped. And not just dumped. Replaced. I dragged myself back to the armchair and sat down. 

I’d been so off about everything. The ghosting, the abruptness, the change in scent. He wasn’t being scammed, or assaulted, or traumatized. Maybe he’d been coerced, but looking at the Amazonian woman who stood in my apartment hallway, her face pinched as if she had stepped in something nasty, something told me he wouldn’t have needed all that much convincing. Hell, if I was him, I would have left me for her, too. 

I sighed, and melted into the chair. The fly from earlier still buzzed around my abandoned Gatorade on the floor. It flew through the air, swirling and catching the air like a paper plane catching on the wind. 

Which gave me an idea. 

I sprung from my seat and gathered some of his things he left behind. A couple shirts, his battered copy of Infinite Jest, his Xbox. I wrapped them together and knotted the sleeves around them. A makeshift rucksack, of sorts. I grabbed the sheet of paper that announced our breakup, and stuck it on top. 

I pushed open the window of my third-story apartment just in time to see Devyn leading Harry by the hand to her sleek BMW. And just my luck, she was parked right underneath my unit. 

I tossed the package out the window. It sailed through the air and landed with a thud on the hood of her sportscar. Not enough to make a dent, but hard enough to get her car alarm to go off. 

They whipped their heads up to my window as I threw down Harry’s second note, my final goodbye to the man I once loved, weighed down by the open, bright blue Gatorade I never finished. As it splashed all over her perfect car, her perfect clothes, her perfect shoes, the note stuck its landing on top of Harry’s now-scattered belongings.

SO NO HARD FEELINGS?