I sat on the couch, staring at the wall. Tears refused to fall, and a pint of Ben and Jerry's sat untouched on my coffee table. My vision was blurred, and there was a roaring in my ears, but at this point, I could barely sense any of it, let alone process what had just happened. My stomach was churning, and I thought I would vomit, if I had the energy to do so. I just wanted to curl up and die, but couldn't convince myself to move enough to reach the fetal position.
Warm brown eyes stared at me. "Hate me, please. Yell at me. Do something. I deserve it. You don't deserve this."
I turned my head enough to look in the general direction of the face looking at mine. "I can't hate you. I love you. How do you expect me to hate you when I love you? How can I yell when all I want do is cry? But you're right, I don't deserve this, no one deserves this." My eyelids closed slowly and refused to open as tears sealed them shut. Opening them slowly, the tears slid back into my tear ducts, and my vision cleared enough that the shapes in the room had a little more definition.
"I didn't mean for this to happen, Steph. She's just everything I want. She's stubborn and hard-headed and I fell in love. I never meant for it to happen when I was with you. Please believe me." His eyes were pleading, and I couldn't take it. I wanted to get angry. I had every right too. He walked out on me, on us, for another woman. I picked up the pint of ice cream on the coffee table and stood. Walking towards the kitchen, I held the ice cream by my side. Opening the freezer door, I stood there for an instant before slamming it and dropping the ice cream on the counter.
"I love you! I was willing to give you everything! I was going to move in with you, and stop with my commitment issues. I was willing to take whatever you would give me. I wanted to give you all of me, and you don't want it all of a sudden!? How the hell am I supposed to feel?" My voice softened, "You want me to be mad, but I just can't, because I love you too much to hate you. I care about you too much to not want to be with you. I wanted the world with you, and now I can't even have the part of you that I used to have because you gave me up for someone that won't love you back." My voice cracked at the end, and I couldn't look at him any longer, opting to look at the ice cream that was leaving a ring of condensation on my counter instead.
He stood up and walked over to me. Reaching out, he tried to place a hand on my arm. Pulling back quickly, I backed away from him. "Steph, please. I didn't mean for this to happen. You know that before this, I loved you and only you, but she will give me what you couldn't before. And I'm sorry that you were finally ready to give us a try, but she understands me better than you do, and she's everything I've been waiting for you to be. She's just what I've waited for so long that it seems ridiculous to not go for it."
Backed into the corner, I brought my head up and finally looked into the eyes that held mine so many times. Pulling the engagement ring off my finger that had only been there a mere couple of days, I set it on the counter, in front of him, afraid to touch him, knowing it would finally set the tears off that had been threatening to fall. "When you realize that she wasn't the right person for you and never could have been and was never doing anything but leading you on, I hope for your sake, I'm still waiting for you. But I hope to God, for my sake, that by that time, I will have already realized what an idiot I was for having ever loved you."
His eyes looked pained. "I'm so sorry for doing this. I hate myself for doing this to you."
"I sincerely doubt you hate yourself nearly as much as I wish I could hate you right now." There was a touch of bitterness to my voice.
"Please hate me back. Please be angry with me- something. I can't believe I'm asking you to be, but I can't stand to watch you just take the fact that I found someone else while we were engaged without a fight."
"Then why are you still here, doing this to me? If you truly loved me, and were truly sorry, and really didn't want to hurt me, you wouldn't have done any of this. So why are you lying to both of us?" My head dropped, any bit of fight that was in me to begin with completely gone. "Just leave. Anything that's still at your place, just get a hold of Mary Lou, and give it to her. She'll make sure I get it. I'm not sure I could bear seeing any more of you that I absolutely need to right now. I'll see you at the station, I'm sure. But right now, I just need to cry and congratulate myself on my wonderfully failed attempt at happiness, so if you wouldn't mind, you need to leave."
His eyes filled with pain as he stared at the top of my head. Taking the ring off the counter, he walked out, closing the door quietly behind him. Picking up the melted pint of ice cream, I threw it at the closed door, watching it splatter my entryway, before collapsing on the kitchen floor, sobs wracking my body, the memory of Joe Morelli walking out of my life for the last time embedded on the back of my retinas.