Violet & Coffee

A Breakup, Ordinary — Part IV

“Bread makes you fat?” — Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Saturday, cont’d

It’s morning. The sun is blasting through the living room window. Empty beer bottles and the box shrimp caponata litter the coffee table. Cups of coffee, Pepto, and gnocchi as well, closer to me. I barely touched anything. Maybe the gnocchi. Between Saz and I, a bottle of amaretto. I had one glass before it came back up. Saz is pinning her pink bangs back. She’s got on yesterday’s clothes and doesn’t look like a minute was lost. I’m in laundry day pajamas but no laundry day. I look like shit.

I feel like shit.

She’s chewing on a piece of stale garlic bread. “Oh my god, this stuff is like crack.” Her words around a mush of crust and buttery carbs. My stomach churns. “I’m thinking of doing my hair blue next. I think that’ll be cute. What do you think?” A cat, gray and white and warm is curled up into a puff ball on her lap, sleeping peacefully. At least someone is.

“Don’t do blue,” I say, picking out a cold, bland gnocchi, gingerly biting into it as if testing to see if it’s poisonous first. “After like a week, blue hair looks like you’re sick.”

“Yeah. Plague chic, you know? I think that’s in anyway.”

Saz’s main strategy over the night had been distraction, keeping me from thinking about the “situation” with Daniel. Kind of hard not to when I pretty much threw him out on our third anniversary. Broke up with him, even. Dare I say, it was mutual. I’m a bitch. He’s an asshole. It’s a mismatch made… well, not in heaven. New Jersey?

All the while Saz bounces between distraction, wild speculation, and holding my hair while I retch in the toilet, I’m subject to an alphabet salvo from Daniel. The last legible thing he sent is a threat to post my nudes on the show’s forum if I don’t come clean about sleeping with Mark.

Looks like I’m getting my sex tape scandal after all, Terry be damned. It would be so much funnier if my stomach didn’t hurt so much.

I tap ashes from my cigarette into a ramekin, recently empty. Saz veers back into speculation territory. “I think he’s sleeping with his ex,” she says.

I put my hand on my head, leaning back into the sofa. “Do we have to go over this again? He doesn’t text or call anyone other than me and his mom. Goes to the vape shop, comes home, every day like clockwork. And when he’s home, he’s leaving me sticky notes, painting figures or shitposting on some Warhammer forum.”

“Someone from his board maybe? Might be having an emotional affair.”

“Saz, you’re probably one of the smartest people I know, so you should know how ridiculous the idea of picking up chicks off a Warhammer board sounds.”

“I’ll buy all your drinks tonight at Sakke’s show if you’re right,” she says. “Here, call her.” She hands me her phone. “Use my phone. I got her number.”

I groan, cupping my head and stomach. I feel the fraction of a gnocchi coming back up, haunting me.

She’s about to jump over the coffee table to catch me. “Again?” she asks, exasperation all over her face. Persian Devil has annoyance on his, glaring at Saz before jumping back onto her lap, circling twice before flopping over, belly up, pawing at her hand.

We don’t deserve Persian Devil. “No, no, false alarm. Maybe not drinks,” I say. “Just tonic. I think that helps with upset stomachs? Or is that ginger ale?”

“Gin helps with breakups,” she says. For someone who’s in and out of relationship, Saz is terrible at break-up advice. I crack a smile at her, though.

I stare up into the ceiling, the ceiling fan whirring, dizzying me. “Do you think the problem is me? I got into it with Mark, and I wonder if that bled into how I treated Daniel?”

“Daniel sucks donkey balls,” she says, giving a casual shrug. “I mean, his idea of an anniversary dinner was Chili’s.”

“Olive Garden,” I correct.

“Sorry, Olive fucking Garden. Would it have made a difference?”

“Does knowing make a difference? If he was cheating on me. You’re just giving it a name, this problem, and it doesn’t change lick. We had a fight. I threw him out. That’s that. But calling it an affair to put him in the wrong? He’s already in the wrong. Maybe I am too, I don’t know. But after those texts, do I need confirming? I just need to feel it, y’know. I’ll hate myself for a few weeks one way or the other.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll call her. I want to know.”

“What are you going to tell her? ‘I’m under the impression that my best friend’s boyfriend and you are ugly knocking, is there any validity to this claim?’”

She glares at me. “I won’t use my Instagram reporter voice,” she smiles. “I’ll use my podcast voice. Is that better?”

“When are you going to get a real job?”

“You first,” she says, laughing.

“The proletariat brand Muppets pay my mortgage, thanks,” I say. “By Muppets, I mean the sweaty dudes who watch our show on YouTube. I wonder, if you had a circle for my fanbase and Daniel’s Warhammer forum, what would the intersection be like?”

“I dunno,” Saz says. A circle, I think. “So anyway. I’m calling her.” The cat grabs her hand, and in between bites rubs his cheeks on her fingers. “Persian and I need to know.”

She puts the phone down on the coffee table, speaker on. She reaches out for a cigarette from me. I hand her my lit one and light a new one. “Hello?” answers a female voice. She sounds like we just woke her up.

“Hi, Ashlyn, right?” she says. “It’s Sarah. Sarah Gray. Saz, from high school, remember?” And somehow, like that, they chitchat, talking small about parties and jobs, places they’re living in, and pets they have. Like they’ve been best friends since forever and just forgot. I have to rehearse my order when calling in Chinese food, and she can just talk to people at seven in the morning like it’s nothing. Ugh, I shouldn’t have thought of Chinese food. Somehow, they got onto the topic of gossip. “Hey, did you hear Violet and Daniel broke up?”

“Who’s Violet?” she asks.

“You know, from Violet and Mopsy the Montsy?”

“Oh, her! Wait? He was dating the weird chick from that kid’s show? Wow. It’s the sriracha mayonnaise of children’s television. Yeah, we get it, but it’s still lame,” she says. I stare dead eyes at Saz. This is stupid. “I didn’t even realize those two got together.” There’s a voice of amused surprise. Like it was fitting for her to find out in the same breath that Daniel was in and out of a relationship.

“Yeah. For, like, ever.”

“Really? We haven’t talked since, you know, when he flipped out at me for dating Gav. I think him and I are still Facebook friends? I’ll have to look it up. But I mean, that sucks. I know how Daniel can be during breakups. If you see Violet, tell her how sorry I am.”

Saz is looking at me as she says, “Huh. I thought you guys were still friends. Anyway, Ashlyn, I gotta run. I’ll be at Geoffry’s tonight. Skanksterella’s playing. They suck and ska sucks and they play ska.”

“What, do you play for them or something?”

“What? Like the drums? That would be awesome. I’d go to and see that show,” she says.

“Well, I’ll talk to Kevin, see what he thinks,” she says. “Hey, it was good talking to you. Let’s grab coffee some time.” Conversation over.

“There,” Saz says. “Now we wait.”

“Wait for what? She doesn’t care about Daniel. If I recall his wailing for the first year we were together, she threw his heart down the garbage disposal.”

She smiles at me. “Just wait.”

And I wait. I sip my coffee, which at this point in the morning has gone cold. I chug it down, my stomach not liking it for a moment. “For, like, how long?”

“I mean, it all depends.”

My phone buzzes after she says that. A text message comes through from Daniel. I read it and show it to her. We need to work out visitation for Persian Devil.

“He’s a pretty remarkable cat,” Saz says, rubbing Persian’s tummy as he lovingly nips on her wrist. “So sue me. It was worth a shot.”

“Was the plan to tell the girl on the side he has a girl on the full-time, and she’d call him out on it, and he’d then text me to stop sabotaging him?”

“Yeah. It sounds pretty smart.”

“That’s more stupid than Terry and live shows.”

She shrugs, “Well, how’d you do it then since you’re such a big Nancy Drew?”

“I don’t care,” I say to her. “I don’t care if he’s fucking someone else. How the hell am I going to explain this to Josie?”

Unimpressed she says, “You shouldn’t have kids if you don’t want problems like this.”

“I mean, this is the last thing I wanted for her, for people to just walk in and out of her life.”

“What about Mark?”

“He’s been consistent…ish. Constant… ish. If I didn’t try so hard, I doubt he’d stick around. But how do I tell Josie we’re supposed to grow up and fall in love and then tell her, ‘Hey, you remember Daniel and how he treats mommy right and how you think his 3D printed figurines are so cool? Well he just up and left because he’s worried he’s two inches shy.’ That’ll blow over well.”

“Get her a dog. Name him Daniel. Tell her Daniel got turned into a dog by a witch. Problem solved.”

I put my cigarette out, trying to hold back a laugh. “You’re terrible at this, you know that?”

“Yeah? I could probably do a podcast on relationship advice,” she says. “Look, she’s smart enough to have figured out you and Mark don’t belong together. She’ll get you and Daniel aren’t good for each other either.”

“I know. I know,” I say. “It’s just… I don’t want to have to go through it all over again, you know? Having to vet a guy if he’s cool with dating someone with a kid — and what if Josie doesn’t like him? Oh god, I was so worried when she met Daniel for the first time she’d hate him. Because that ends it, you know? I can’t be with someone my kid hates.”

She’s not hearing a word I am saying. “You’re coming with me to see Skanksterella, right? I can’t watch that train wreck by myself.”

“You just invited my ex’s ex.”

“It’s cool. She’s not coming.”

“So why are you going,” I ask.

“Because I told Ashlyn I was going to be there.”

“But you just said… you know what, never mind. No, I intend on spending the rest of the day curled up on the toilet, listening to the Smiths and cry. And I can’t, because I still have to record the commentary track for this season, even though the last episode won’t be out of editing until next week. And I can’t do the commentary because my weekend has now been booked solid having the imaginary problem of introducing imaginary suitors to my daughter. That takes up my afternoon and evening, thank you. All because Mark was late, no-show, whatever.”

“Oh god, no. Not the Smiths. I’m not going to let you do that to yourself. You’re coming with me. I’ll load you up on Imodium and Diet Red Bull and Gs and Ts. Do the commentary hungover, tomorrow. And this gives you a perfect excuse to clear out of the house for Daniel to get his shit out. What is it, like a box and three trash bags?” She picks up another slice of garlic bread. “Oh my god, I could eat this stuff with every meal.”

Breakup, Ordinary returned with Violet & Drinks on Story of the Week@Medium.com.
Credit to Joe Butler @writelikeashark on Twitter for the help with the poster.