Give a little time to me or burn this out

I drove straight from the airport. My bag was sitting in the passenger seat because I just tossed it in there as soon as I unlocked the Jeep. I went right to Markus. I couldn't do anything else in Dallas before this. Before I ended it once and for all. I had texted Markus as soon as I was allowed to when the plane landed and told him I would be going to his apartment shortly. He never replied back to me.

Markus buzzed me into his apartment without acknowledging me on the speaker. I rolled my eyes and walked through the lobby door and went right to the elevator, hitting number 5 to get to his floor. I was replaying how I thought this conversation was going to go. But I knew it didn't mean anything, since he would throw some bullshit at me that I'd have to try and deal with.

I got to his door and went to open it, but he still had it locked so I almost walked into the door. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, willing myself to calm down and not rip his face totally off when he opened the door for me. I knocked hard on the door until he finally swung it open.

"Relax," he muttered, "you're gettin me all agitated already."

I rolled my eyes and shut the door behind me roughly, "You relax. You knew I was here. Have the door unlocked, it's not rocket science."

He laughed, "Yeah, because you know anything about rocket science either," he said, taking a seat at the dining room table where a few empty beer bottles were left, with a half full one waiting at his seat, "all you know about is face masks and hockey players," he spat as I sat down across from him.

I put my elbow on the table and rested my chin on the palm of my hand, "Sorry, what did you go to University for again? Beer drinking and fucking other girls on your girlfriends couch?" I asked sarcastically.

His eyes went wide and I could see the fire behind them. He was angry. But I was egging him on and I didn't really care. I was so far beyond caring. He had been ruining everything for me, for literal years. Not anymore.

He smirked at me and shook his head, "And there's the girl I fell in love with," he said with a snarky edge to his voice, "God, maybe you need to look at yourself to see why I cheated."

I scoffed and rolled my eyes, "Sure. It's my fault. Totally. Because I was basically supporting us and taking care of shit. And I was doing the cooking and cleaning even after I would work for twelve hours. But yeah, you cheating is on me."

"What the fuck has gotten into you?" he hollered, slamming his hands down on the table top.

"Nothing!" I yelled back at him, "This is me, Markus! I'm not some girl that you can bully and push around! I will never let you treat me that way anymore!"

"Bullshit," he spat, "you're here. You're mine. The end."

"No! Not the end!" I retorted, getting angrier than I ever imagined I would have. I was livid at this guy in front of me. I couldn't even see the old Markus anymore. I don't know where he went. I had no clue where the guy I had fallen in love with was, he had been gone so long from me.

"Listen...we need to sit and have a talk, Markus," I told him.

He rolled his eyes at me, "Isn't that what we're been doing?"

"About something important," I explained, crossing my arms across my chest and sitting back in my chair.

He chuckled, "I think our definitions of important are very different."

"Are you going to listen to me or be sassy all day?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at him.

"Well go on then," he said waving his arm, "Say what's so damn important to ya."

I sighed and closed my eyes, "I'm not happy here anymore."

"What'd ya mean 'here?'" he asked suspiciously.

"Here. Us. I'm not happy," I told him, letting my arms fall onto the tabletop, "Things aren't good here anymore, Markus. They haven’t been good in some time."

"What're you talking about?" he asked, "Things are fine with us."

"Are you fucking kidding me? Were you not just here for our hello five minutes ago?” I sighed, "Do you not even want to know where this is coming from? Why I'm feelin this way?"

He laughed, "No, because I honestly don't care, Raeanne. This is from some small idiotic part of your brain."

And I felt it. I felt the snap inside of myself at those words.

"I'm not an idiot," I told him, surprising myself with how calm is sounded, "I own a business. I make good money. I went to and finished school, Markus, so the only idiot I see if you."

He looked surprised and then covered that up with anger, "What did you just say?"

"You heard me," I said coldly, "Markus. I am not happy anymore here. God...I haven’t been happy for a while here. But I let it continue on because I thought maybe...maybe this would get better. Maybe I could make myself happy with you. But I can't do it anymore..."

His face was beet red in anger. And I could see it in his eyes...he was putting shit together, trying to figure this out. He had never seen this side of me, probably in years.

"Is this about him," he seethed.

"What?” I asked, actually being a little shocked that he was connecting this to Tyler.

He scoffed, "Don't play dumb, Rae. Is this about that guy, your hockey guy?"

"Leave Tyler out of this!" I cried, "This is about how I feel about being with you! This is about how I'm not happy with you anymore!"

"You were happy before that! Before he came along! You like him because he shits in high cotton!" he said pointing his finger at me.

"I don't care about money, Markus!" I yelled.

"Whatever, Raeanne! You have no reason to not be happy!" he yelled to me. He was starting to sweat, I could see it. The veins in his neck were protruding.

"I have every reason to not be happy!" I said, pointing my finger onto the tabletop hard, but I couldn’t tell if it hurt or not, I was too pumped up on adrenaline to notice, "This isn't a good or healthy relationship! And if you think it is then you're out of your mind!"

"What? And you've got a good relationship lined up with the hockey boy? Give me a break Raeanne! You're turning into some uppity bitch!" he said, waving his hand in my direction.

"Fuck, Markus! I want to talk to you but you're just lashing out at me!" I shouted at him.

"It doesn't matter!" he yelled, "You probably fucked him!"

"So what if I did!" I screamed, hitting my open palm on the table in front of me.

He looked taken aback, he leaned back in his chair and looked at me, "You...you slept with him?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I breathed, "We slept together."

His mouth was hanging open and I realized...he was genuinely surprised, "I never...I didn't think you'd do that to me," he admitted looking shell-shocked.

"I don't regret it, Markus," I told him honestly, "I'm not gonna lie to you and say that I do regret it."

"But you're here with me," he said triumphantly, "so you do wanna be with me then? I knew that fucker had nothing on me."

I scoffed, disgusted, "That's all you have to say?" I asked him, feeling my anger rise up, "You're more concerned with the fact that I'm sitting here and you haven't been listening to a God Damn thing I've been saying! This wasn't a fucking competition, Markus! I wasn't a prize to be won!"

"It doesn't matter!" he shouted back at me, "You're here with me while he's alone wherever he is!"

"Do you not feel things?" I asked him, "Do you not care about everything else that I've told you, Markus? I told you that I'm not sure how I feel about you and this relationship anymore! That the last couple years haven't been good for us! But you just think because I'm here right now that that fixes everything!

"Well fucking newsflash! I didn't come here because I picked you over Tyler! I came here to figure out how to tell you! Something that I should have done months ago! Actually, I should have done this years ago!" I yelled to him, unable to help myself. I wanted this done. I wanted this relationship done. I wanted this conversation over with.

"How to tell me what?" he snarled.

"That I'm not happy with you anymore! I don't regret sleeping with Tyler! I don't regret the feelings I have for him! But you better believe I do fucking regret the time I've wasted here with you!" I screamed, hitting the table a few more times to emphasize my point.

His face was redder than I had ever seen it, his eyes were moving faster than anything I had ever seen, he was thinking, and thinking really hard about all of this.

Finally his eyes settled with staring me dead in the eyes, he slammed his hand on the tabletop, "You don't think I know!" he yelled, standing up with the chair falling backwards.

"Know what?" I asked, standing up and facing him.

He ran his hand through his hair, "That you love him, Raeanne!" he cried, "I'm not an idiot!"

I squinted and watched him, but he didn't give anything else away to me, "What are you talking about?" I finally asked him.

"I don't think you've ever looked at me the way you looked at him!" he said, "You came to his defense the other day and not mine! The way you fuckin looked at him...like he was the best thing you'd ever seen! You've never looked at me like that...at least not for a long time."

I ran my hands through my hair and sighed, "What do you expect from me?" I asked him, "You never put anything into this, Markus," I told him, "ever since the thing with Kelly especially, but even before that...it was never really good here, with us. You can't look me in the eye and saw it was good."

"But. You. Stayed," he told me, "You dealt with me, even though all of the bullshit," he closed his eyes tightly and looked up for a few seconds before bringing back his focus to me, "But I knew this was coming. All of this...you've been different the last few months...not putting up with my shit...standing up for yourself...I should have known then."

I wiped my eyes and shrugged, "You need to know that you can't push me around...it was something that I've let you get away with and I never should have. I never should have let you treat me and my family the way you have...and that's something I can never forgive myself for.

"But, I've stayed with you, hoping that you would change, because I really did think this was it for me. But you've never tried for me. I just sat wishing you would change into the guy I wanted...but you never did. And I kept hoping and sticking it out, even when you would fuck me over, Markus. And then Tyler...Tyler changed everything for me. He's done more for me in the past few months then you have in six years! And that sucks!" I told him as I continued to cry, "It shouldn't have been that way! Tyler and I should never have met because you should have been there that night! If you had been a good boyfriend from the start none of this would have ever happened! But he has shown me so much more affection...so much more everything than you have, Markus! And it kills me that I didn’t even know how to respond to him because I've never been put in a position where someone treated me special like that! I never knew that guys treated girls like that in real life!

"I didn't want it to end like this, but it's ending, Markus. I'm sorry," I sobbed, "this isn't how I wanted this...us to go, and you know that."

He watching me, taking in everything I had said, and I saw that his eyes had filled just slightly with tears that he would never let fall.

"Wow," he said thickly.

I took a couple deep breaths and nodded, "Yeah," I told him.

He opened his mouth to speak a few times but nothing came out. Finally he cleared his throat and started, "We could make this work," he told me quietly, watching me for a reaction, "I can...fuck...I don't know, Rae. I can change?" he said, making it sound more like a question, "We can do something, ya know?"

I shook my head before he finished the whole sentence, "We can't," I said, "I can't. I can't do that to myself or my family. I can't believe I let it get as far as it did, Markus. And I'm not saying it to be mean," I said, walking around the table to get to him, "but you haven't treated me well the last little while, and you can't deny that, Markus. You can't say that you loved me and that this was healthy."

"I do love you," he whispered, taking my hand in his. But I didn't feel anything. I hadn't in such a long time.

I shook my head, "You don't," I replied, "you don't do this to people that you love."

"I don't want to lose you," he told me, pleadingly.

"I'm sorry," I said with a light shrug, "I've been gone from you for such a long time. And you've been lost to me for years. Where's the sweet boy that I had a crush on in Middle school?" I asked squeezing his hand, "Where's the boy that I fell in love with in high school. I haven't seen him in years, and that makes me so sad, because that guy was amazing. He used to leave me such sweet notes in my locker and in my books. He would bring me flowers just because, and text me all the time. He. Loved. Me," I told him, as tears streamed down my face and I was pretty sure that my nose was running but I didn't care, I needed to say all of this to him.

"That was my guy. He was mine. I loved him so much," I said quietly, "but he left me. He's been gone for a while, and I don't know why. And maybe you don't know why either, but it just happened. And it hurt me," I said, using my other hand to cover my heart, "because I didn't know what I did to make you change like that, to change into this guy. And that's why I stayed, because I remember what you used to be like, and I wanted him back so badly. And I held on hoping one day he'd show up again and it would all be okay. But he never did. And you started being so cold to me and being awful to my family and friends. And I defended your actions this whole time to them! And they kept saying I was crazy, and maybe I was. But I just loved the old Markus so much that I was willing to do that to myself just in case a glimmer of the old you would show up.

"But I can't keep waiting and being treated like this. It's awful that I'm with a guy that isn't allowed in my house, or can't call my mama and daddy by their first names. I waited for as long as I could...but he's gone," I told him, "And I'm sorry, Markus. You have no idea how much I wanted this...you and me to be together forever. But we can't. Even if you changed I'd be too scared you would flip back just as fast. And...God, I just can't do it anymore. And it's selfish, but I've tried for so long."

"I'm here," he told me, "That's still me, Rae. I mean...shit...he's still here, baby girl."

I shook my head at him, "He's not right now, Markus," I told him sadly, "I'm sorry, but I can’t. I'm done," I said taking my hand out of his, "but, honestly...if you stop acting like this, and treating people the way you treated me, and get back to that guy that was so wonderful, you are going to make some girl so unconditionally happy."

One tear fell down his face and my breath caught for just a moment. I couldn’t believe such an honest and pure emotion had just come from him. For the first time, I felt a small pang in my chest about all of this.

He let out a small breathy laugh and wiped his face, "I just can't believe it won't be you."

I smiled sadly at him, "I would have agreed with you if this happened a few months ago."

"Are you doing this because of him?" he asked quietly.

I opened my mouth to protest, but the only thing that came out was a stuttering noise. I knew I was doing this for me...but I knew that it was only a matter of time before me and Tyler were together. There was really no question about it to me.

He nodded once, "I get it," he said.

"I don't want you to think that...Tyler is making me do this," I started to explain, "yes, we slept together, and I'm so sorry that I did that to you," I told him honestly meaning that, "After we did that, I told him I needed to figure some stuff out first. Which was us, Markus. So don't think that, ya know, Ty is waiting somewhere and we're driving off in the sunset today. I need to decompress. I need to . I need to figure all of this out, because I'm lost too now. For the first time in six years...I'm alone. And it's scary. But I need to figure my life out for a minute, ya know?"

He looked down, "I never deserved ya, Raeanne," he said looking back up at me, "you've always been too good for me. Everyone knew it, especially me. And I don't know why I put you through all of this, Rae, really I don't. Ya never did anythin to deserve it. You're perfect to me," he told me sadly, "And I've loved you every day we've been together. And I honestly hate myself for doin all this to ya, really I do. And I wish I knew why," he licked his lips and closed his eyes, "I think part of me has always been a bit jealous, especially when ya went to school and got the shop and everything. You were so happy, and I was so miserable because I was a nobody with the rich family. So I relied on that while you went and did stuff to make you happy. And I think I started to lash out at you, and that wasn't fair at all. I wish that you could stick around to see me try and go back to the old guy that took ya to Prom and made a picnic for you," he said making me laugh sadly as he smiled at me, "but I understand why you won't be."

"If you get that old Markus back here, God, some girl is gonna be so lucky," I told him, trying to make him feel better.

He sniffled and wiped his face with his hands, "I just want that girl to be you, Rae. There's not gonna be anyone else out there for me," he said as tears fell more openly down his cheeks, "I don't know what I'm gonna do without ya."

I bit my lip and looked at the guy in front of me. Six months ago if someone had told me I would have said everything that I just did to him, and that I would be breaking up with him...I never would have believed it. Not for one second. But it was happening, and there was no way around it. Not anymore.

"I'm sorry," I told him softly, "I never would have believed it if someone had told me that I would actually be doing this...but I have to. Like I said, I mean, I know it's kinda selfish...but I've been waiting for him for years...and it's really starting to hurt me.

"But deep down you are a good person, Markus. But you have to help yourself, ya know? You can't be mean and cold to someone you claim to love and wanna be with. You can't do that to someone. If you get yourself in order, great thing will happen for you! I promise!" I told him, trying to make this as painless as I could.

He nodded, "I'm sorry," he whispered.

I nodded, "I know, Markus, I know," I told him, taking a step back from him, "But I'm going to go now, okay?"

"Okay," he told me.

I nodded and turned, going back to the other side of the table and getting my purse from the floor before looking back up at him, "Good luck with everything, okay?"

"Yeah, you too," he told me.

I smiled and turned to the door, "Rae?" he called.

I looked back at him, "Yeah?" I asked.

He hesitated, "Do you think...I don't know...maybe we could be friends one day?" he asked me.

I smiled at him and he returned it back to me. And I saw it. That smile he gave me was a small piece of the old Markus. Because it wasn't sarcastic, or a mean snide smile. It was the smile he gave me when I accepted his invitation on our first date, and the smile he gave to me when I told him I loved him back.

"Yeah, one day," I agreed.

He smiled and nodded at me, "Okay."

"Bye, Markus," I whispered.

"Bye, Raeanne," he said back to me.

I turned and made my way out of his apartment and as fast as I could out of the apartment complex and into my car where I sat and cried. I cried because Markus and I were over with. I cried because I had lost my first love. I cried because my first love had left me long before this. I cried because I was overwhelmed. I was almost in a state of shock that it was finally done with.

I didn't feel anxious or nervous about the day because I knew I wasn't going to fight with him, or wonder what he was doing or where he was. I didn't need to worry about him anymore. And that was comforting to me.

I sniffled and wiped my eyes, composing myself and looked to my phone sitting on a cup holder. I wanted to call Tyler to tell him. But I wanted to give him space because I knew he had been upset with me a few hours earlier. And we said to wait and talk until he came back home on the twenty third anyways. I didn’t want to push it, especially after everything that had happened that morning. I wanted to give him his space, just as much as I needed mine too.

And I just hoped that after the few days apart and not talking that his feelings for me would still be as strong as he was telling me. I knew mine wouldn't change I just hoped that Tyler would still be waiting for me. Even though I knew I didn't deserve it.

Notes

As much I hated Markus, I knew he needed to have this moment, which was something that went unchanged in my re-writes I talked about a little ways back. Please let me know what you think. There's not too much left for Rae and Tyler!