Stupid.
He felt big and clumsy and stupid.
Roy sat in his living room -- used to be THEIR living room -- and stared blankly into the darkness. He picked absently at the label on the bottle, and tried to figure out what had happened to screw it all up so badly.
What the hell could she possibly want from him? Fucking hell. Why did he even care? He had WASTED the best years of his life on her, and now there was nothing. NOTHING. He had been the star athlete, the cool guy. She had been the nobody, the art nerd. Everyone said he was wasting his time sticking to just one girl, especially her, with her drooping shoulders and dreamy ways....and now, he wondered if they had been right after all.
Back then, he had thought they were all so wrong. He didn't need the cheerleaders or the pink, fluffy class queens. Honestly, they all made him feel nervous, and he couldn't stop staring at his dirty fingernails when they talked to him about their shopping and hair and cars and parties. Pam was different. She didn't care about his friends or their parties, or his junky car. He relaxed when they were together. She was the only girl he ever knew who made him feel smart. She said he was funny, and she wasn't afraid to open her mouth and really laugh at his jokes. When he'd joke with his brothers, she'd join in, pulling practical jokes and bantering in her silly way. In turn, she thought she was lucky to have him, and most of their friends agreed. Finally, he was the top dog. After years of "practice harder, son, no junior varsity in this family" and "but Steve has a Trans Am!" Roy finally got to hear that he was the catch, the king. Sometimes, he wondered if he was the one who was lucky, but he was certain never to say it, never to let out that bit of information that would have exposed his weakness, he dependence on the girl who wasn't supposed to be good enough for him. Finally, he could relax and stop trying.
But now, he was knocking on the door of 30. Nobody cared if he had been a high school hero or wrestling champ. Now, he was just some manual laborer with a beer gut and a pickup truck. The cheerleaders weren't smiling at him any more. He had taken the years where he'd been the hot commodity, and given them to her, only to have her look up at him a week before their wedding and say "I can't."
And now, he could see that she was lost, and she still stubbornly insisted that she could find her path alone. He had heard her crying in her car one day last October in the parking lot at work. She been talking on the phone with her mother, sobbing that she'd never been with another man and didn't know how to go about dating. Well, he hadn't really been with any other women, either. Sure, there had been the teenage drunken gropes, and a few nights out with the boys that he'd rather she never found out about....but he didn't know how to start over any better than she did. Hell, he probably knew less. She was out there, taking classes, improving herself, moving up. And he was left right where he was, right where he'd always be. He was Roy. The big, oafish warehouse guy. He'd been past his prime at 18. And now, he was alone again.
His eyes felt strangely hot and he found himself blinking very hard. He tossed his beer bottle into the bin by the door, and reached for his flask of tequila. It was going to be a long night.
Author's Chapter Notes:
A little character bit on Roy (since I did one for Karen.) Again, still in the week between my pretend Business School and my imaginary Cocktalis.
I own none of these characters, etc. I'm just a simple housewife, unfrozen from a block of ice. Your world confuses me.
