I could hear the tears thickening her words. "I was so so stupid. Mark was he was just using me the whole time. He didn't want me back. He just wanted to see if he could still have me.
And the second I gave in, he was done. He looked at me like I was garbage, Liam. Like I was nothing. And I realized I realized what I threw away. I threw away the only person who ever actually loved me."
Her palm hit the door, not a pound, more like a desperate flat-handed press, like she was trying to reach through the wood. "I miss you," she said. "I miss us. I miss the way you used to look at me. Nobody's ever looked at me like that, and I ruined it.
I know I ruined it, but I can fix it. Please let me fix it." I stayed quiet, not to punish her, not to make her suffer, but because I genuinely had nothing to say. The words she wanted, forgiveness, comfort, reassurance, didn't exist inside me anymore. She'd scrape them out.
I was empty of her. The silence stretched, and then, as if a switch had been flipped, her tone changed. "Are you even in there?" Her voice hardened. "Are you just standing behind the door, listening to me beg?
That's sick, Liam. That's actually sick. You're enjoying this, aren't you? You're loving it." I didn't respond.
"You think you're so much better than me." The tears were still there, but now they were mixed with something uglier, anger. "You're not. You're boring, Liam. You've always been boring.
Mark was right about you. You're just a placeholder. A placeholder who got lucky. That's all you ever were." She waited.
I said nothing. "Open the damn door." Her fist hit the wood hard now. Three sharp bangs that echoed in my quiet apartment. "Open it.
Stop being a coward and face me." I looked through the peephole. Her face was twisted, mascara streaked down her cheeks, teeth bared. She looked nothing like the woman I'd loved. She looked like a stranger having a breakdown on my doorstep.
"I'm not opening the door," I said. My voice was calm, steady. "We're strangers now." She froze. "Strangers?"
She let out a laugh, high and sharp and unstable. "After everything we had, after 2 years, I'm a stranger?" "Yes." "You're a monster," she spat. "A cold, heartless monster.
I wasted 2 years on you. I hope you die alone." I heard her footsteps retreating down the hallway, fast and uneven. Then the stairwell door slammed shut. I stood there for a minute, two minutes.