Chapter Text
For a guy that claims to not like drama, I'd really fucked myself by staying with Bea so long.
Honestly, I don't know whether to respect that she somehow kept me out of all the shit she started in my name or not, she probably knew I'd hate it. The whole operation started to come unraveled when she rushed on a flight home after I dumped her over the phone.
I'll admit I was surprised. She didn't seem sorry at all during the breakup call, and I'd made the mistake of turning my phone back on right before she got back, and saw she'd left me an insane amount of voicemail messages. I hadn't even finished listening to them when she busted through the door, basically begging me to take her back. During that speech, she'd let slip that the cheating had been with more than one guy. When I pressed her on that, she folded completely and admitted she'd been fucking the woman who owned the dog next door too.
Great. Just fucking perfect.
After I refused to budge, it was basically chaos. We had five months left on the damn lease and Bea refused to talk logistics. I didn't want to stay — without Bea's shit the place would be almost empty and I'd prefer to live somewhere cheaper anyways — but it seemed like she didn't either. In the end, I sorted out breaking the lease, and Bea moved back in with her parents. I was grateful our landlord was reasonable about it. I didn't like the guy or anything, I didn't really know him, but he had nothing legal that required him to let us dip and he did.
Leaving it there wouldn't have even been that bad, but then I had to go and be reckless. Last Thanksgiving, Bea and her mom had been talking about selling Donut as a breeder. Bea and I had gotten into one of our only real fights about it around Christmas, and I couldn't stop thinking about the cat who I'd known since she was a tiny squash-faced kitten being given up, abandoned, for being not useful anymore. And, to be honest, I'd grown to like the little thing. She slept on my neck and we both snored. Because she was a cat, she was usually awake or woke up at night when I did, and she would jump on my shoulder for a treat, stare at me smoking on the balcony, or sit in my lap while I played Call of Duty or something. It was nice, especially on the nights when I wasn't really sleeping, to have another living thing hanging around.
What it comes down to is that I thought about kidnapping Donut, before I realized that was a bad move if I didn't want to get my door knocked on by cops, or worse. Bea's dad was a ruthless lawyer and would make sure I was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for anything I did to his precious baby girl or her belongings. My only choice then, was to try to negotiate.
By this point, it'd been three days since Bea came home, and despite the fact that Bea and I were still technically living together — though I'd taken to sleeping on an air mattress in Donut's trophy room — she was refusing to speak to me. The only interaction we had was when Bea would slam into the trophy room in the middle of the night to yank Donut off my neck and bring the cat back to bed with her. Not gonna lie, this startled the shit out of me every time and wasn't helping with my already fucked sleep. So, I wasn't exactly in top form when I approached her dad, looking to bargain for Donut.
Not that it would have gone well either way, I'm a certifiable dumbass by Bea's family's standards who didn't even properly graduate high school. Right after I got out of the Coast Guard, I got a Facebook message from one of the foster families that housed me before I went to the ranch, saying how surprised they were I had cleaned myself up and hadn't ended up in prison. Meaning, when I walked into the guys' office, sleep deprived and running on caffeine and microwave meals, I should have known I was going to get screwed.
Thirty six months, interest-free, three hundred dollars a month or a lump sum equivalent to ten thousand eight hundred dollars. It was less than I expected, which is the only reason I agreed at all. I theoretically had the money on hand, but it seemed stupid to pay it all at once when there was no interest. I've always been kind of squirrelly about having as much cash on hand as possible. My dad drank anything we had away, and having no family and not a lot of friends makes you realize real quick that the way the world works is its either cash, connections, the military, or homelessness. I'd spent time doing the latter two, and wasn't keen to do them again, though I'd take another stint as a Coastie before couch surfing or spending the night at a shelter. The worst stipulation in the contract was the 'ensured well-being' one. If I had to guess, this one was Bea's doing and also why the price was so low.
Basically, I had to make Donut into a social media influencer. I was required to post a photo of her a week on Instagram, and one video a month, for the full thirty six months regardless of whether or not I'd paid the full amount off. Whatever. It was probably a way for Bea to maintain some kind of contact with me, or maybe she did care about Donut in her own twisted kind of way.
A week later, contract signed, Donut, me, and a few boxes and a duffle bag worth of my belongings chilling in some older guy's furnished basement I'd found on Craigslist on a month to month lease, and I'd thought things would be on the up and up.
I'd almost forgotten to post the weekly photo of Donut. I ran a brush through her fur before framing her nicely so the tiny basement window and her old cat tree looked more like a majestic sunset-lit throne or something. Then, I opened Instagram, an app I hadn't opened since the breakup, and only ever opened before that to like Bea's posts because she'd told me it was important to her. That's part of why the photo with Brad was so goddamned stupid and I believed her when she said she was drunk when she made it — I had a fucking alert set up for her Instagram posts.
I slapped together a post, no caption, no location, no context. Just Donut lounging on her cat tree in the sunset. I had a few messages on Instagram. Some were Bea's friends, so I went through my measly follower list to get rid of them, and blocked the ones that sent nasty messages. One of them was a guy I knew from the Coast Guard. I left that one unread for later.
I suddenly remembered that I had a Facebook account, and should probably check that for messages too. That was how I found out first, that Bea had access to my Facebook account. Then, that she'd gotten my previous coworker fucking fired for asking me out on Facebook Messenger and she'd done it by bribing my boss with nudes of her friend?? Oh, and of course, the final thing I found out was that —
"What the actual fucking fuck?!"
Donut hissed and jumped off the cat tree.
I had a fucking brother, in Iowa, my dad was dead, and his widow (who was basically my age) was in my Facebook messages begging for me to help them get out of the run down trailer they lived in. At that exact moment, I got a text from Sam, the notifications popping up at the top of my phone screen.
"hey dude, lily and I decided we're gonna move to connecticut to be closer to her family. we should hang out before I leave tho"
I debated chucking my phone out the window or trying to lay down and sleep for twenty four hours. I settled for something in between and sat right on the basement floor and put my head in my hands.
So that's how I started my twenty eighth year on this stupid planet. Freshly single and cucked, in debt over a cat, living in a basement, one of my only close friends hitching a ride across the country with a girl he'd been dating less than a year, learning my boss was a scumbag who could be bribed with naked photos and that I was indirectly responsible for someone losing their livelihood, and my dead father dumping me with a probably traumatized eight year old and his desperate, broke widow.
"Goddamnit."