All Chapters of Love in the Time of Quarantine: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

It’s been months since Cole and I had our fight. For a while there I was only seeing him on weekends and we really only interacted when we had sex. It was heartbreaking. Things got better and we’re hanging out as friends again, watching TV, playing video games onthe PS4 in the living room, cooking, and just sitting and talking. But anytime things start to get even slightly intimate, Cole either bails or turns it sexual. It’s gotten to the point that I just stopped trying to tell Cole what I thought or what I felt. He’s not listening anyway. Yeah, I get it, I was an asshole. I admit it. I’m sorry about it, but there’s nothing I can do to fx it if he won’t let me. And he’s not letting me. Honestly? I’m kind of pissed at him. He knew that I had a lot of trouble with relationships when this started. He knew that I had only wanted this to be a friends with benefits thing in the first place. He’s right, we slipped into a relationship like it was the most natural thing in th

It’s 2:00 on Saturday afternoon before I can even think about getting up. I had the biggest catering event that I’ve had so far last night. I catered the reopening of an art gallery, pushing out food for 100 people all night long. It was amazing. It was exhausting. It was lucrative. And I’m fucking proud of me and my staff. As my business has gotten bigger, I’ve been able to higher even more of my old colleagues. They were pissed about how they were let go by the Hayes and trying to get them to come back at the same rate wasn’t cutting it. I have servers, sous chefs, line workers, and even some of the dishwashing staff of my crew now. Even Jessie, my old assistant, is with me, running the office and helping with the business side of things. Most of the crew is back together from the Hayes. Jeff must be throwing a shit fit! Last night, the party lasted until 2 am and then clean up took until 3. I had to get the stuff back to our ghost kitchen (the professional kitchen we

I’m a coward. I know I am. I took a day off on Monday while Kent was at work and I moved up. I had been packing up my stuff over the weekend, though he didn’t know that. By Monday, everything but the furniture and my things in the kitchen had been packed. Luckily for Kent, the furniture in the shared living areas were his. He had lived here before I moved into the apartment and had everything there already. I left him a note, telling him that I love him. That’s something I hadn’t been able to do in person and, again, it was a coward’s move to do it in a note instead of face to face. But I wanted him to know. God, that makes me sound manipulative. And it was the biggest dick move that I could have made, but…I wasn’t trying to be a dick. I was trying to let him know why I couldn’t stay with him. I couldn’t stay and be his punching bag. I couldn’t let him parade guys in and out of the apartment because I wasn’t giving him enough attention. Especially when I feel like

An entire month without Kent. I would have thought it would have been…worse? I mean, it was bad. It really was the first few days. But then, I was just so fucking with my catering business that I literally didn’t have time to think about him. All of a sudden, I looked up and realized that: 1) I needed to hire more staff and 2) it had been a month since I had seen Kent. And honestly? I didn’t really miss him. Ok, that sounds fucked up. And it’s not completely true. I missed hanging around with him. I missed how we used to be with each other. But…what I didn’t miss was the drama. All the heartache and the pain that came with us being together. The insecurity that I felt whenever I thought about our relationship and how we acted together. Jessie had made me go out with her friends and reconnect with old ones. I hung out with people that had nothing to do with Kent so that I didn’t have the possibility of running into him. I was busy as fuck with the catering company.

**TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions of suicide and attempted suicide. Read at your own discretion.** “How are you feeling, Kent? You’re looking better. You have some color in your cheeks.” I’m sitting in my therapist, Allison’s, office. “Yeah, Star dragged me out to the flea market on Saturday. They made me put on, like an entire bottle of sunscreen. Said they were worried that I’d turn into ash like a vampire,” I say, giving a short chuckle. It’s been three months since that fateful meeting with Cole. Ok, that’s a bit dramatic and I’m trying to tone that down. It won’t help my processing my feelings if I use hyperbole to deal with it. When Cole told me that he didn’t want to be with me anymore, I left the cafe and didn’t turn back. I didn’t respond to his calls and pleas for me to stop. I just ran home and locked the door behind me. He had left his key and couldn’t get inside. Cole banged on the door for an hour trying to get me to talk to him. But I just laid in