Am I bitter? Hell yes, I am. Every morning, I have to see the man that ripped my heart out. I have to listen to him drone on and on about dead people and our founding principles that no longer seemed to matter, all while being expected to pay attention. If his attitude was anything to go on, I’d bet time wasn’t on his side, either. He appeared just as disheveled, acted just as sad, and sounded—if at all possible—even more distraught than he had two weeks earlier on that very first day back to school after our “break up.”

It was obvious that his suffering hadn’t let up. And I knew without a doubt that mine hadn’t eased an ounce. Yet there wasn’t anything either of us could do about it. His mind had been made up. His decision practically etched in stone.

But one thing time did manage to accomplish was shutting Rebecca and Jill up. Their snide comments and muttered assumptions had finally stopped. Took them about a week, but thankfully, it had ended. The very last thing I wanted to happen was for Axel to get into trouble for befriending me in the first place. We had enough to deal with regarding that decision. He didn’t deserve more.

It’d been fifteen days since he’d last spoken to me, and those final words weren’t ones I wanted to carry around with me. He hadn’t uttered a word in my general direction since leaving me alone in his back yard. I didn’t exactly make it hard for him. When he’d ask a question in class, whether I knew the answer or not, I never raised my hand. It would’ve been pointless to, because he only ever called on people that sat on the opposite side of the room as me. I guess that made it easier not to look my way. I was fine with it, because most of the time, I kept my head down and took notes anyway, not bothering to turn my attention to the front of the class.

Every morning when I’d come in, he’d be at the chalkboard, or his podium. In fact, he never sat at his desk during class anymore. Even during a test, he remained up front. At the beginning, it killed me to be that far away from him. But over the last two weeks, I’d discovered that it was easier for me that way. Being too close to him, such as the times I had to walk past him before and after class, made it hurt worse. A dulled knife straight to my heart would’ve hurt less than smelling his cologne. And I’d probably freeze to death if I had to be in such close proximity to his icy-cold attitude for longer than two seconds each day.

But that still didn’t mean I believed in distance making things better. Did it make it easier to have the width of the room between us every morning? Yes. It saved my sanity. However, it didn’t heal anything. It didn’t succeed in making anything better. Only slightly easier. Yet there were still days when I found myself yearning to be close to him, the space between us becoming too much, too hard. My heart ached either way.

I’d never been in a real relationship before—the only one I could even remotely consider as one was Axel for those few weeks. And even then, I never considered it a real relationship until it was over. So I’d never experienced Valentine’s Day the way other people did. To me, it was no different than February thirteenth, or even the fifteenth. Just another day. But for some reason, this Valentine’s Day, I felt as if I’d missed something.

It was on a Saturday, which saved me from having to see Axel at school, but I still found myself wishing for a small glimpse of him. I’d gone out back and waited in the trees for hours, hoping Lassie would show up and haul me away to her owner again. But she never came. When I went to bed that night, I held onto the phone he’d given to me, as if it were a life preserver saving me from a rip current, praying with all my might for it to ring or beep with a message from him. With every day that passed, I lost more and more hope that he’d change his mind. But for some naïve reason, I had it in my head that if he’d reach out to me, it would be that day. The one day set aside, designated to show someone that you care.

He said he cared. So where was he?

I finally fell asleep, clutching the phone to my chest, my face buried into my wet pillow as I cried alone. The first week of his silence, I’d cried myself to sleep every night. But after that, I may have tossed and turned, stared at the shadows on my ceiling, or closed my eyes and thought back to the time before the rug had been ripped out from beneath me, but I hadn’t cried. Reverting back to the flood of tears after days of dry eyes and hardened emotions seemed like regression.

I blamed it on the fat baby that shot me in the heart with his stupid arrow.

Waking up the next morning sucked. My dad used to wake me up the day after Valentine’s Day with a cupcake when I was little. He’d come in and I’d pretend to be asleep until he started singing Happy Birthday to me. The last year he did it was for my sixth birthday. I’d accidentally dropped the cupcake and the red icing stained the carpet. Mom put an end to our birthday morning celebrations. Two years later, instead of waking up to a song, I woke up to the sounds of glass breaking. I never knew what their fight had been about, but whatever it was had my dad in a bad mood for the rest of the day. I only had three more birthdays with him after that one. And each one grew more depressing than the last.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I’d actually looked forward to my birthday this year—until Axel shattered my heart. The thought of sharing my day with someone I cared about had excited me. Which is why waking up this morning sucked even worse than normal. Had I never been ecstatic about it, or remotely looked forward to it, I wouldn’t have been so let down. And I’d worked hard over the years to lessen my expectations in order to protect myself from being disappointed.

After forcing myself out of bed and putting clothes on, I made my way downstairs. My mom sat at the kitchen table with her cup of coffee and the newspaper. Much like any other morning when we were both home at the same time, I walked around her on my way to the fridge for a glass of juice, paying her no mind at all. Only this time, she lowered the paper and spoke to me. I had to question myself if I’d actually woken up or not.

“Do you have any plans for your birthday today?”

I slowly spun around, verifying that it was, in fact, my mother sitting there and not some nice imposter. “Um…no. Why?”

“Oh, I was just wondering,” she said, waving her hand as if brushing off my concern over my mom being nice to me. “It’s almost eleven. When the phone rings, make sure you answer it. If you don’t, it’ll go to voicemail. I have no desire to talk to your father.”

“I know, Mom. His phone calls on my birthday have been consistent for the past five years. This year should be no different. But I’ll make sure to answer it on the first ring.”

“His gift hasn’t arrived yet. It’ll probably come Tuesday because of the holiday tomorrow.” She picked the paper back up and began scanning it again. I couldn’t do anything other than stand in the middle of the kitchen and gawk at her. I would’ve questioned her motives for breaking the silent treatment she’d given me over the past five weeks, but I didn’t dare give her a reason to either go back to ignoring me, or worse, back to treating me like shit.

I opened the freezer door once I got over the shock of my morning conversation. “What do you feel like for dinner?” I asked, scanning over the frozen meats we had on the shelf.

“Pick whatever you want, it’s your birthday,” she said through the paper, not bothering to lower it in order to answer me. At least she hadn’t changed that much.

I pulled out hamburger meat and set it aside to thaw. But before any other idle chitchat could begin, the phone rang. My mom set the paper down, pushed her chair away from the table, and grabbed her mug before walking out of the room. She apparently hated my father so much that she couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as his voice over a phone.