~*~
The whole thing came to a head, as things usually do, on Wednesday. It was exactly two weeks after I’d found Brad cheating on me and, after finishing work, I was walking back to my car. My feet were aching and my head throbbed from listening to the constant 'beep, beep, beep' of the cash register.
Rounding the corner to the car park, I froze as I saw the silhouette of a guy leaning against my car. It wasn't that late, but the rest of the area was completely deserted and the buildings surrounding the asphalt were all dark. The streetlights offered some light, but it was that eerie orange kind that seems to sap all the colour out of everything making even quite ordinary objects seem really creepy.
I fished my mobile out of my bag and held it at the ready as I began to walk purposely towards my car. Any funny business and I was going to be onto the police quick as a flash.
The guy caught sight of me as I moved closer to him and pushed himself off the car before beginning to walk towards me. My heart gave a huge leap of alarm and then, as I realised who it was, sank down into my shoes.
"Hello, Brad," I said, unenthusiastically.
"Hi, Talia." His voice was subdued and, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his head bent, he looked and sounded for all the world like a guilty school boy in the principal's office.
Brushing past him, I unlocked my car and threw my stuff onto the backseat, giving myself time to collect my thoughts and get over the fright he'd given me, before facing him once more.
"So, is there any particular reason you're skulking around my car in the dark scaring the living daylights out of me?" I asked, putting my hands on my hips and making sure I looked as uncompromising as a rock. It wasn't hard to pull off, I'd spent the last two days coming down on people like a tonne of bricks and I so wasn't in the mood to deal with Brad.
"We need to talk," he said, looking pretty stony himself.
"Oh my God, you're pregnant," I said with a fake gasp, putting a hand over my mouth then lowering it and shooting him a contemptuous look.
"Can't you give it a rest for a second?" He snapped and I folded my arms mutinously, but pointedly closed my mouth. "Do you want to go for a drink? The uni bar is still open." He gestured down the street as if I didn't know where it was.
Seeing that a reply was actually allowed now I looked at him scathingly and shook my head. "Go in there with you? I can't think of anything I'd hate more."
"Why do you have to be so bloody single-minded?" I swear to God it sounded like he was whining. "You can't see through one little screw up? That has to ruin the really good arrangement we had going before? We were good together, you know we were. We got each other, we kept things light. I meant what I said when I called you, things were good when everyone got along."
"Then you should have thought a bit more carefully before you buggered the whole thing up, shouldn't you?" I pointed out, thoroughly fed up with him. I wasn't going to stand around in the cold listening to his drivel any more. I moved round the car to the drivers’ side, fully prepared to get in and drive off, but Brad grabbed my arm before I got very far.
I looked at him in astonishment then down to where his hand was gripping me just above the elbow. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked incredulously. "Let go of me."
"See, now, that was the biggest problem with us, Talia," Brad said angrily, still not letting go of my arm. "You didn't ever let me get near you."
"And, considering what a tool you turned out to be, thank God," I snapped. "Now let go." I yanked my arm and he released me.
"But don't you think I deserved a bit more?" He asked and I stopped dead at his words. I must have looked pretty mad when I whirled to face him because I could swear I saw him swallow nervously.
"Deserved?" I spat. "We're not in the Elizabethan era, Brad, you can't demand conjugal rights or whatever. You deserve nothing, not from me and not from any other self-respecting girl." I was whipping myself up to present a full on monologue but he held up a hand and butted in.
"I'm trying to get back together with you, why won't you listen?"
"Why are you trying to get back together with me?" I countered. Then, suddenly, I remembered the phone conversation I'd had with Simone two weeks ago. Brad had been telling his friends…oh that was right, it all made sense now! "This isn't about how sorry you are at all, is it?" I asked, noticing, with some pride, that my voice sounded almost as dangerous as my mother's had on Sunday. "This is about how you've told your friends that even though we've broken up you're still going to - how did Simone put it? - bed me before the end of the year."
I could see by his face that I had hit the jackpot.
"You're disgusting," I hissed.
"Talia-" he tried, but I talked over him.
"Look, I'll make this simple for you. It's over, that's really all there is to it, don't try to talk to me again."
I wrenched open my car door, but, much against my will, found myself pausing as he released a torrent of words at me.
"Over? Well sure, OK. Good luck finding any other guy who won’t go running for the hills the second he meets your mother or your brother. Sorry, I meant brothers. Fuckin' insane, the lot of them." He was so petty and mean he seemed to drip poison as he talked, his face so twisted by anger that he looked nothing like the guy I'd first met.
I saw red.
"Don't you dare talk about my family like that." I obviously prefer verbal assaults as I'm not exactly able to produce particularly convincing physical ones, but at that moment I was prepared to rip him limb from limb and my intent must have shown because he took a couple of steps back. "Every single member of my family is worth ten of you."
"Oh, gee, now I feel bad," he said sarcastically. "Natalia Davenport doesn't think I'm as good as her family, well what a big bloody surprise! Sorry if I don't go straight home and kill myself because of my unworthiness."
I know I've said it before, but what the hell did I ever see in this guy?
"So what happens now?" He was still speaking in that weird, angry voice. "You go home and tell on me and Jack comes and smacks my head into a wall again?"
"It'd be no more than you deserve," I snapped. "If I had his upper body strength I'd smack your head into a wall!"
Although, wait a minutes, again? Wasn't it supposed to be Matt who had thrown him against the wall?
I hesitated for a moment and then said, my voice slightly calmer, "And, just to clarify, when did Jack smack your head into a wall the first time?"
But even before he answered I knew what he was going to say.
"Don't act all innocent, Talia. Despite your frigidity it doesn't suit you. You know that Jack threw me against a wall the day after we broke up. Everyone knows that."
And I guess, in a way, I did kind of know that it had been Jack. He'd been acting so suspicious that evening and he's always been an awful liar. Great, the person who told Simone must have got their wires crossed and thought it was Matt. Then Matt hadn't found out about our break up overhearing Brad, he'd found out overhearing me! My mind was so busy concentrating on the conversations I'd had two weeks ago that I barely registered the fact that Brad was talking again. I tuned back in pretty quickly, though, once I realised what he was talking about.
"He's made it quite a routine you know, Jack the hero. He threw Jeremy Symons against a wall last year for trying it on with that girl that lives below you, whatsername…"
I felt like smacking my head into a wall myself. "Haley," I ground out between clenched teeth.
"Yeah, that's the one," Brad looked at me shrewdly. "You don't like her do you?"
"Haley?" I asked in pretend surprise. "I don’t care one way or the other about her."
"Yes you do," he pressed. "You really hate her." He smiled, almost gleefully. "Well, that must suck for you considering how obvious it is that your precious Jack’s so massively into her.”
“He’s not massively into her,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
“Careful, you’re so
unding a bit jealous there...” Brad said in a sing-song voice that made my flesh crawl.
I had to disengage from this whole stupid thing; anything else I said would give Brad further ammunition and, besides, I had to get home. I had to find Jack, talk to him, and then kill him.
"Well, this has been nice," I said sarcastically. "What a good little catch up we've had. Now, just to recap, you're the lowest scum ever to take up valuable oxygen on this planet and I never want you to speak to, or about, me ever again. Is that clear?"
But before he could answer and trap me into another spat, I got into the car. I slammed the door and turned the ignition on, fully prepared to get the hell out of that car park even if it meant skittling Brad over the bonnet on the way.