Going in Circles Read Online Free Page A

my bed again. For making it
our
bed again. I could have chosen to make this moment a loving one.
    But I was cracked, so I couldn’t do that. Instead, I said, “
This
is the bad dream.”
    A side effect of being cracked is that you say lines that would get cut from even the cheesiest of films.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œMatthew.” I had to say his name even though he was the only other person in the room because again, I was living a cliché. “Matthew, did you come back for me or for you?”
    When living a cliché, always make sure to repeat a person’s name at the beginning of every question.
    Under the cover of darkness he thought I couldn’t see him think through all the possible answers, his eyebrows furrowed as he feverishly narrowed down the possible responses, searching for exactly the right thing to say at this hour, in this situation.
    â€œI came back for
us,
” was what he landed on. The right answer on paper, as long as that piece of paper was from the cheesy movie script being written in my head.
    I wished I hadn’t asked, because the answer didn’t ultimately matter. I was the one who had to be able to live with it. And Matthew didn’t realize, couldn’t realize, that when he had come back, he’d created an invisible monster that grewinside me. Like those little gummy toys that get larger from adding water, I’d swallowed a tiny dinosaur. It mixed with my stomach juices, poisoned by anxiety, frustration, unanswered questions, and abandonment, and now a T. rex was roaring inside me, ready to burst.
    For the next couple of weeks, everything Matthew did drove me crazy. The most innocuous act could set me off on a mental tirade. He could flush a toilet, and my cracked brain would rant, “That man has the
nerve
to just come
waltzing back here
and
flush that toilet
like he
didn’t just dump
me a few
weeks
ago?”
    I’m pretty sure my head was involuntarily bobbing on every fifth word that went through my mind. I must have looked like a pigeon, swiveling my neck around, wobbling and weaving with indignation.
    â€œAs if
I
were someone you could just
leave
without
warning
and then come back here and just
ask
me if I wanted to eat Chinese for dinner tonight? Like we can ever have Chinese again when the
last time
we tried to eat it you walked out on me? Like anything will ever be
normal
again? As if I’m someone you just
ask
questions of and then wait for an
answer
—as if I have
answers
instead of a thousand questions? Like:
where did you go/who did you see/did you sleep with someone/did you sleep with someone and decide you’d rather sleep with me?
”
    That’s another thing. Once Matthew left me, I imagined he did everything he could do while being away from me. It didn’t matter if he told me the truth or not. In my mind, there were women. Lots of women. Naked, glistening, horny, dirty women who did everything I didn’t want done to me. These hot women would cook for him and then beg him to do illegal activities on them, all of them. Giant hordes ofwhores and skanks wiggling all over Matthew. That’s what I saw. And for some reason, I saw this happening in Cairo.
Everything’s hot and beige and cannot be duplicated by me. I am nothing compared to what Matthew could have Out There. I will never be as good as Hot Sex in Egypt. I know that, but now he must know that, too.
    So why had he come back? There had to be a catch. Trying to figure it out was ripping me apart. If he couldn’t get everything he wanted from me, then what was it he was getting from me that he couldn’t get anywhere else? What did I do for him that even the dirtiest of girls was saying, “Oh,
hell, no
” to? Maybe I needed to be more like one of those Cairo orgy girls. Make some boundaries that didn’t involve sex acts.
    Sometimes I marvel at what the female body can endure. We can create life, giving our