Breaking Somebody's Heart - Bonnie Smetts

Randy ended up sleeping on my couch, falling asleep like a baby, her face going soft and blank. Being here at the beach is having the same effect as it’s had on me. And she’s only been here half a night. I put one of my white covers over her and brush her runaway curls from her eyes. “Good night, Rand.” She doesn’t hear me, she’s already sleeping with the sound of the ocean right here in the room.

I can’t help look out at the curl of the ocean, my ocean, it glows a strange white in the middle of the night. I used to wake up and want to scream at the darkness. But here sometimes I wake up just to make sure the ocean’s still there. Here.

“Honey, honey,” Randy says, waking me up the next morning. “Hey, it’s ten o’clock. I thought maybe something’s wrong with you.” She’s standing at the door to my bedroom, wearing the clothes she showed up in last night.

“Hey, come here,” I say, patting the edge of my bed. “Hey, how are you doing?” And I mean how are you doing in the day. I know things always look different in the sunlight.

“What can that asshole think, breaking somebody’s heart like this, breaking the heart he vowed to cherish from this day forward, the day we got married,” she says.

“Nobody can break your heart, hon,” I say. And I know what I’m talking about. “They can try, and sometimes they don’t even try, but you can stop the breaking. Just stop it. Just stomp around and be mad. Mad is better than sad in this case. I’d stomp right on him, but that’s just me.”

And we laugh. Randy’s not quite as hot as me but I suspect this too-nice husband-turned-somebody-else might change that.

“Don’t let it get you, Rand,” I say, knowing I’m asking her to walk on water, fly to the moon, and be somebody she’s not.

“But Rawl, what am I gonna do?” she’s crying. What is she gonna do? Move away, throw him out, what? And he’s given her the car and the house filled with furniture. What’s she gonna do. There’s no moving in with her mother or sister or anything like that. They all live in places so small they barely fit all the people they’re supposed to fit.

“You gotta do one thing. For me. You’re gonna stay here today and not call that man and not think about him. Anytime your head goes there, you’re gonna think of something else. Like how pretty I am.

She doesn’t laugh, she smiles.